The Educated Heart by Nina McIntosh - Professional Boundaries for Massage Therapists and Bodyworkers

"Professional Boundaries for Massage Therapists and Bodyworkers"

This is an incredible resource for someone in my field - it has application that extends far beyond my field and could apply to many different careers. I wish I would've read this years ago and I should re read this every year.

A rabbit trail on massage modalities:

Some people might wonder what is included under the title "bodyworker." Since I started my business as a massage therapist in 2013, I have been on a journey to discover and unveil the mysteries that shroud all the different types of massage that seem to be out there. Well, I guess the word massage connotes smooth strokes with oil or cream while bodywork is more inclusive - somatic, cranio-sacral, reiki - I'm just dropping terms like hot cakes here. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of some of this stuff myself.

somatic therapy - "is a holistic therapy that studies the relationship between the mind and body in regard to psychological past. The theory behind somatic therapy is that trauma symptoms are the effects of instability of the ANS (autonomic nervous system). Past traumas disrupt the ANS"Sep 12, 2014" - psych central.com  

This is an example of a label for a bodywork modality that goes beyond the basic muscle manipulation and tension relief. I took a week end course entitled "Touch, Presence, and Healing" - which was amazing - it didn't get me a certificate in any of the above mentioned modalities, yet seemed to fall under the category of what I understand to be cranio-sacral therapy. Nor, was it psychological therapy in the sense of dialogue which involves detecting sources of present or past pain and resolving them.  I've been practicing these techniques and integrating them into my massage routine (which involve steady holding on certain points of the body (usually joints) or particularly the base of the head and sacrum area) - the idea being that they link to the central nervous system. 

Back to the Book

This book really helped me unpack assumptions and perhaps practices that I intuitively try to follow, but often haven't succeeded at completely in pursuit of conducting business in a professional manner. I transitioned from doing massage as a hobby to tentatively experimenting with it as a business to thinking "hmm, I might actually make a career out of this." Along this self directed journey there have been many mentors and helpers and many floundering jump into the deep end alone moments. 

This book helped me to really ponder what experience clients might have, need, expect etc.. My boundaries and ethics training in school consisted of reading over a list of ethics. My teacher had a lot of practical tips and advice but our coverage of boundaries was bare bones compared to what counselors, therapists, doctors, nurses (and other professionals) undergo - and our work is often incredibly intimate - so this book is soo helpful. My next step is to create a support group of massage therapists in my area and perhaps do a study group based on this book. (2017 goals?)

Just to encapsulate some topics included in this book in a well organized fashion with lots of examples, quotes, and even funny cartoons - Client practitioner boundaries and the power imbalance, Ethical boundaries from theory to practice, boundaries and the power of words, sexual boundaries - protecting our clients, sexual boundaries - protecting ourselves, financial boundaries, dual relationships and boundaries wearing many hats.

This is a must read for massage therapists and/or Bodyworkers!

Girl Hunter - By Georgia Pellegrini and my thoughts on conscious flesh eating

This was an audio read, which means I "read" it in 10 or at the most 25 minute snatches while driving or washing dishes. Audio reading is really good for me because I've already mentioned my diabolical habit of skimming, which means I miss a lot of stuff - especially descriptive stuff that is actually quite poetical and charming. 

Here's a description of the book from Amazon:  "What happens when a classically-trained New York chef and fearless omnivore heads out of the city and into the wild to track down the ingredients for her meals? After abandoning Wall Street to embrace her lifelong love of cooking, Georgia Pellegrini comes face to face with her first kill. From honoring that first turkey to realizing that the only way we truly know where our meat comes from is if we hunt it ourselves, Pellegrini embarks on a wild ride into the real world of local, organic, and sustainable food."

This seems to be an honest account of her different hunting adventures across the country, in Arkansas, Texas, Wyoming, Louisiana, upstate New York, and even and old English style hunt in the UK. This was pretty entertaining. I love her declaration about the surprising good manners and intelligence of people who have been labelled back woods rednecks by the cloistered liberals in the city. This resonates with current political happenings and the realization of the media and much of the country about the disconnect between rural and urban folks that has happened - rabbit trail!!! No pun intended. She prefers squirrels.

I have pondered my own disconnect between the flesh that I eat and its once living state. I did help butcher some turkeys this year - an experience which I embraced, like Georgia, as an opportunity to encounter my food at a more honest level. I held the wriggling turkey in a bucket whilst its owner sliced its jugular (or the equivalent) in a humane fashion. I watched its blood drain out and was pleasantly surprised to see that there didn't seem to be distress. I reached my hand into its cavity and use my fingers to separate its innards from the frame and then pulled them out in one clean sweep. Enough description for now. 

So, I can appreciate her pilgrimage towards what does it really mean to be an omnivore. I have contemplated vegetarianism. I have seen death, but rarely. I have watched the light go out of a coyote's eyes and felt the strange mystical power of the transition from life to death. I have lamented my lack of awareness and appreciation for the life that has become my food and how easy it is for me to acquire it. I also know that I consciously choose to eat meat because I believe that humans were designed to eat meat and that my own body needs the iron and nutrition it provides. 

This book has philosophy but it's not a treatise. It's a play by play of her experiences capturing food. It felt oddly like reading poetry because of her fresh portrayals of people, places, and things, that really pulled me into the moment - the sights and sounds of the early morning hunt - the jocular hunting guide "the commish" - who I feel like is someone I met in my childhood, and the luscious descriptions of how the prey became a tasty main dish. 

I feel that I have always looked down on hunters a bit. I have always felt like hunting is valid only if people couldn't otherwise procure meat. The idea of capturing a lovely graceful deer just for sport seemed villainous, especially considering high powered rifles and modern technology - so unsporting and relatively easy - like when everyone on your soccer team gets a trophy when you're nine, or when it's your turn to be student of the month. I guess this book made me ponder my posture a bit. Perhaps there is something to be said for keeping alive a dormant part of ourselves which helps define what it means to be human. Perhaps there is something in the process of stalking, killing, preparing, and devouring food that gets us in touch with a more authentic version of ourselves. Plus, apparently wild pigs are overtaking the west. Stalk on. 

   From the prologue: "I speak of men who rode the Outside Circle. Men whose struggles, strengths, attitudes, humor, fiber, character, and philosophies were tempered and shaded by the mighty Mountain -Mogollon."

  Jinx Pyle has done it again! This cowboy, writer, singer, speaker, and historian has captured an elusive moment in time - the age of the cowboy in the west as he experienced it growing up in the Arizona mountains beneath the shadow of the Mogollon Rim. This book is full of interesting tales based on the larger than life heroes who carved out a living in the mountains by raising cattle, living off the land, and hunting lions and bears to protect their herds. 

  The book is full of interesting photos and humorous stories about an era and a lifestyle that came and went only too quickly. I love all the photos! They really capture the spirit of these tough yet light-hearted individuals. Jinx Pyle has done an amazing job in researching the area and transmitting his own experience growing up on different ranches, being apprenticed from the early age of three by his father and grandfather in the now almost lost arts of cattle handling, horsemanship, and hunting.

   One of the best things about the book is its plethora of cowboy lingo - a vocabulary and dialect which I grew up with. This is of particular value because I doubt much of this terminology has been recorded and used extensively or accurately elsewhere. 

   One part that I loved (see my bio for disclaimer on overuse of "love") was where he talks about games or activities he did as a kid that "town folks would consider far too dangerous" like jumping on horses and racing bareback, roping each other and pulling partner off of horse etc.. When he was about fifteen he asked his Dad about this. This was the response. "Sure, I thought you might get hurt or even killed, and sometimes I almost had to hold your mother down, but I knew that if you lived you would be a man, and if you didn't grow up to be a man, I wouldn't want you around anyhow.' I knew Dad was joking, but many a truth is passed along in jest."

   What a startling philosophy in this age of helicopter parenting. (myself included.) I get the feeling that this band of mountain survivors buffered their hardships with humor and in fact an entire chapter is dedicated to humor - it played such a vital role in relaxation, entertainment, and education.  

   This is also, like the author's other books and songs of which I'm familiar, a tribute to the true cowboy and an elegy of sorts to a heritage that is now just a dimming memory. He says it best in his song "Where'd the cowboys Go?" the lyrics of which are included at the end of Mountain Cowboys.

  

 Books and other resources can be found at www.gitarope.com

   Other books by Jinx Pyle that I have enjoyed: Falcon Fox, Blue Fox - War to the Knife (fictional in the western genre), The Pleasant Valley War. I also love his c.d. Rawhide Ranahan (authentic songs written and performed by the author).

I have also read Muanami, Sister of the Moon - by Jayne Peace Pyle which is another well researched and artfully crafted fiction book about Native Americans. I believe it has a sequel I hope to read. 

For the southwestern historical aficionado - there are many more resources from the Pyles...

On a sidenote - if you are an avid reader of westerns you probably know that Zane Grey hunted and had a residence in the area near Payson, Arizona that is described in this book. His cabin has been recreated and exists as part of a museum in Payson Arizona. Apparently Grey loved this area and if you do a bit of research used it as a context for several of his stories.

First Ladies by Susan Swain and C-Span

This is basically the transcript of interviews with different experts about the various ladies, so it reads differently from other books. 

I really can say that the only first ladies that I knew anything at all about prior to this book were Abigail Adams, Rachel Jackson, Mary Todd Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, and Nancy Reagan. 

Of course the ones that have served in that capacity during my lifetime I know nothing about. I'm still catching up on human history which impedes my interest in current events. Then there are those things adults repeat which stay in your mind. I remember as an eleven year old interjecting myself into an adult conversation saying "Barbara Bush is really the boss." If it was an original statement it would have been precocious indeed, but I'm sure I was just repeating something I had heard. 

This was a fascinating read. If I could go back in time though and visit with a first lady it would still be Rachel Jackson who never actually even made it to the white house. She died of a heart attack - perhaps related to the stress of being harangued, insulted, and scandalized due to the circumstances surrounding her second marriage to the romantic, daring, and undeniably patriarchal husband Andrew - a complicated character who is forever aligned with the trail of tears but who himself adopted a cherokee boy. Perhaps I am swayed by my childhood visit with my grandparants to their home the Hermitage during a magical stay in Nashville TN, a city that seemed ancient compared to my California surroundings, and where I first heard the tale of Andrew and Rachels' troubled but seemingly close union. It reminds me of my early exposure to Heathcliff and Catherine, but again a rabbit trail. 

Of the first ladies in general, this reading reinforced my unwillingness to proffer unthoughtful criticism of people in positions of leadership - so many difficult things to navigate and so many feathers to ruffle no matter what. Truly, blessed are the thick skinned dwellers of the White House. These ladies, for the most part were amazing examples of tenacity, energy, and perserverance. 

This is what Allida Black says of Eleanor "During her 1943 tour of American troops in the Pacific, Eleanor flew over in an uninsulated military aircraft. her eardrum shatters. She goes deaf in one ear. She will walk fifty miles of hospital corridors in two days. The arches will fall on her feet. She will never be able to stand again without special shoes. This trip changes Eleanor Roosevelt. She begins to carry a prayer in her wallet that says "Dear Lord lest I continue in my complacent ways, help me to remember that somewhere someone died for me today. And if there be war, help me to remember to ask and to answer, am I worth dying for?"

the life-changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo

The title is not capitalized which makes it plebeian and accessible to all. I figure there's two types of people who would want to read this book: those who are hoarders and/or clutterflutters and those who are obsessed with minimizing and maintaining neatness. Since I fall into the latter category to some degree, I was thrilled that my friend sent this to me. I had coveted it at Costco once but the above trait prevented me from buying it - ironically. 

It has some great tips. I tried the folding thing - but I think Marie will have to show me that one. One of the pieces I carried away from this book is that inanimate objects respond to proper care and placement. I totally believe this. This computer is a virtual dinosaur and it is only alive by sweet talking. If you're trying to decide whether or not to keep something hold it in your hands (unless its larger than you smarty pants) and reflect on your feelings for it - nostalgia, need, guilt, fear...?

Oh, and because of my particular weakness, it was good for me to be reminded of the beauty of the joyful chaos of sharing space with others. As Marie walks in after a long day and gently unpacks her purse, puts on her loungewear which is beautiful and comfortable, and sips a cup of tea surrounded only by the things she loves... She admits, you musn't try to minimize the things of those around you.