Massage and Embodiment

Article by Keith Eric Grant, PhD, NCTMB in Massage Today June, 2006, Vol. 06, Issue 06

Grant reflects on touch and the two best known paradigms of massage in the U.S. context namely massage for relaxation and massage as health care. (Despite legislation in South Africa attempting to bring all types of massage under the same umbrella, the same distinction exists here - EK)

He then discusses a third paradigm of massage that has an impact on the quality of body-sense or embodiment of the person, an approach that has been largely ignored "by those looking at massage as tissue-specific health care".

According to Grant, practising massage as sensory re-framing has no lack for material to draw from. He points to the work of:

• Maurice Merleau-Ponty who sets out a philosophical framework more than a half century ago
  

• Deane Juhan, best known as the author of Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork and

• Donald Bakal who lays the same stress on developing body awareness as a path to healing in his book Minding the Body: Clinical Uses of Somatic Awareness.

Read the full article at: http://www.massagetoday.com/mpacms/mt/article.php?id=13431

---