Self-Healing
Pushing Back the Boundaries of Aging, Part Two
b y Meir Schneider and Carol Gallup
This second of a t w o - ~ a t t
column on aging explores
the impoflance of movement
and other lifestvle choices,
and offers massage and
movement sessions for
elderly clients.
R o l e m o d e l s give u s o u r e x p e c t a t i o n s a b o u t
As a teenager, Meir Schneider found a role
model in Shlomo, a 77-year-old retired
laborer. They met on a beach in Tel Aviv.
Meir went there every chance he got; it
was a great place to do the vision and
movemenr exercises that were now bring-
ing him functional eyesight. Shlomo also
went to the beach to move. He could no
longer run and he swam slowly but had
built up great endurance. Unlike other
swimmers, whose warm-ups were hurried
and perfunctory, Shlomo took a lot of
time with gentle exercises before his daily
swim. H e was exploring movemenr,
incorporating yoga and other systems,
inventing, having a good time. When
other seniors joined him, he led an exer-
cise class. At retirement 10 years earlier,
degenerated disks had made movemenr
stiff and for Shlomo; now he
moved with ease and amazing flexibility.
"It's important to move and loosen every
part of the body - at least 20 repetitions
for each movement, or your muscles and
joints won't respond," Shlomo told
Schneider. Noticing that his toenails had
turned yellow, an early warning sign of
poor circulation that could lead to serious
28 MASSAGE. issue Number 62 J u l y / A u g u s t 1996
infection, he made a project of improving
them. During his exercise sessions he
would interlace his fingers with his toes
and stretch them into extension, then flex
them against resistance, then stretch them
further into flexion. After three months
and many repetitions, his toenails became
white again.
Schneider was impressed that Shlomo
didn't back away from the changes that
come with aging. Instead he explored the
enormous realm of his body as i r was, then
z+.
and there, through movement. Schneider
was learning that movement itself is a
deep, primal place you can return to again
and again in spite of all kinds of stiffness,
pain and disabilities. You can use move-
ment systems like tai chi or yoga as a way
in - or better yet, invent your own.
The body in movement is a shifiing
landscape like the beach - never the same
from day to day. You may feel muscles
clamoring to be stretched in certain exact
directions, or find yourself wanting to try
out strange new ways of walking, running
or dancing. You may have moments of
intense pleasure in some part of your back,
or you may suddenly feel that your neck is
as long as a swan's, coming up from the
strength of your midback, and that it
needs to swoop. Years later, what
Schneider learned from Shlomo and oth-
ers helped him transmit this kinesthetic
aliveness to clients whose only pain-free
movements might - be the motion of breath
in a small area of the ribcage - yet move-
ment became their path to recovery.
Factors in aging
In our last column we wrote about how
stress accelerates aging.--Stressalso limits
and stereotypes our movement; this is
what Shlomo taught himself to overcome.
Anxiety, fear and anger create muscular
tension, which builds up in the tissues
when it is not released, until some areas of
the body are virtually frozen. For exam-
ple, some people respond to stress by
angrily clenching the jaw, causing chronic
headaches or TMJ syndrome.
As patterns of rigidity lock in, tensed-up
muscles shorten; their antagonists can no
longer balance them, so they weaken and
grow
- slack. Blood vessels and nerves
become compressed, local circulation is
cut down and sensation dims to the point
of numbness. Many cells are left under-
nourished and burdened with waste prod-
ucts. Connective tissue in the area hard-
ens, causing joint spaces to shrink. Pain
and stiffness ensue. Shallow breathing and
breath-holding are also associated with
stress - and impair lung and heart func-
tion. With these stiff patterns engrained
in the body from chronic stress, we are
perpetually bracing ourselves for our next
experience. Neutral or unimportant'exter-
nal events appear to us as hassles or annoy-
ing problems - and we respond with the
kind of behaviors that create more such
events. Stress becomes a reverberating loop
in our lives, self-amplifying, self-prolong-
ing and self-restarting. We stay tuned to it.
The lifestyle part of the picture
Stress is not the only thing that ages us.
Bad food and too much of it are a prob-
lem. Time Magazine reported that nearly
one-third of Americans are obese. Animal
and human studies link dierary restriction
and lower weight with longer life. The
medical profession advises us to watch our
weight and cut down on dietary fat. Of
course, the kind of severe dietary restric-
tion that results from body-image prob-
lems like bulimia and anorexia nervosa is
not conducive to a longer life; it's simply
dangerous.
 They also tell us we need at least 30
minutes of vigorous exercise every day. As
a society, we're outrageously sedentary.
Surveys have shown that only 10 percent
of adult Americans take part in any regular
fitness program; in late middle age (age 55
to 64), only seven percent bother with any
kind of fitness regimen even once a week.
This downhill slide gets worse for the
elderly.
Many of us insist on driving to any des-
tination that is more than half a block
away. Even young athletes tend to avoid
movement that doesn't bring athletic gain.
"It's the scoreboard complex - it ain't
worth doing unless somebody's keeping
score," said San Francisco State University
Professor of IOnesiology Steve Evans.
"The only reason they'll exercise is for
competition, to win. Ail of these coaches
were athletes. They don't exercise at all
any more. It was all in the scoreboard,
winning and losing points." Evans sees
the results of this unbalanced approach to
movement in injuries to knees, backs,
joints, tendons and ligaments; in sciatica;
in carpal tunnel syndrome. Young female
athletes don't have enough body fat to
retain their menstrual cycles; estrogen
secretion decreases sharply as a result, lead-
ing to a serious loss of bone density. "The
top young gymnasts in the world restrict
their skeleton formation so badly in their
teens chat they enter menopause with the
skeletons of 70-year-olds, and we can't do
anything to reverse it later," Evans said.
These young athletes are our society's
role models. They display our collective
lifestyle, either moving to compete -
intensely, furiously, ballistically, hearts
pounding with effort, often injuring thern-
selves as they use their bodies to achieve
the win they want so badly - or avoiding
moving at all. O n the surface, it's attractive,
and the injuries make them look heroic. Is
this really the way we want to live?
In our last column we mentioned Jim
Fixx, a proponent of jogging who con-
vinced millions of people that it would
prevent heart and circulatory problems.
H e died while jogging at age 44.
Schneider thinks that Fixx would be alive
today if he had cultivated what Schneider
calls kinesthetic awareness, a subtle sense
of movement from within that keys us in
to the body's movement needs. Schneider
runs too. As he sets out to run on the
beach near his home, he'll have some idea
of how far he'd like to run that day, and

MSAGE Issue Number 62 July /August 1996 29

1 .
Self-Healing
then modify it as he feels his body's
. -particular needs from moment
to moment. For all of us, and as we train young people, a primary
goal of movement should be to serve the needs of our bodies.
There's an ideal flux, according- to Evans, for each system of the
body. Both mineral in bone and protein in muscle are continual-
ly being built up and lost. Both overuse and underuse are damag-
ing; we get a net loss in these fluxes. "You need to find the exact
exercise prescription for each person at a given time," he said.
Schneider says that people with sedentary habits, even those
who engage in occasional furious athletic activity, have taught
their brains to resist movement, so they have that resistance to
overcome before they can develop the kinesthetic awareness that
leads to balanced, healthful use.
When you're young and active, nature gives you good circula-
tion, flexible joints, strong muscles and bones, great reflexes and
coordination. You can start then, or in middle age, to build the
health that will help you age successfully. Nature definitely
doesn't give these gifts to the elderly; it's going to cost them an
effort to stay in good shape. Schneider
recommends that people in their sixties
work on themselves at least an hour a
day; in their seventies, an hour and a
half, and in their eighties and beyond,
two hours a day - but no matter what
they do, they won't be as fast as when
getting real with
they were young, although they can
improve reaction time to some degree.
Statistically, increasing muscle weak-
ness is a part of aging. This serious
health problem for the elderly leads to
falls, fractures, loss of independence and
institutionalization. How much is loss
of strength an inevitable part of aging
and how much is it just the atrophy . be at the top of the fitness curve for their
that comes with an inactive lifestyle? Leg muscles suffer the
greatest losses with aging, back muscles less, and arm muscles
the least. This points to lifestyle. T o stay strong, muscles need
to be loaded, and a sedentary lifestyle disproportionately
unloads the weight-bearing muscles. Joint pain and stiffness can
be a factor; stiff ankles, for example, can limit movement at the
knees and hips, and make full loading unlikely.
The picture of senile muscle atrophy is not fully understood.
What is clearest is that with old age
- we suffer a dramatic loss of
motor units. A motor unit is one spinal motor neuron and the
muscle fibers it innervates. Motor units remodel themselves
throughout life. A muscle fiber can easily lose its connection to
the motor nerve. T o attract a replacement for the lost motor neu-
ron, the orphaned muscle fiber puts out extra receptors for the
nerve's chemical messenger, acetyl choline, all over its surface, like
a wall of hungry mouths.
Muscle fibers belong to either of two main types: Type I, or
slow-nvitch, are the small, slow, postural muscles; Type 11, or fast-
twitch, are the bulky, powerful, fast muscles that we use less often.
In motor unit remodeling, the muscle fiber takes on the character
of the nerve that adopts it. As it happens, Type I nerves tend to
arrive at these orphaned muscle fibers sooner than Type 11. In old
age we have fewer, bigger and more homogenous motor units,
and many more of them are Type I.
30 MASSAGE Issue Number 62 July /August 1996
Whether the problem begins with the aging nerve or muscle is
the subject of debate among researchers. Spinal motor neurons
are the longest nerves in the body - sometimes more than three
feet long in humans (and 60 feet long in whales). Some
researchers think that therein lies their fragility. Substances are
shuttled continuously up and down along the microtubules,
which are a nerve's long-distance transport system. Because these
slender, delicate filaments are so incredibly long, foul-ups can eas-
ily arise: the microtubules can break down, leading to an accumu-
lation of cellular garbage in the nerve. So it may be the spinal
motor neuron that causes the death of the motor unit in elderly
people. It is certain that spinal motor neurons are dying as we
age, and the Type I1 motor neurons are dying in disproportion-
ately greater numbers - but there is also evidence of degenerative
change in aging muscle fibers.
The original challenge that kills these spinal nerves may be
underuse - but if they are few enough, it doesn't take much
activity to constitute overuse. This is exactly the pattern that has
emerged with postpolio: years earlier, polio
attacked and &!led some of these nerves,
leaving the surviving spinal motor neurons
vulnerable to overuse, which eventually
destroys them. The difference between
people with postpolio and the rest of us is
about 20 years, Schneider believes. As
the situa
massage therapists, we need to facilitate
balanced use in elderly clients who have
lost motor units. It's a challenge.
Elderly people who were once top-level
athletes and continue to work out will see
their athletic skills deteriorate with age,
especially at high-speed, highly skilled
activities like basketball - but they'll still
age. Fairly physically active people who remain so in old age will
sustain moderate losses. The place you don't want to be is at the
bottom of the curve; the sedentary elderly are at risk for losing
independent living.
While endurance exercise, like walking or swimming, improves
muscle metabolism, it can't reverse muscle atrophy in the elderly.
What does reverse senile muscle atrophy dramatically is high-
intensity resistance training - weight lifiing at 80 percent of one-
repetition maximum. Using Nautilusmequipment or a similar
system, the trainer finds a weight for each muscle group that is
just beyond the person's capacity to lift, say, 100 pounds, then
takes 80 percent of that, or 80 pounds. The weight-lifting session
for this person would consist of lifting 80 pounds in three sets of
eight repetitions each. Each repetition takes six to nine seconds;
the rest period between sets is one minute. Periodically, the train-
er assesses the person's progress and raises the one-repetition max-
imum weight lifted accordingly.
This is a recent and important discovery. In one high-intensity
resistance program, the participants in their 90s increased an aver-
age of 174 percent in strength of the quadricep in just 12 weeks.
Improvement carries over into function - a similar program
increased walking speed by 48 percent for its elderly participants.
Elderly muscles are more easily injured and take longer to recover
than younger ones; antioxidants like vitamin E may help in recov-
ery. Senior citizens need their workouts too much to give them
 Self-Healing
up for fear of injury; they should work out sensibly, with a good
fitness trainer. Fitness trainers who work with the elderly need to
teach kinesthetic awareness rather than a mechanical approach,
and need to be well aware of the special needs of the elderly. The
important thing is the movement needs of the elderly person's
body, not how much they can achieve.
How we look at aging
The way Hazel Parcells lived her life tells us a lot about aging.
As a young woman, she followed her soldier husband from one
army camp to another during World War I. The camps were
notoriously unhealthy places, and Parcells contracted tuberculosis.
At age 41, at an army hospital, she was told that she had only a
few days to live. The tuberculosis had enlarged her heart, deflated
one lung and hemorrhaged away a third of one kidney. She
checked herself out of the hospital, went home and lifted her spir-
its with a facial and a perm. As no doctors held out any hope for
her, she decided to try to listen to her body; what did it want? It
wanted green, leafy things. It was winter in Colorado, so that
meant spinach - steamed, raw, juiced, in salads. She bought it
by the gunnysack. A year later she went back to see the doctor
who had predicted her imminent death. He found that her heart
had returned to a normal size, her lung- reinflated itself and her
kidney, an organ that supposedly has no regenerative powers, had
regenerated itself.
Working w i t h your elderly clients
w at follows is a sample six-session sequence for work-
ing with elderly clients, aimed at the most common
problems that occur with aging. The sessions include
massage, movement and other methods. The most import feature
is the home program, which will include the movement and other
exercises that you introduce in the session. Clients shouid be
encouraged to set aside one to two hours a day (all at once or bro-
ken up into shorter segments) for their home program. If there is
a family member or friend who is willing to come to the sessions
and learn to massage the client, then massage can be included in
the home program,
- .
too.
A home exercise and massage - or self-massage- program is
essential to self-care and self-healing. Without it, lasting change is
impossible. Some massage therapists routinely give their clients
home programs. If you don't, you may feel diffident about
impinging on the free time of your clients. But as a massage ther-
apist, you are a health educator - and education usually includes
homework. You may have felt intuitions about exercises and
lifestyle changes you wanted to suggest to clients; we hope you
will honor those intuiriofis.
Clients at the Center for Self-Healing expect to get an extensive
home program. If your clients don't, we suggest you negotiate.
Tell them you suggest one to two hours per day, and ask them
how they think they might be able to work it into their schedules.
Consider the directions given below as a starting point to be
modified according to your clients' needs and reactions. Please
apply your own intuition, inventiveness and experience. If you
have questions or ideas, feel free to call us.
32 WSAGE Issue Number 62 July /August 1996
For the next 65 years Parcells devoted herself to creating a body ,
of knowledge about the chemistry of foods and nutrition. The
body could heal itself, she s l d , if given the right cleansing and
eating programs; the important thing was to get in touch with the
body's needs rather than to give over our lives to the "experts." In
the 1930s Parcells studied chemistry. During the next decade she
began teaching and lecturing throughout the country. In the
1950s she founded the first school of nutrition in a college or uni-
versity, at Sierra State University in Los Angeles. At age GO she
went back to school and earned doctorates in naturopathy, chiro-
practic, nutrition and world religion. In the 1960s she set up
practices in nutritional counseling in Los Angeles and
Albuquerque and commuted regularly between them across the
Arizona desert. Parcells continued counseling until age 105.
She spent half of her last year of life working six hours a day,
five days a week, on a book about her work with Joseph Dispenza,
now director of the Parcells Center. "I'd have to ask her for
breaks; she had enormous reserves of energy and just kept going
and going - at age 106," Dispenza recalled. Parcells finished the
book a month before her death, then warned her associates that
she would die soon; she felt free to leave this life now that her
work was finished. She died peacefully in her sleep; apparently,
her heart just stopped. Shortly before she died in January of this
year, she told Dispenza, "It's an accident of nature that I've lived
contznued on page 34
- six sessions
Most elderly people need to breathe more deeply. The most
haunting problem of old age is lack of oxygen; it impairs circula-
tion and creates sluggishness and an unwillingness to move. The
joints of their chests and abdomens may be so stiff that they lack
available space to breathe into, so we need to help them loosen
their armor and then work with breathing.
There are special problems in working with elderly people.
When you give them instructions for a home exercise program,
some of them may become very anxious because they know they
have trouble remembering things. Don't give them too many
new techniques to learn at one time. At the beginning of each
session, you may want to review exercises from earlier sessions and
answer any questions and concerns they have. It's a good idea to
give them a take-home instruction sheet, preferably in large print,
and to leave some time to go over the new exercises at the end of
the session.
Use your own judgment about the number of repetitions for
each exercise, depending on your client's condition.
Make sure your clients have had a recent medical checkup.
You may want to ask their physicians whether there are any spe-
cial problems you should know about. For example, in elderly
women especially, bones may be fragile, and so cervical traction
could be very dangerous. O r there could be an embolism (typi-
cally a piece of arterial plaque that is dislodged and adrift in the
bloodstream) that should not be directed toward the heart. There
could be a fragile artery. Many goals of massage can be accom-
plished equally well with gentle touch or deep-tissue work. With
rhe elderly, it's better to be gentle.
contznued on page 34
Self-Healing
to be 106 years old. It's the quality of life that matters, not the
quantity of years."
Unlike some proponents of New Age philosophies, we won't
suggest that you can live forever. Such proponents say that things
like old age and death are merely our collective illusions. They
talk a lot about healing ourselves -just as we do - and people
think we are saying the same thing. We are not. We agree that
how a person looks at things can influence his or health enor-
mously - and that changing the mind can change the body. O n
the other hand, we feel that healing begins with getting grounded,
getting real with the situation and getting deeply into the body.
That's where changing the mind needs to start.
We've never seen anyone who has lived forever, but we have
seen people like Shlomo and Hazel Parcells, and we are unwilling
to dilute the meanings they've shown us with airy speculation.
They accomplished things that mattered to them, took care of
their bodies patiently and realistically, shaped the lives they want-
ed to have, and departed in a way that was good for them. T o us,
that's successful aging.
Some New Age authors state that health is not just the absence
of disease but a higher state of consciousness. Under this philoso-
phy the body is the objective experience of consciousness; the
mind, its subjective experience - and the body is intelligence,
information, energy and voidness. In many spiritual disciplines,
lofty statements like these are ofien viewed as ungrounded, as a
kind of spiritual candy. The really important insights in life come
out of our own challenges and efforts or from seeing them embod-
ied in a role model, because an insight is inseparable from the spir-
itual transformation it came from.
Schneider worries that such messages are aimed at aging yup-
pies, who may believe that all they need, in order to continue
going through life first-class forever, literally, is to take on this
attractive, hip way of thinking. They believe they'll get younger,
healthier bodies and have a new spiritual path to talk knowingly
about at parties. They have a panicky need to stay insulated in
the kind of materialistic cocoon that has encased them through-
out life, a greed to hang onto life at all costs, a denial of the gritty
realities of aging and dying. T o us, it looks like what Chogyam
Trungpa Rinpoche called spiritual material~sm - picking up
some New Age ideological wares in the marketplace, plunking
down some money and adding something exotic to our present
identities.
A 53-year-old man once proudly told Schneider that he was
immortal. "Look! I've got the body of a 20-year-old!" he said
excitedly. A few minutes later, he had an attack of indigestion. It
threw him inro a panic. H e was doing all the right things; how
could this be happening to him? When someone like this gets sick,
this kind of denial makes recovery a lot less likely. All that this
rontrnued on page 37

T h e first session
This session will loosen your client's stiff neck and shoulders.
Let's assume your client is a woman. Have her sit in a chair and
rotate her neck in both directions while tapping on her trapezius
muscles. This will be the first exercise of the home program.
Standing behind her, massage her back upper back and the parts
of her shoulders she can't reach.
As your client lies on her side on the massage table, have her
rotate the arm that is uppermost in both directions while you
massage the ribcage area. Next, have her rotate the tip of her
shoulder in both directions while you alternately stretch her
shoulder away from her head and compress it toward her head
and then massage both shoulders, squeezing and gently pinching
the muscles. Next, have her sit up agair. and repeat :he firs: cxci-
cise to check whether the second exercise made this movement
easier. Follow this with a full-body massage.

T h e second session
This session loosens the joints of the hip and back. As your
client lies supine on the massage table, passively rotate each of her
legs in both directions, malung the hllest possible pain-free circle
of the hip joint (if there is discomfort, massage the area before
continuing). Then have her bend and straighten her legs continu-
ously, bending one while straightening the other. Meanwhile,
massage her abdomen. You are breaking up a very common habit
of tensing up the abdomen every time the legs are moved.
Now have her stand and perform on an imaginary Hula-
Hoopm,rotating her hips as fully as she can, first in one direction
and then the other. Then have her kneel, if she can, or sit cross-
legged on the floor if she can't kneel. Have her do a slow forward
bend, feeling the movement of each vertebra, while you massage
around the vertebrae to cue her. This will break up adhesions and From the first session: Have the client sit in a chair and rotate his or
allow fuller movement in the spine. continucd on page 36 ber neck i n both directions while tapping on the trapezius muscles.

34 WSAGE Issue Number 62 July /August 1996

 I
conrinuedfiom page 34

From the second session: Have the client kneel, i f h e or she can, or sit cross-leyged on thefloor
i f h e or she can't kneel. Have the client do a slowforward bend,feeling the movement of
each vertebra, whileyou massage around the vertebrae to cue the client. This will break up
adhesions and allow filler movement i n the spine.

Have her assume the long sitting position on the floor (seated, with both legs together
stretched out in front). Have her rotate her feet in one direction and then the other, then
stop to visualize the motion, then repeat it. Now instruct her to alternate dorsiflexion
and plantar flexion of her feet, moving as far in each direction as possible; again have her
visualize and repeat. Then have her move her feet to one side, then the other, as far as
possible, and visualize and repeat.
As you perform your massage, include a deep effleurage of the legs, followed by a fric-
tion massage to increase warmth and circulation.

The third session

This important session loosens the thoracic spine, making more room for lung and
heart function, and begins the breathing exercises.
Begin your massage with the client lying prone, with a pillow under her chest if neces-
sary. During the massage, if she complains of pain in any area, have her visualize the pain
away, picturing the arca expanding as she inhales, shrinking and letting go of all pain,
tightness and trouble there as she exhales. You may also suggest that the pain is exiting the
body through the fingers or toes - whichever is closer to the pain. Visualization tends
to increase circulation and reduce inflammation. (Because we often work with serious
degenerative conditions, many clients come to our therapists with areas that are initially
too painful to be touched. We routinely use visualization to relieve this kind of pain; we
may further diminish it by massaging and creating movement in neighboring areas.)
A soothing voice is essential for suggesting visualizations ro clients. You may choose to
use a commercial relaxation tape that focuses on breathing instead of guiding the visual-
ization yourself, or you may want to listen to a few such tapes to get ideas.
Hot or cold applications can be useful while the client is doing the visualization. The
combination of visualization, massage and, if necessary, hot or cold applications followed
by appropriate movement exercises, can be very effective in pain reduction.
Your massage should include plenty of effleurage and tapping on the thoracic area to
warm and increase awareness of the chest. T o create a sense of space, stretch the muscles
with pinching and skin collltapping. Skin rolling, commonly done on the back, consists
conrznued on page 38
Self-Healing continurdfrompagp34

man's belief systems had done for him was had all their lives or find entirely new julie Doyle contributed to this article
to make him inflexible. He'd stay healthi- ones. It doesn't work when they try to live
er and probably live longer if he could in the past, offering unwanted advice to Meir Schneider, Ph.D. L.M. T , an inter-
learn to accept his problems, work within the successors in the businesses they lefi, nationally known therapist and educator, is
his limits and be the best 53-year-old he ignoring the changes and new needs of the creator of the Meir Schneider Self-
could be. their bodies. Maybe they can't run the Healing Method, the author of two books,
We've often seen people who have businesses they started anymore, but they Self-Healing: My Life and Vision and
heard these quasi-spiritual, mind-over- can sit on the boards of nonprofits instead The Handbook of Self-Healing, and the
matter messages, and then blamed them- - or travel around the country in RVs, founder/director of the Center and School
selves for their serious illnesses -as enroll in college courses, volunteer some- for Self-Healing in Saz Francisco. AJa
though the relationship between body and where, or take up fishing or chess. O r teenager, he overcame blindness caused by
mind were a simple mechanical one. They maybe they just want to have fun - Some congenital cataracts and other serious vision
believed that over the years they had too people who have worked hard all their problems and today has an unrestricted drz-
many gudging or mean-spirited thoughts lives have built up an enormous need for verj license. Forfirther information, call
and would get well immediately if only play, and they shouldn't feel apologetic (415) 665-9574.
they had switched to a majority of noble, about it.
lofty thoughts. It's hard to talk accurately T o stay healthy they'll have to devote a Carol Gallup is an advanced student of
about things in this realm. A feeling of lot more time to self-care than they did Self-Healing, Registrar of the School for
guilt about a degenerative corrdition is when they were young. They may find it Self-Healing, staff writer of the Self-Healing
incredibly harmful; a feeling of empower- an unexpectedly grounding and deepening Research Foundation, and the author of
ment about the ability to improve a physi- experience. numerous magazine articles. She studied
cal condition is essential. Anger is in fact physical therapy at the Mayo Clinic and is
toxic and forgiveness does help. But what Note: Information about the diet and now a master j degree candidate in research
is needed is an enormous, sustained effort cleansingprogram of Hazel Parcells is avail- psycholog at San Francisco State
that eventually leads to transformation. ablefiom the Parcells Center in Santa Fe. Universiv. For her thesis, she is document-
Aging and death are mysteries that exceed For information call (800)811-6784. ing the progress of a Self-Healing client with
our ability to predict and control them - muscular dystrophy using kinematic analysis.
and that's wonderful. They're a worthy
challenge for our spirits. That's why they
need to be approached with respect. There
is enormous human meaning in them.
As we discussed in our last column,
Americans are living longer, in better
health and with fewer disabilities. Senior
citizens are taking- to heart their doctors'
instructions to learn stress reduction and
relaxation techniques, stop smoking, avoid
too much alcohol, swim or take long walks,
lose weight, and cut way down on dietary
fat and choiesteroi - and it's working.
Things will probably get even better.
Now that scientists know what high-inten-
sity resistance training can do for the
elderly, it will probably become much
more widespread among them and they'll
maintain muscle strength - better. We can
expect to learn a lot more about successful
aging from the scientific community; a lot
of research dollars are going into gerontol-
ogy (the study of aging), and holistic
health practitioners from many disciplines
are likely to come up with their own dis-
coveries about aging.
We predict that, more and more, the
elderly will be able to enjoy their lives and
enjoy their bodies. We'd love to see them
explore movement and develop their own
self-healing powers, as Shlomo did. They
may continue to follow interests they have

MASSAGE Issue Number 62. July /August 1996 51'

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conrinucdfrom pagr 36

From the third session: Sitting on thejoor, legs apart andfeet touching each other (the tai-
lorjposition), have the client leanforward andpush down on his or her knees. This opening
ofthegroin area helps abdominal breathing.

of pinching a layer of skin and superficial muscle and then rolling it along between fingers
and thumbs. As this layer of muscle is lifted and stretched, the underlying muscle
becomes accessible; it is this underlying layer that should be tapped on.
Pay special attention to the serratus anterior and posterior and the intercostal muscles.
Now have your client turn over, and begin work on the chest with effleurage and tap-
ping, paying special attention to the intercostals and the pectoralis major and minor. If
she is complaining of pain in any area, have her visualize the pain away, picturing the area
expanding as she inhales, letting go of all pain, tightness and trouble there as she exhales.
In the following exercise sequence, ask your client to notice a sense of increasing space
to breathe into in the areas she is working on. First, as she lies on her side, have her
stretch her upper arm over her head while she taps on the upper ribs with the other hand.
Next, have the client stand facing the wall, elbows locked, hands at shoulder height on
the wall, and move the midback forward, to a midway position, and back, that is, lifting,
bringing to neutral and then collapsing the chest. Then, standing, have her do a forward
bend, massaging her own lower back if she can, while you help her, and visualize that
increasingly she is breathing into the lower back, feeling it expand and shrink with her
breath.
Then, sitting on the floor, legs apart and feet touching each other (the tailor's posi-
tion), have her lean forward and push down on her knees. This opening of the groin area
helps abdominal breathing -
Now have her lie on the table in the supine position. Massage her anterior and poste-
rior neck. If you are sure it is sat;: with this particular client, you may include some gen-
tle cervical traction at this time. Then massage her chest and abdomen until they are
very relaxed. Now have her exhale slowly. When she is finished exhaling, have her
refrain from inhaling as long as possible while you count, and then ask her to inhale. As
you repeat this exercise over time, your goal and hers will be to lengthen the count each
time by at least five; you are aiming for a count of at least 30. Now have your client
kneel on the massage table and lean forward, with a pillow between buttocks and calves if
necessary -you may even need a second pillow under the abdomen. Massage the lower
back with tapotement while asking her to breathe deeply and visualize greater space to
breathe into in her back. You may want to repeat this session once.
continued on page 40
conmnuedfrom page 38
From the fourth session: Have the client inhale, hold his or her breath, and
move the air back andforth between chest and abdomen at your command,
while you give resistance to the abdomen or chest, whichever is rising.
From t h e j f t h session: With the client lying supine on the massage
table, have the client stretch out both arms to the side, then look at one
hand and reach it across the body until the fingertips have reached
beyond those o f the other hand. This exercise lengthens the neck and
improves t h e j o w of cerebrospinaljuid.
40 MASSAGE Issue Number 62 July/ August 1996
The fourth session
This session continues the breathing- exercises and bene-
fits the cardiovascular system.
Massage your client's shoulders to relieve any pain and
tension. As your client lies on her side on the massage -
table, have her rotate the tip of her upper shoulder in both
directions and then the whole arm in both directions, pic-
turing her fingertips leading the motion. Then have her lie
supine and move her arms rapidly up and down (one is up
while the other is down), again picturing her fingertips
leading the motion. We tend to overuse and tense the
shoulders in lifting the arms, and this visualization breaks
that habit.
While she is still lying on her back, massage her chest.
Now put your hands on either side of her rib cage; while
she is exhaling, press on the ribs and hold, then let go at
the end of her exhalation. Repeat, changing the position
of your hands, until you have pressed and released every
part of her rib cage. Now have the client inhale, hold her
breath, and move the air back and forth benveen chest
and abdomen at your command, while you give resistance
to the abdomen or chest, whichever is rising. Next, add
this combination of ~elvicfloor and breathing exercises:
Have the dient exhale fully, hold her breath and contract
her urethral sphincter as hard as she can for a count of 15,
then let go and inhale. Next, have her do the same thing,
but this time contracting the muscles of the vagina (there
is no equivalent for this exercise for male patients).
Finally, have her inhale deeply and then exhale with tight
lips, "whistling like a locomotive," as Schneider tells
clients. Immediately after she exhales and before inhaling,
have her tighten her anal sphincters as hard as she can
while you count to 15; then tell her to let go and inhale.
This exercise tones and relaxes the whole abdominal area
and allows more breathing.
Add to the home program alternating hot and cold
temperatures in the shower (if the weather permits) with
brisk self-massage to all parts of the body with a brush or
loofa sponge.
If she doesn't already take a long walk every day,
encourage her to begin now and to make a habit of it.
You'll need to discuss logistics and make a plan that works
for her, given her functional level, weather conditions, etc.
Many elderly people take their daily walk in a shopping
mall (however, walking in nature, preferably on sand or
grass, is better for the eyes, the legs and the entire body).
As her condition improves, she can gradually increase the
length of her walk, up to an hour or even longer if she
wishes. This is one of the best things she can do to main-
tain her functional level and prolong independent living.
You may also want to add to her program two exercises
from our column in Issue #60 (MarchIApril 1996):
"bringing movement up the body" and "breaking up
adhesions."
The fifth session
This session addresses the central and peripheral ner-
vous systems. The goal is to challenge and reprogram the
nervous sys~ernwith unfamiliar movement patterns. It's a

From the sixth session: Start the session with the client lying
prone. Ifthe condition of the neck and shoulders permits,
have the client interldce his or hevjingers under the forehead.
Grasp the client > elbows andpassively lzfi the client up and
back, bringing the upper back into extension.
good idea to massage the clienr between exercises to promote
relaxation and thus facilitate the changes to the nervous system.
While she is seated, have the clienr simultaneously rotate her
head in both directions and rub her hands together. If she gets
dizzy, have her gently cover her eyes with the palms of her hands
for a moment. Now take her head in your hands and rotate it for
her; tell her to relax her neck and let you control its motion. The
vast majority of clients will find it impossible to be passive. If you
find that this is the case, lead up to it by t&ng a handful of her
hair in each hand (with her permission) and rotating her head
passively by gently pulling on her hair. You may then want to
add a body-on-head rotation: have her get down on all fours,
place her forehead on the carpet and rotate her body on her head.
Then have her rotate her feet in one direction and her head in the
opposite direction. Then have her roll from side to side on the
floor.
With the client lying supine on rhe massage table, have her
stretch out her arms to the side, then look at one hand and reach
it across her body until her fingertips have reached beyond those
of the other hand. This exercise lengthens the neck and improves
the flow of cerebrospinal fluid.
For her massage, use the Self-Healing neurological massage
technique. The stroke is a light pressure, very vigorous vibrating
touch, a cross benveen brisk shaking of the muscle and tapore-
ment. Put your fingertips and thumbs on the client's back and
move your fingertips up and down around the area without
entirely lifting away from the skin. Use this technique for at least
45 minutes. Spend a lot of time on the muscles of the back, espe-
cially on stiff areas. Your touch will create illusory feedback to the
brain and nerves, sending the message that the muscle is moving
in many more directions than it normally does - up, down, side
to side, inward and ounvard. We use it for a variery of nerve
problems, including multiple sclerosis and ALS (Lou Gehrig's
Disease). You may find rhat there is a lot more tension on one
side of the back than the other; if so, work more on the "hillier"
side. O n the more concave side, use more effleurage and make
your strokes very round.
For the home exercise program, ask her to walk backward on a
beach or grassy area, barefoot if possible, as often as she can. She
should bring along a companion to spot her. Invite her to make
up her own coordination exercises - and to enjoy them. The
experience of walking while windmilling the arms, for example,
can give clients an exhilarating sense of the challenge to their
nerves.
The sixth session
This session is devoted to osteoporosis. Let's assume, as is often
the case with elderly women, that the worst area of bone loss is in
the back at the area of the "dowager's humpn (kyphosis in the
upper back). Pan of the problem is poor circulation and hard-
ened connective tissue.
Start the session with your client lying prone. If the condition
of her neck and shoulders permits, have her interlace her fingers
under her forehead. Grasp her elbows and passively lift her up
and back, bringing her upper back into extension.
Massage the client's back, starting with effleurage, then friction,
then deep tissue massage of the paraspinals, and then Self-Healing
bone tapping. This massage is light, steady, and fast (about three
taps per second). Tap with alternating hands, using the fingertips
of all your fingers and thumbs and keeping the wrists very loose
and fluid. Your hands should feel warm and alive. Feel a tram-
poline effect in your touch -as if the .librations and the client's
body are bouncing your fingers back up. Visualize that your
hands are penetrating not only to the bone but beyond the client's
body. It's important that your touch doesn't have a jabbing qual-
ity; try it on yourself, and if it is, shake your wrists loose and try
again. Work directly on the osteoporotic bones for at least 45
minutes. 191
MASSAGE. Issue Number 62 .
July 1 August 1996 41