By
Dale G. Alexander Ph.D L.M.T.
Consider that the
organization of the human body is designed for our growth as personalities and
as spirit. Consider that body sites (one’s organs and structures such as the
jaw) are actually doorways to accessing and changing the set of rules (the dos
and don’ts) which determine the parameters of your choices in life. Also
consider that there exists a map which can serve you as a starting point for
exploration, discovery, and verification, a map which can be added to as you
walk the terrain of your many levels of consciousness.
14 years ago I met
Lansing Gresham, the founder of Integrated Awareness®, in John Upledger’s
Advanced CranioSacral training. Up to that point in my self-directed continuing
education I had dedicated myself to learning the many dimensions of osteopathic
manual therapy, a process which continues today. As I began attending Lansing’s
Integrated Awareness® workshops in California
over the next few years, I became increasingly intrigued with elements of the
healing process which had been missing in my other trainings.
The notion of
consciousness as the crucial component of healing was not new to me, yet the
articulation of the five levels of perception which comprise the range of our
wholeness as humans had never before been so simply and clearly described.
What was truly novel to my experience at that time was the ease with which
subtle movements during guided floor exercises revealed the labyrinth of my
mind’s set of rules for my life, rules which previously had eluded me and those
which I had been endeavoring to update and change via many forms of therapy for
over 25 years.
Additionally, I was drawn to the exquisiteness of energetic touch I experienced
and witnessed. I really wanted to learn more of this.
Touch conveys the
meaning of life. It is through touch that we all assign our personal stamp on
the meaning of life and upon our sense of worth as children. This made absolute
sense to me and had been the reason I had moved away from verbal forms of
processing toward a body-based orientation, both personally and professionally.
Here, in the context of Integrated Awareness® I had found some of the missing
elements of healing – ways to expand one’s perceptual net, exploring movement
patterns in ways which invite different behaviors, feeling states, and thought
patterns, and learning qualities of energetic touch which access across the
spectrum of spirit, genetics, tissue, fluids, organs, and bone.
Over the ensuing
years, Lansing continued to make rather astonishing connections between
emotional and spiritual themes, relating body sites to accessing and reconciling
feelings of shame, abandonment, and betrayal, to name but a few. He also queried
more existential questions relating to whether one has really made the committed
choice to be here on earth at all. I used to think this was exclusively a
California phenomenon. It is not.
For example, the
knees resonate with one’s experiences of abandonment, both our experiences of
being abandoned, and those in which we abandon others. The spleen resonates with
experiences we anchored related to our mother, deep feelings of disappointment
and to our sense of connectedness or not to divinity.
Lansing also began
teaching the interrelatedness of the body’s biomechanics in movement, for
example, how the toes reflect and support the functioning of the lumbar
vertebrae; and how the fingers correspond to the movements, or lack of movement,
of the ribs. These and many many other relationships have been significant
contributions to my ability to assist clients who come to my office.
A recent example was
a female client with a shoulder problem, which rather miraculously disappeared
in response to work with her same sided hand and fingers. Ironically, she
reported that not only did her shoulder now function with more ease and
strength, she had also experienced an increase in her sensual responsiveness.
Could the corresponding mobilization of her ribs not only have freed blood and
nerve supply to the shoulder but also have opened the space for her heart to
have expanded?
The skills,
knowledge, and readiness for change which emerges from experiencing Integrated
Awareness® are for all of humanity, not just for us as professional touchers.
They are potentially the means through which we may see options where none
existed before, allowing us to transform our life experiences in families, in
our communities and, I pray, in the whole of our world. We are designed to
evolve through our experience of embodiment. As 6 billion on this planet, we are
certainly driving the bus of our collective evolution and present-time survival.
What has been needed
is an alphabet and basic comprehension of how psyche and SOMA truly dance
together in oneness. The ancients have told us the answers are all inside. It is
my opinion that some day we will look back on this pioneering style of touch and
movement exploration with the same degree of appreciation as we view the
Periodic Table of Elements and the awe we currently hold for the current
research into decoding the human genome.
Dale G. Alexander
Ph.D. L.M.T has had a Clinical Massage Therapy practice in Key West, Fla. for 22
yrs. He is the author of the Adaptive Mechanisms Concept©. His background
includes extensive training in Osteopathic Manual Therapy, Soma Bodywork, & is a
Certified Integrated Awareness® Teacher. Dale is approved by the National
Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB) as a
continuing education provider under Category A and has been an approved Florida
State CE Provider since 1987.
For information on
upcoming courses on this subject contact Dale G. Alexander at 305-296-7339 /
TROPICAL@aol.com
For more information
on The Body’s Map of Consciousness® please visit
www.inawareness.com or call, e-mail or write to 707-795-4399,
touchstone@inawareness.com, Touchstone 429 East Cotati Ave., Cotati, Calif.
94931-4029
Copyright
Touchstone 2003. All rights reserved.
