My Trager Treatment

My friend Meg's mom, Pat, is taking classes to become a certified Trager practitioner and she needs "guinea pigs", so I volunteered. I'd never had a Trager treatment, although I've heard about them. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but I have an open mind about the whole mind-body connection and I like and trust Meg's mom. There are articles about the Trager method and the related Mentastics movement education at the United States Trager Association's web site, because I'm not sure I can do an adequate job of describing the session!

We did table work today. We started by chatting about my goals for the session. I wanted to just relax and to rid myself of the lingering effects of any stress floating around from last week at work. We discussed any weak areas in my body and areas where stress tends to manifest itself before I hopped on the table. I wore some nice loose-fitting clothes, so I didn't feel the need to undress any further, although sessions are very private and it is like massage in that you can undress to your level of comfort. A lot of the session revolved around gently getting my muscles relaxed and warmed up and then taking them through a range of motion. Pat and I talked quite a bit throughout the treatment, but it wasn't annoying. She is learning, so feedback during the sessions is important. As with massage, you promise to let the practitioner know if anything hurts or is uncomfortable. The hardest thing to do, and I struggled with this during massages as well, was doing abso-freaking-lutely nothing to "help". It's very hard to put yourself in a state of total non-resistance. I had to practice this and remind myself to just let Pat move my head or my arm or my leg. There were several times when I could feel the heat from her hands as they moved over me, and there were several times that I swore I could just feel energy flowing through various parts of my body. At the end of the session, I was as relaxed as I've ever been from a massage but without the achy muscles that usually come from having a really good massage. I felt very centered, grounded and solid afterward, rather like everything was properly aligned. No achy foot or achy knees. It was a great feeling, and I volunteered to go back for another session. My lower back is a problem area that gets very stiff, and I'd like to get that feeling looser, although I feel very relaxed right now.

In a lot of ways, it was rather like being petted and caressed, in a totally non-sexual way, for 90 minutes. I joked afterward that I must have been a dog in another life because I really liked getting rubbed behind the ears and having my back stroked. Let me tell you, I now understand why Dogzilla likes it so much when I pet him for hours at a time when he's napping on my lap. Pat and I talked afterward, though, about how we live in a society where we don't touch each other in non-sexual ways very often, though. Our culture doesn't have a place for much of that kind of interaction once we leave babyhood, and it's a shame because we are such tactile creatures.

Anyhow, I was very impressed and I am going to be quite happy to go back for another session. It was a really serendipitous opportunity to do some very necessary self-care, and I'm grateful for it.

I ran a few errands and then I came home and read a little bit. I even curled up for a nap after dinner (pan-seared thin round tip steak, with a red wine-rosemary pan sauce and oven roasted potato wedges with leftover haricot verts). I still think I'll sleep like a baby tonight, too. I plan to sleep IN tomorrow morning, since I don't have to work until 2:30.