I was thinking ...

What are the contraindications of working with Cancer?

There are many contraindications for working with cancer; they vary with the client and the practitioner and we should all take responsibility for educating ourselves in the area of client response.

A colleague has asked this question and it is one that comes up often in discussion. I believe that it is a difficult subject to define. There are many contraindications to working and most of them can occur whether the client has cancer or not. It is not a good idea to receive any bodywork when suffering from an infectious disease or where fever or high temperature is present. Open wounds will always need to be given a wide berth and working fresh scar tissue is really best left to absolute experience and experts. Broken bones, lumps, bumps and tumour sites - the list could go on.

Anything that gives us the slightest feeling of reserve; any situation that makes us worried, unsettled, in doubt or simply question our treatment is a warning that there may be a contraindication for us. Even if all our confidence tells us it is safe, if we haven't dealt with it before it is wise to step back and read the instruction box (i.e find out more about it and ask others who have experience - it is also good to engage the client with this as it empowers them to take responsibility). If even one person has been burnt in the past by something that was considered safe we may like to discount it. On the other hand if a client is asking for support and touch by simply coming to you then don't be shy of extremely gentle caring work, getting feedback from them as to how they are and how the treatment feels.

Given that lymphodema responds to lymphatic drainage massage it is clear that with the right approach this is not a contraindication. If you are extremely gentle and work with little depth bodywork can actually improve lymphodema problems but again we must be confident of our approach.

Clients tend to create their own desire to exclude complementary therapy. Gladly they really do take on responsibility for their own health and some will choose not to have treatment during chemo- or radio-therapy whilst others carry on with treatment throughout their treatment. Some people come because they believe treatment can help with nausea and others cancel because they are feeling sick so what is a contraindication?

Let me know what you think....

Thursday 24 September

All Action is an expression ...

but of what. As I learn more about Tai Chi and deepen my understanding of

playing Tai Chi I see that there is a part of me the SuperEgo (SE) me that wants/needs to know what is coming next and to meet that next moment with control and poise. Then there is the Mere Mortal (MM) me that has accepted that I am ordinary and to a large degree have no control other than to engage with my life. When the MM is playing my tai chi becomes an expression of the deeper me and when the SE takes over (as it has a tendency to do - a lot!) then tai chi is an expression of a me I believe I should be.

Yin/Yang discussions

I am working with a client at the moment for whom the Lung (lu) and Large Intestine (LI) meridians seem critical. The desire for control is a big thing in most of our lives and seems to be even more powerful when we have had control taken away from us in a big way. (I'm thinking about cancer and other life threatening illnesses.)

The breath is perhaps one of the best expressions of Yin and Yang. The breath goes out and comes in but which is Yin and which Yang? If we say that Yang is action and Yin reaction then for most people breathing in is the action and therefore Yang. We believe that if we don't breath in all will be lost, we have to know that we can breath in. Breathing out therefore becomes Yin and passive.

I would like to suggest the exact opposite and to say that breathing out is the action and as a reaction the breath comes in. Physiologically, when we breath out we reduce the air pressure in the chest cavity and the external, greater air pressure forces in the breath without our doing anything (we are passive in a way).

Learning to breath out as fully as possible will inevitably lead to us having a deeper in breath. The more space we create in our lungs the more air will come in to fill them (nature abhors a vacuum).

There is a lovely exercise which can help to create this pattern in the body. I know it as Ki-breathing which I learnt when doing Aikido. It is based on an out breath that is twice as long as the in breath. It is an exercise aimed at improving our breath - not a way to breath. It is important to try and make both the in breath (through the nose) and the out breath (through the mouth) as smooth as possible. Making a sound as you breath (in and out) can help both with smoothness and with vibrating energy in the throat. Start by breathing in for a count of 5, wait a second for the breath to settle and then breath out for a count of 10. Again wait for the breath to turn and the breath in again (for a count of 5). Even 3 or 4 repetitions will have an effect. Try it and see. Of course increasing the number of reps and the count will help as will regular practice.

Most importantly it may help re-educate the body to focus on the out breath when not doing the exercise.

Shiatsu meeting at Royal National Blind College, Hereford

Thank you to Jane Crabtree of the Royal National College for the blind (RNC) who arranged a small informal gathering for massage, shiatsu and other bodyworker practitioners to work with Sasada sensei. Mr Sasada comes from Japan every year to teach blind students at the college.

After some morning ki development run by Igg Welthy (Yo ki ho) we listened to Sasada sensei's method for assessing, treating and evaluating musculo-skeletal problems.

I put myself forward as the first demonstration client having discovered a little pain in hyper-extending my back. After checking my basic posture (and telling me that I had a little lordosis - the rounded shoulders of childhood!!) he suggested I stand in golfers stance with the toes and heels equidistant - even when doing the dishes!

On the table Sasada sensei showed us some basic assessment tests (knee to shoulder, knee out to side, as shown, and knee to other side) and based on the clients responses about pain he then chose the Bl (knee to shoulder), Sp (knee outward) or GB (knee across body) meridian to work on.

For me the work he did was the most educational. His approach is completely different to my own and even though I had met him 4 years ago I had no memory of how painful it could feel. In supine he bent my leg and tested Bl40, Kd10 and Bl57 in the crease of the knee. With my identifying Bl40 as the most painful he then proceeded to work it by leaning backward thereby getting a jitsu to release.

The GB treatment in side position was the most painful though with GB30 and the whole hip area being handled very deeply indeed without a supporting hand elsewhere to balance the work. Having said all that the treatment was effective with me being able to lean much further back than at the start. So thank you Mr Sasada.

And what have I taken away? Well quite a lot actually. All week I have been playing with how long I hold my position. I have always been drawn to stillness and so the fact that Mr Sasada held everything he did for 20 seconds intrigued me. I may, in the past, already have been holding shoulder stretches for that long but this week I expanded the possibility of holding for 20 into working Bl and Kd and into holding points. My idea of extending Ki seems to me less harsh than Sasada sensei's but that length of stillness draws me to extend further into the meridian and seems to have had benefits with clients deepening their own experience of the energy. Once again thank you Sasada sensei and thank you Jane.