Robert Byrnes has been providing bodywork in a professional setting since 1994, and integrates several modalities for a unique treatment that is individualized to each client’s needs. He provides therapeutic treatments by appointment in his Sausalito, California office. Call 415-360-4389.
RELAXATION MASSAGE
RELAXATION MASSAGE
RELAXATION MASSAGE
Relaxation massage (aka: Swedish massage) starts with a meditative approach that promotes deep relaxation. This method emphasizes the use of a slower rhythm with a longer, sustained flowing touch to relieves stress, and reintegrate the entire body system, bringing it into balance.
I seek to facilitate increased awareness into the client’s body. My yoga practice has taught me much about mindfulness. By focusing on the breath and quieting the mind, the client can relax even more into the present moment. The client is feeling instead of thinking. From this place of being grounded and centered in the body, we discover a deeper connection, and the transformative, healing energy intensifies.
REFLEXOLOGY
Reflexology delivers the following benefits:
- Stress reduction and deep relaxation
- Improved circulation
- Aids the body in eliminating wastes and impurities
- Revitalizes energy and balances the body
Reflexology is more than just a good foot rub. It is a method for activating the healing powers of the body. Reflexology was founded on the principle that there are energy zones that run throughout the body, and reflex areas in the feet that correspond to all the major organs, glands, and body parts. Working on the feet is an ancient art, as is evident from historical artifacts, texts, and illustrations, and its therapeutic effects have been well recognized in many cultures.
In the early part of the twentieth century, Dr. William Fitzgerald and Dr. Edwin Bowers gave life to their theory that parts of the body correspond to other parts of the body. In the same way that a hologram contains the whole picture in each of its parts, so too does the body contain a picture of the whole in each of its parts. In the 1930s, Eunice Ingham discovered that the feet, because they are the most sensitive, allowed the greatest access to the energy zones that run throughout the body, and that every part of the foot corresponds with a specific area in the body. She proceeded to map the entire body onto the feet and discovered that an alternating pressure on the various points had a tremendous therapeutic effect. Hence, reflexology was born.
How reflexology works is through the energy zones that run the length of the body. Reflexologists specify that there are ten of these zones; five on each side of the body that run from the head and tips of the fingers down through the body and into the feet. These zones can be thought of as meridians that give access at specific points on the body to other specific points within that zone in the body. The energy of life and the Universe flows through our bodies. Sometimes, this energy flow becomes blocked. But, because the whole of our bodies is contained within the feet, a reflexologist is able to reopen the energy flow to specific areas in the body that are blocked by working the corresponding part of the foot. This process brings balance and harmony to the body and can greatly aid the body in healing itself.
ESALEN® MASSAGE
The Esalen style integrates detailed structural body work with long, flowing strokes that relax, reconnect, and reintegrate the whole body from top to bottom, front to back, and side to side.
Esalen massage is meditative. As the client becomes centered in their body and surrenders to the experience of simply receiving the healing touch, my creative energy increases and becomes more intuitively guided. The massage session becomes a dance with the receiver and the giver engaged in a communication of movement, and the greatest degree of relaxation and healing is achieved.
What is the difference between Esalen massage and deep tissue massage? Esalen focuses on the quality of the touch. In deep tissue massage we are focused on inducing change in the body. But we don’t have to mechanically hack at the body with brute force. Esalen informs us that we can work with great strength and power in a relaxed and flowing manner when we know the body and how to engage it with full consciousness. So, it isn’t that they are different, it’s that Esalen massage allows one to take the practice of deep tissue massage to a level of deeper connection and transformation.
You can view some of my old YouTube videos shot in April 2009.
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THE ESALEN INSTITUTE
THE ESALEN INSTITUTE
We are presently enjoying a renaissance in the art of touch in this country. Esalen massage practitioners have contributed considerably to the reinstatement of this delicate means of interfacing between human beings, in a flowing style that is a marriage between classical Swedish massage, with its precise manner of working with muscles and circulatory system, and the deeply personal sensing work brought from Germany by Charlotte Selver. We offer our clients what we have individually and collectively discovered and refined in our concentrated hands-on work in a variety of approaches over the past 30 years. Styles which may appear simple to the on looker have many levels of conceptual understanding interwoven with tactile sensitivity, elegant awareness and heartfelt communication. At times we find ourselves spontaneously touching levels of the emotional body and even spirit.
Our work began to ripen in the early 1960’s. It was remarkably enhanced by the dynamic environmental elements unique to this small coastal experimental community. Gradually, individual styles began to expand and cross-pollinate, then become concise concepts, which still further expanded, until a larger picture of the physical/emotional/spiritual human began to emerge and be sung to through touch.
Massage is “structured touching” or touching with purpose. This purpose may be directed towards relieving muscle pain and stress, increasing body awareness, or bringing equilibrium to a life in crisis. Tangible outcomes can be experienced in the active stimulation of skin, lymph and blood, relaxation of the muscles and nervous system, elimination of metabolic waste, stretching of connective tissues and release of a tranquilizing effect into the entire organism through the parasympathetic nervous system. It is a healthy way of handling stress.
The recipient is gently urged to become an active participant through heightened awareness and surrendering to a deep sensing place. Long, lengthening strokes with gentle rocking and stretching, passive joint movement, sculpting of deep musculature, delicate cranial balancing, subtle neural reeducation and the precision of Chinese point work are all part of the somatic offering. Personal attention takes precedence over technique; thus each massage session is unique in itself.
Bodywork happens any time you focus attention on the life of your body, whether while playing sports, working in your garden, or simply feeling your feet on the floor. Thus the meditation of receiving touch from another is part of a large picture of richness which can put you very firmly in touch with your more personal self, since sensation is our primary connection to
reality.
We invite you to be with us.
– Esalen Practitioners
THE SPIRIT OF ESALEN
by Brita Ostrom
People who have experienced Esalen Massage agree that it is an extraordinary form of bodywork. This unique style of massage integrates the whole body with long strokes, blending wisdom and techniques from other cultures, and weaves new concepts of subtle energy with bodywork. Esalen massage evolved from the contributions of early teachers at this center for experimental education and it continues to expand and grow as present-day practitioners add to the whole.
“I can’t say if it was the touch of the air on my skin, the sound of the ocean waves in my ear, the long sure stroke of the practitioner’s hand gliding along my spine, or the sense I had that every move matched my response. Whatever it was, I’ve never experienced anything like this before.” With these words, the lucky recipient stretched, stood up, and gazed over the rail at the sea beyond. “I feel like I’m all connected up again.”
Such comments are not surprising at the Esalen Institute, established in 1962, situated in Big Sur, California (between Santa Lucia Mountains and the Pacific Coastline). It’s diverse workshops form an educational springboard to the further reaches of human potential and it’s a spiritual retreat where those suffering from burnout seek solace. It’s organic gardens and hot sulfur springs are the heart of a healing spa. Workshops include specific massage moves and sequences it is more the “glue between the moves” that defines this approach to bodywork. This glue is found in the contact between the practitioner and receiver from the minute their eyes meet; the way the hands respond to the clients signals of contraction and release, pain and relaxation; the attention to the whole person rather than a summary of parts; and a shared observation of the innate capacity for self-healing within.
No Quick Fix
This contact precludes the notion that the practitioner is going to fix the client. Instead, the practitioner enables the client to tune into his or her own database of sensation, emotion and mobility. The practitioner is both facilitator and witness to this process; her or she is neither the agent of change nor the healer. The practitioner delineates the problem, the client clears it up. In the process the client may discover how much energy was expanded to maintain the problem in the first place.
The open-air quality of Esalen massage and the interpersonal contact banish the authoritative stance of the more traditional health practitioner, allowing the client an active role in the session. Practitioner may encourage breathe, use colorful images to suggest a relaxed state, and bring the clients attention to holding patterns, rather than simply relying on deep muscle work.
The most important aspect style wise or technique wise is not technique at all, but the quality of the touch. This refers to the presence of the practitioner and the ability of this person to tune into the client, to be sensitive, and to pick up messages. Esalen encourages talking to all clients before working on them, but it is just as important to be able to sense in, and to be present enough to hear the messages that come through the body.
Mindful Massage
Massage at Esalen is a mindfulness exercise; both giver and receiver are called to full presence and attention. In the beginning and all through an Esalen massage session the intention is kept in the foreground of the therapist’s mind. If a person is here for a particular type of healing, that needs to be kept in mind; if a person comes in and says they’re exhausted, they need some rejuvenation, or they need to replenish themselves, hold that thought and try to give from the place in ourselves that allows the energy to pass through to and to refill them.
Esalen teaches people how to touch. What I mean by that is how to touch with sensitivity and in a non-intrusive and nurturing way. It teaches people to enter the energy field of another person with sensitivity and respect. It is important to move through that energy field gently and with awareness before making physical contact. The first touch is held for a moment before the movement starts. The client begins to relax and trust in the practitioners hands. At this crucial moment, clients will often take a deep breath and begin to relax as their internal voices say, I feel trusting and comfortable. This intuitive connection between the massage therapist and the client is thus established.
The Journey Continues
Many of the practitioners working at the Esalen Institute have innovated and refined this non-invasive approach to the body, which invites a response rather than demands one. They continue to research ways to make their work more effective. Over time, they have seen the wisdom and effectiveness of listening within, of letting the massage create an environment that allows for a return to optimal health, of reaching inside to the impulse toward balance rather than to impose and fix from an external “expert” stance. They have seen lives prolonged, steps become lighter, laughter return as people attain a respect for their bodies and an acknowledgment of the messages and intelligence they contain. Esalen massage today defines itself as a way of exploring, person to person, a matrix of physical, psychological, energetic and spiritual awareness united by the balm of touch.
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