The Best Kept Secret For Balancing The Body – NST!

In 2002, I was searching for a technique that would make my life easier as a massage therapist – something that would keep me from the injuries that were beginning to plague me.   I was, also, looking for something that would balance the body quickly so that I would be able to work with the craniosacral system more easily and I was looking for something that would give better, more permanent results for my clients.   I found it in NST (Neurostructural Integration Technique) – an easy to apply system that balances the body in ways massage doesn’t begin to touch.

NST is the brain-child of Australian-born Michael Nixon-Livy, an Applied Physiologist,  who took on the challenge in 1991 of transforming the advanced principles of the late Australian bodywork genius, Tom Bowen, into a practical and teachable system.  I was sure impressed when I took his course in Vancouver way back in 2002 – yes, it is easy to learn and here is a short explanation of what it’s all about…

You will notice that he is promoting his DVD series that is available to anyone who wants to learn the method as it is safe to use on virtually anyone. The youngest person I’ve worked with was an infant and the oldest was 93 years of age. As he states in the video, I, too, will get clients who have tried everything else and this is the one method that will often give them relief for the first time in a long time. In fact, when I first began using NST in my clinic, my clients wanted to know why I hadn’t learned it sooner because they felt so good! I actually took the first class taught in Canada with Michael along with six of my former massage school classmates who were searching for the same thing I was!

So, if you want to experience this for yourself, book an appointment with me at www.northernlightsmassage.com or check www.nsthealth.com for a practitioner near you.

"The Perfect Food For My Befriended Body"

Image via Wikipedia

This is a journal entry from the Abraham-Hicks Publication – excerpted from the workshop in Asheville, NC on Sunday, October 29th, 2000.  I ran across this when I was decluttering recently and thought I’d share it with you as the theme on this blog is mostly about food, your body and energy alignment.   This is what Abraham has to say, through Esther Hicks, about the relationship we should have with our bodies and the way we nourish it……

“What is the perfect food? We would say there is not one, other than water. We encourage lots of that for all of you. Drink as much water as you can get into your body, and then eat anything else that feels good to you.

We would, for a little while, step away from the subject of food altogether in terms of trying to make anything happen. And we’d get as happy as we can relative to other aspects of our life, until we could feel that our cork is floating mostly about most things. And then we would say, “I’m going to befriend my body. I’m going to become a friend with my body. I’m going to make my body my friend.” That is so essential: making your body your friend.

Most of you are afraid of your body. Your body feels like something that might trick you. It might get run over, or it might make the wrong decision, or it might die too early, or it might get a disease in it, or it might do something, after all, it has all kinds of mysteries. You can’t look into your body. You can’t see metabolism. You can’t see what’s happening with the cells. You don’t really understand your body. And your body frightens you in most cases.

Moving the way I'd like to move!

I just got back from my singing group’s (Potluck in the Basement Singers) recording session of our Christmas CD where we were standing for 2 hours, basically non-stop.  A little hard on the body!  So, I thought, hey, I could get on my SoQi bed and use the Chi machine and shake all that tension away… OR… I could lie down on my Feldie mat, find an Awareness through Movement lesson on-line and get rid of it that way.

I chose to do the ATM lesson — why?  Because a few of us, at the session, began talking, when we were having our short break, about movement and changing patterns and paying attention to movement and what would be best for someone who didn’t feel flexible as far as classes go.

One of the ladies had attended the ATM classes I taught last year and was enthusiastically talking about how these classes paid off when she went for her shoulder surgery in Calgary recently.  In taking the classes, she was able to recover the flexibility in her torso which, not only, took a lot of her pre-surgery pain away but, post-surgery allowed her to speed up the recovery of movement by using some of the techniques she learned – such as visualizing the movement possibilities and doing micro-movements to re-educate her joint movement before getting to the big movements.  She, also, spoke of the sense of relaxation she always felt after a class and other benefits that showed up in her life that were a little unexpected but wonderful.

All this reminded me that I haven’t done an ATM in awhile so I went to www.openatm.org, chose a lesson on the Home page and got down on my mat…to realize that I hurt practically everywhere!  The left and right side of my body seemed to belong to 2 different people!  As I moved through the lesson, I was reminded of all the lessons I did throughout the 4 years of my training as a Feldenkrais practitioner….how some lessons were easy and others seemed impossible to do at first, but, as we moved through the lesson and allowed softening to happen or curiousity about how many different ways we could lift our heads easily, even those impossible lessons eventually became easier and, sometimes, effortless.

After completing the lesson (Introduction to Flexion), my 2 sides felt like they belonged to just me now and the pain level was minimal.  On standing, I felt taller but my feet were still complaining a bit so I went to my favorite site for fun short lessons (www.laviniaplonka.com) and did her Lesson of the Month which happened to be a walking lesson.   Now, my toes and heels feel connected to my hips and back!  So, on that note, I will head for bed and a good night’s sleep!!

But, before I do, please do yourself a favour and go to these web-sites and try out a lesson or 2 … and let me know how you felt before and after….pass this on to your friends and family…we all need this.   Maybe after Christmas, I’ll start up another round of classes…..would you come?