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 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.

To commit the principles of Milton Trager's approach to the linear and neatly subdivided printed page is to automatically exclude the effective expression of one essential principle: it is at the core a feeling experience.