Misadventures of the Myofascial Kind (Part I)
Twenty-two hours of seminar this weekend, finally done and gone. And I must say (very thankfully) I actually kind of enjoyed it, despite feeling like I was going to pass out from exhaustion on the drive home.
((As it was a long (but rather interesting) weekend, I'll be splitting up the entries into installments over the next few days so as not to overwhelm. Prepare yourself.))
As I mentioned last week, the reason I was spending twenty-two hours at school on a weekend was to take the first half of the Myofascial Release seminar I'm signed up for this month--this past weekend was spent on the upper-body, the next weekend seminar (at the end of the month) will be spent on the lower half. It's an extensive and exhausting weekend, and I can't even FATHOM how tiring it'll be to take the Precision Neuromuscular Therapy seminar sometime before I graduate, knowing that it encompasses not *TWO* weekends but *FIVE*. But I managed to get through it.
I went into the seminar knowing absolutely nothing about what myofascial release even is. And at first I wasn't quite sure what to make of it all--our instructor (who is obviously a practitioner) spoke of it as though it was one-up to the second coming of Jesus, as though it could cure anything and had unfathomable healing powers and could turn a toaster into a poodle if done correctly. When people start to sound a bit too close to facetious Tom Waits songs, I get a bit skeptical:
That's right, it filets, it chops
It dices, slices, never stops
lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn
and it picks up the kids from school
It gets rid of unwanted facial hair
it gets rid of embarrassing age spots
It delivers a pizza
and it lengthens, and it strengthens
And it finds that slipper that's been at large
under the chaise longe for several weeks
And it plays a mean Rhythm Master
It makes excuses for unwanted lipstick on your collar
And it's only a dollar, step right up
it's only a dollar, step right up
So I had my doubts.
But then we were told that myofascial release involved very deep tissue work and *CAN BE PAINFUL*, and my ears, of course, perked right up. Obviously, I'm not into making my clients HURT. But as I've mentioned at least once or twice before, I really really enjoy giving massages where I'm able to put the full-force of my body into a stroke and have a client open themselves up to a beautiful wonderful ache and pain whose end-results will be pleasure. So I was intrigued.
The goal of myofascial release is apparently to realign the body in the gravitational field by working on the fascia (which runs continuously through the whole body) and returning the fascia to a state in which it is again flexible and able to act as a lubricant. This is done through fairly intense stretching of various body-parts and the underlying fascia (so intense that often, clients will feel pain when being worked on). Myo also apparently works as a fantastic complement to chiropractic adjustments as well, since they both have the same goal in mind. Cool stuff.
So despite the fact that I was at school and it was 6pm on a Friday night, I was a little bit excited and didn't dread quite so much the prospect of having to spend 22 hours of my weekend there, now that I knew what we would be learning.
There were about 25-30 people in the class, I'd guess, and they were a good and enjoyable bunch (thankfully)--a mixture of students who were required to take the seminar and professionals already out in the massage therapy field, making their marks. Our instructor reminded me of a (much cheerier) Sam the Eagle from The Muppets, though Sam the Eagle has less hair than I remembered, and our instructor is bountiful in that area.
Some of us knew one another, some of us didn't, so he *OF COURSE* made us begin the first night with the obligatory ice-breaking garbage-ola that folks always like to torture seminar attendees with.
This particular night, it was a staring/intimacy exercise that I'd done once before when I started my current job. And let me tell you, IT SUCKS.
What it entailed was standing across from a person, both of you placing your hand on each other's heart, and then both of you placing your other hand over the hand that is on your own heart. And then you stand in silence and are supposed to look the other person in the eyes.
Now, I don't know how many of you have stared a stranger in the eye for about five-minutes straight without talking (and without diverting your gaze), but it is a surprisingly and disturbingly uncomfortable experience. It sounds easy enough, but you can't even begin to understand what a horrifying experience it is to be forced to gaze into the eyes of someone you don't know at all. It literally is like opening your soul up to them and staring into the gaping maw of their own. I kid you not. Do it sometime--with a complete stranger. You will see what I mean.
This was made even worse on Friday by the fact that I have a hard time maintaining eye contact with folks as is. It creeps me out and makes me feel itchy and awkward to do so with people I don't know, and I have a tendency to stare off into space when talking to folks for that very reason. I also am a person who has very carefully built a protective fortress around myself, and I rarely let people in or myself out. So staring someone directly in the eyes is effectively taking a big ol' wrecking ball to this damnable fortress, and I'm not a big fan of doing that. I'm not a real big fan of vulnerability period, if you haven't yet figured that out. So when I realized this is what we were doing, I was like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
We didn't stay with one person the whole time either. We switched up with about 3 or 4 different people in the course of what was probably 15 minutes (but felt like 4 hours). The first few people I had were girls, and we kind of just giggled uncomfortably and stood around awkwardly. The pattern of interaction went something like this: giggle, accidental eye contact, abrupt and uncomfortable looking away, staring at your hand on their heart, accidentally making eye contact again, giggling, looking away embarassed, accidentally realizing you're staring at their boobs, looking away quickly, staring at their chin, giggling.
Awkward--yes. Uncomfortable--yes. But the other person was clearly feeling the same way, so no real harm done.
The problem arose when I got paired up with the teaching assistant for the seminar, a short older man in his fifties or sixties. Clearly he had done this before. Clearly he took the activity seriously. And clearly I could not giggle awkwardly the whole time without feeling like a total ass.
The man's gaze remained on my face consistently throughout, despite my constant, unavoidable, almost reflex-like diverted gazes, and I felt terrible because he was trying so hard to let me in and make me comfortable with his eye contact. So, goddammit, I decided that I would make an effort and would attempt to maintain eye contact with him (despite the fact that it's about as painful as having my wisdom-teeth extracted). So I tried tried tried tried. And I kid you not--it was literally one of the spookiest experiences I've ever taken part in.
Now, I'm not a big fat new-agey person who's all about energies and the forces of love and chakras and light emitted from the body and out-of-body experiences all that. I believe in a lot of that stuff, but not in that spooky-eyed kinda glazed-over kinda way that some new age folks do. Moreso in an uber-rationalized tied-down-to-the-scientific-workings-of-the-universe kind of way.
But I've gotta tell you, after finally forcing myself to stare at him without looking away, I had the most bizarre and sudden cataclysmic moment where I literally felt like I'd slipped into some sort of otherworldiness and was being swallowed up by the energies of this person. And it scared the crap outta me. I felt simultaneously warm and safe and exposed and vulnerable. I felt like I'd in that one moment told them EVERY SINGLE DASTARDLY SECRET ABOUT MY LIFE THAT'S EVER MADE ME CRY MYSELF TO SLEEP AT NIGHT, and it was a goddamn intense experience. I actually had to look away for a moment at one point because I felt so exposed that I literally thought I was going to start crying. Had I not looked away, I think I probably would've.
I think the teaching assistant experienced something similar (although perhaps not precisely the same) as well--at one point, his eyes got kinda watery and he looked kind of uncomfortable and then eventually, when it kinda felt like it was done with, he kinda just smiled lop-sided at me.
I guess you would say "we had a moment." And man oh man, was it amazing but spooky.
The whole experience literally freaked me out so much that when I went to pee afterwards, I realized I had broken out in a hive below my lip from it.
I never ever ever get hives.
Clearly I am mental.
And clearly our TA was some sort of hive-inducing witch-doctor.
Until tomorrow, here be some links, in case you're interested in reading more about the kinds of stuff we were learning...
(Stay tuned tomorrow for More Misadventures of the Myofascial Kind.)
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