What it Means and Why it is of Central Importance.
A Nothing Thing
The Trager® Approach: Principles for an Ageless Practice
I am standing in front of 100 massage therapists at the AMTA National Convention in Richmond, VA. I have less than 8 hours to introduce them to the breadth and depth of Trager and the practice of movement as a way to agelessness. Although Trager is not a form of massage, but rather an approach to Movement Education and Mind/Body Integration, I have been invited to present it here because the work is often an easy fit in a massage therapy context.
The Trager® Approach
Imagine for a moment that there are no words available for use to communicate with our patients. Our language is one of touch. We will communicate tactile feelings with our hands to our patients’ tissues. These gestures, offering suggestions and attitudes of softness and freedom of movement, will be picked up through their sensory receptors and interpreted by their minds.
The Principles of the Trager® approach - Part III
As with resistance, the tighter and harder the tissue, the lighter and softer the practitioner works to encourage change, until the messages of lightness and softness are picked up by the receiver and the tissue responds by loosening and softening. With a person who is too loose--that is, where there is weakness, flaccidity, or even paralysis--the practitioner evokes reflex muscle activity.
The Principles of the Trager® approach (Part II)
The receiver must first feel something different and better in order to establish and develop a different and better pattern. If I am always anxious, I cannot change fundamentally until I have felt calm and peacefulness. If I am uncomfortable, I cannot change until I experience comfort. Once I have experienced a better sensation, the possibility of returning to that improved feeling state will always be available.
The Principles of the Trager® approach Part I
Tragers®: Mentastics®-presence in motion
Trager emphasized to his students the physical effects of motion as apprehended by the client’s mind. He guided his clients toward actively recreating off the table, as ‘mental gymnastics (Mentastics), new movements they had passively experienced on the table, Mentastics are the playful side of Trager.