Episode 134 – How Bodywork Changed Our Lives

Summary

Episode Transcript

Whitney Lowe: Welcome to the Thinking Practitioner podcast. 

Til Luchau: A podcast where we dig into the fascinating issues, conditions, and quandaries in the massage and manual therapy world today. 

Whitney Lowe: I’m Whitney Lowe 

Til Luchau: and I’m Til Luchau 

Both: Welcome to the Thinking Practitioner 

Whitney Lowe: And welcome to the Thinking Practitioner podcast, which is supported by ABMP, the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. ABMP membership gives professional practitioners like you a package including individual liability insurance, free continuing education, and quick reference apps on your phone, online scheduling, and payments with PocketSuite, and much more.

Til Luchau: CE Courses, Podcast, and Massage Bodywork Magazine always feature expert voices and new perspectives in the profession, including articles with myself, Till Luchau, and you, Whitney Lowe. Thinking Practitioner listeners can save on joining ABMP at abmp.com/thinking. Hey, Whitney, how you doing? And what are we talking about today?

Whitney Lowe: Good day, sir. We’re actually, and we’re recording this just before the U. S. Thanksgiving holiday. It’s getting to be the holiday season for everybody around the world.  I was thinking of the other day, we were getting close to our anniversary date of launching the podcast, which I think we launched in December of 2019, I think. Is that right? 

Til Luchau: Yeah I’ll take your word for it that’s true though, I do remember it was this time of year. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah, it was this time of year, and I seem to remember it being right alongside COVID, if I remember correctly, so it was like 2020, I think we were getting going, so I think that’s about right.

Til Luchau: Could it be five years? My goodness. 

Whitney Lowe: It’s been a while anyway this time of year always brings around some reflection, I think, for us, and so, I was we’re going to have a little bit of a reflection episode today for you and I, both talking about some important things that I think for each of us and for our listeners too, that help let you reflect on and sort of look at how this work that we do shapes our lives.

And we were going to sort of couch that in an overall big theme of how did massage or manual therapy change your life. So, we got a lot of sort of specific ways that we want to try to look at that. But just starting off you know, we covered this a little bit in our very first two episodes when we talked about our backgrounds, but I can’t remember exactly how much we touched on it though.  

Til Luchau: me neither. That’s like you said, maybe that’s been four or five years. And I remember you interviewed me. I interviewed you on our backstory. So it’s nice that you’re bringing that back around. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: Let me just put a plug in here. Okay. Listeners, we would love to hear your story. Your, like, how has massage or manual therapy bodywork changed your lives?

You can, we’ll give you some instructions at the end, but basically you just email us or message us your story. We’d love to hear it and maybe even share it on the air next episode or something. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah, that sounds good. So, just, yeah, for a reminder how did you get into this? What was it? What was your starting point of getting started there?

Til Luchau: Me? Til? How did I get into this? It’s a little hard to say the exact moment I got into this, but what I remember is shopping in a bookstore in London. I was there as a teenager, about 15, maybe, yeah, probably 15. And in this bookstore was an interesting little book, had an odd shape. And it was George Downing’s massage book, which had been published by, you know, out of the Esalen Institute there.

And this was my first encounter with the idea of massage as a practice. And what really struck me about this book was that he emphasized, in today’s terms, how holistic the practice of massage was. It wasn’t a professional book, per se, but he’s talking, if you want to be really good at this, you might, like, what did he say, you might, you know, work on some movement discipline, like Tai Chi, or you might actually make some bread so you get a feel for things in your hands, or do ceramics, or and that’s what really got me, I captured my imagination in a way that I think laid the groundwork for my later, more professional diving into, yeah.

Whitney Lowe: It is interesting how many people were kind of, sort of set down that path by George Downing’s book because there were so few books back then that really covered this in any kind of detail. And so those few things, and again, this was, of course, long before the internet, video, and all that kind of stuff was out and around, so you went to bookstores to learn things, or you went to the library to try to get books to learn about things like that, so.

Til Luchau: That was what browsing used to be, going to a bookstore and browsing the shelves. Yeah. 

Whitney Lowe: Yep. That’s right. 

Til Luchau: Well, that, so that’s my kind of origin moment that I can identify. How about you, Whitney? 

Whitney Lowe: Mine was a little bit different. I was in graduate school studying psychology, and my ex-wife was starting massage school, and was telling me every day when she came home all these fascinating things they were learning about the mind-body connection and everything, and I was like, that sounds really cool, you know, and I was getting kind of burned out in my graduate school program, and decided I really wanted to learn some more about the mind-body connection, and so, I was also looking for a way to kind of make my work schedule be a whole lot more flexible around my schooling hours.

And so I thought, Oh, you know, I can just go do this massage thing and just learn a little bit. And then I’d use that for just a little job to, you know, help me pay the rent and do those kinds of things while I was finishing my graduate school program. And- 

Til Luchau: Just a little job, you said? Just a little job.

Whitney Lowe: That’s right. That was my view at the time, you know, so, and then of course I went to massage school and then that, like so many people, that changed everything, you know. That was the end of my graduate school program in psychology and I got sort of on this track for studying massage. And of course, you know, this is the mid to late 1980s back in Atlanta in the south, and so when I went and told my parents that I was stopping graduate school to go to massage school, that didn’t go over so well.

Til Luchau: Really? That must have been a moment. Yeah. 

Whitney Lowe: But yes. Yeah, so it, it was a launching pad, obviously, and it’s always interesting to me to hear these stories from everybody else about how they got started and that story of familiarity of, I went to massage school and it changed me, you know, is a real common theme.

I think that we hear from people. It changed me in ways that I had no idea it would. 

Til Luchau: That’s right. It’s been interesting to watch over the years. It’s been about the same amount of time for me, about four decades of doing this work, how massage school has become a kind of entry point or right of passage into the whole world of whatever this is. The bigger field that bodywork and massage is a part of transformative care, health and healing, understanding the body mind connection, whatever it is, that so many young people are going into massage, either as a career focus, which wasn’t really It’s clearly lined out then as it is now, or as an entryway into the broader field of, you said the mysteries of the body mind connection.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And that was mine. Like, I remember mentioning it to you four or five years ago that I was really way at a choice point. I’d studied some body work at the Esalen Institute and practiced there, was on the massage crew. Then I had this chance to start a graduate program in psychology and  was really weighing this out.

It was sequential for me and at the end it was very practical. It was like, okay, so if I go to the Rolf Institute first and really consolidate my abilities to do that work, that’s going to make a lot more sense practically. Then I can basically earn my way through graduate school that way.

And I kind of did that. Didn’t, you know, I ended up spending a lot more time in the bodywork realm than I anticipated. Loved it. A lot. And had a psychotherapy practice, did other things as well, but this has always been there and emerged as in the kind of the calling level, like as a personal calling or professional calling, that emerged over time.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: It was a clear focus for me that, well it wasn’t a moment, it was more of an emergence of that. 

Whitney Lowe: Would you say that your current approach to what you’re focusing on is still relatively closely in line with what you thought this was when you got started, or was that, did that change significantly for you?

Til Luchau: What I thought this was when I got started, boy, let me see if I can remember. What did I think it was when it started? You know, it was, yeah, it was a holistic practice. I mean, that word is so old and overused that I am almost hesitant to use it, but it really was the vision in George Downing’s book, which was really reflecting what was happening at Esalen, where I ended up going and living and studying and working, really was that it comes from who we are, even more than what we do.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And so we were the project, not just the learning involved, but the becoming and the embodying and the being and the experiencing. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. I think 

Til Luchau: We’re catalyzing experiences for our clients more than delivering a protocol, procedure or technique. 

Whitney Lowe:  Sure. Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And that’s, again, that’s got its roots in probably the psychological influences or the spiritual influences, I think, as well as the tangible somatic work that was being done there.

So, in that sense, no, it’s still a transformative practice for me, and those are the most interesting people I work with, the ones that see it the same way, the ones that are interesting, interested in hands on body work as a means to, you know, engage with people on multiple levels and work with things that are mysterious and important and deep.

And I just, I think of Ida Rolf’s often quoted statement that you know, the body is not all there is, but that’s what she could get her hands on. That’s where she focused. 

Whitney Lowe:  Yeah. 

Til Luchau: It’s something about the way that we’re working with much more than just what we touch that I was interested in, and it’s still part of the interest there.

Now, we can start a list, I bet you got one too, of how many things are different in my, the way I think about it now that we’re starting. Right, yeah. But how would you address that? What’s been your change? 

Whitney Lowe: Well, for me, I think it is a, quite a substantial change because I don’t think I took it real seriously at the outset.

You know, like I said, I thought it was just going to be a sort of thing that I would do that would be just, you know, some things working on sort of relaxation massage and just a job, you know, that was going to be convenient and kind of fun, you know, convenient and sort of fun thing, but not, you know, not really serious.

And so I don’t think I was taking it real seriously at first. And then only halfway through massage school, I started shifting and thinking about like, you know, there’s a lot more to this thing. That’s really I see a lot of other stuff going on here. And then, you know, for a while, I, when I got out of massage school, was a little bit ambiguous about where I was going and what was I landing into and what kind of work was I going to be doing because I had still been coming from that psychology background and thinking partially that I might head back in that direction but I also had ended up working for a chiropractor and started to get really interested in the people who were coming in who were in a lot of pain and I was thinking like And you know, I think it was like the first time I really helped somebody that was in pain.

I was like, this is cool. I really like the idea of being able to change things in peoples lives and really alleviate their pain with this work. There’s something to that. And so that was kind of like, okay, this means that there’s got a lot more that I need to learn. And that, I think that kind of set me off in a very different direction.

Til Luchau: There is something satisfying about being actually able to help people. And it sounds that, like me, you saw that as a technical challenge as much as anything else. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau:  I worked my way in college and as an auto mechanic. and that was my first job at the Esalen Institute, so I had an interest in technical stuff.

And that was the, you know, that was the interface between the actual stuff and the things and the ways we can strategize and use logic to accomplish things. And then the end result of actually having an impact in some way somebody feels and lives and moves. Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. So how is it like would you say we’ve sort of touched on that a little bit, but, changing your sort of worldview and personal growth process has there been like significant stepping stones? What has, what have been the, really the biggest impacts there? 

Til Luchau: Yeah. Since I said something about transformation, I should talk about that for myself.

It’s I mean, there’s a list and it’s almost like because of how much of my life it’s been, it’s really hard to tease that out. I mean, I got to do this so early, you know, my early twenties that I spent, you know, 40 years or so doing it that it’s hard to even know what, where, you know, what was related to body work and what was just part of me growing up and growing into a bodyworker.

But, I could say that receiving and practicing this work has really put my like, taking care of myself so that I could show up and do the work so that I could actually feel good about embodying what I was trying to embody. evoke or ask for in my clients was, it’s been a great frame personally, professionally.

It made me take my health a lot more seriously, but I, and that includes physical health too, but also the ability to be emotionally present and to follow what’s happening with someone rather than jump in and try to impose, What I think should be happening. That’s an ongoing process, ongoing practice and process that this has really been a way for me to I’m not sure.

It’s a lot of stuff that you can work with and learn and correct around. 

Whitney Lowe:  Yeah. 

Til Luchau: There’s there’s more. Let me think about it. How about you? Do you have an answer? 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah, I would say that there’s been a lot of things in here that were, and I’ve struggled to try to figure out.

How does one make some of this stuff work into a curriculum for training massage and bodywork practitioners? These are so many valuable skills, but yes, I live right now, very prominently, and I think, it’s kind of the orientation of my work is much more in sort of the scientific medical realm of things and evidence-based practice and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. But I also never forget my roots and a lot of folks don’t really know that about. My background when I was studying psychology,  was into all kinds of stuff of the transpersonal psychology and the, spiritual practices, meditation and Tai Chi and all, energy stuff and all that kind of thing.

Those studies and things were an important part, I think, of helping me become grounded as a clinician and as a practitioner and developing compassion for individuals and things like that. These are crucial parts of being a really good clinical practitioner, and they don’t get emphasized as much those skills but I do think that they are critical in becoming really skilled in working with people.

Til Luchau: I’m thinking too about how underrated or underappreciated our basic request is of our clients. It varies according to what you think about it in your modality. But we’re asking a lot of clients, just asking someone to relax is a huge request. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And that’s a body-mind experience to actually feel oneself let go of whatever tension, protection, habits, mindset, et cetera, that we’re coming in with. And to be the person with whom someone feels invited, safe, interested to do that with is a huge thing. It’s a place, it’s an honor. It’s a place I approach with a lot of reverence and respect. And it’s easy to forget how much I’m asking of my clients. And of course there’s more, like being willing to move, being willing to lie down while I stand up. All those things that we ask of our clients that essentially are surrender or letting go on their part. 

Whitney Lowe:  Yeah. 

Til Luchau: That I think it’s been a, it’s been a great path for me to feel like I could ask that, essentially, and be the person that could accompany someone as they go through that on their own time.

Whitney Lowe: So what were some of the most kind of impactful things that you feel like your clients have taught you about that process? In terms of, you know, connecting with others and relationship things. What have been some of the most impactful things they’ve taught you? 

Til Luchau: Just thinking, stay in touch along the way.

You know, there’s this tradition in some kinds of massage of not talking. And that’s great and fine. And yet I remember thank goodness and you know, it’s kind of mortifying to think about now, but I remember a client, I was taking her through the Rolfing series and session six was classically face down, working on the back of the legs and the glutes and the low back.

And I’m just doing my diligence. I’m being sensitive with my hands, but at some point she sits up, turns around and says, Listen, I just need you to tell me what you’re doing step by step when you’re working back there on me. I was like, Oh my God, of course. I am so sorry. You know, but as I was so, I felt like I explained what was going to happen.

She laid out, I went to work, but to stay in touch along the way. I mean, it’s simple as that sounds of course. So I think it’s that understanding that it’s an always renewable contract or there’s it’s always in the moment connection that counts.  Once there’s anything else and that’s a life lesson.

Whitney Lowe: It is for sure. Yeah, I think one of the most significant things that I learn from clients is that there’s not rules in many of the ways that we thought there were a lot of rules in terms of the way we were taught things like there’s “do this. don’t do that”. When you do some when you’re working with somebody with this kind of thing this is what you do and then the clients come in and they’re just like it doesn’t follow the rules and you have to really become creatively attuned to what’s going on in that person’s life. I can remember a time working with a woman early on who had really serious carpal tunnel syndrome and bilaterally and to the point where she really couldn’t hold silverware to eat.

I mean, it was really bad. And I’m just like, I have no idea what you do in this kind of situation. And well, the first thing is just, is she, you know, and going through her story. Clearly had not been treated well and with respect and with compassion by the healthcare system. Everybody just sort of passed her on through workman’s comp and all this kind of stuff.

And it just was clear that the first thing that was necessary was just to kind of be there with her and really know that I was going to do anything that I could to really be just as compassionate as possible and just treatment started with just the very very lightest touch that I could do to give some sensation of connection there.

Til Luchau: That’s big.

Whitney Lowe: So, I think t’s a lot of it is just what the clients teach us about, being unique and being the thinking practitioner. 

Til Luchau: Well, yes, and touching practitioner, feeling practitioner, all those things because, I was just thinking about those kind of examples too, where  we could do a whole episode on things our clients taught us, but it, how many times it was a revelation to me that the connection was enough.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And that’s not to say that all I need to do is connect and I’m done. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: But at the times that I was really thinking of this as problem to, to fix, to address someone’s pain, for example, or someone’s difficulty. And there were times I didn’t feel like I found what I was looking for and yet to realize the fact that we were there together was meaningful, impactful, and helpful for my client.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: It’s again a big lesson for me too. It made me reevaluate what I even thought it was I was offering and my role in that interaction. 

Whitney Lowe: I remember one instance when I was working in the orthopedic clinic back at Emory. And this woman had been referred in for massage and she was of course being seen by the physical therapist simultaneously.

And she was the sort of typical kind of client of somebody who’s in a lot of chronic pain. Nothing works for her.  Nothing helps her.  She’s upset.  She is depressed, she is just not a person who, is really enjoyable to be around sometimes because life has been so difficult for her.  I was getting ready to work on her and one of the PTs who was the supervising person on that particular case said something to me about like how can you touch her?

How do you deal with that? And I’m like Oh my god, this is what’s wrong with our health care system. You know, it’s like how can you not touch this person and try to make a connection with them of seeing and of course the massage was the one thing that was saving her at that point of from kind of 

Til Luchau: yes 

Whitney Lowe: You know being in much worse shape 

Til Luchau: You’re making me think how our willingness to touch might, it’s also a big ask of ourselves, but the fact that we’re already there by the time we, presumably, by the time we see a client, means that we’ve taken a big step toward that transformative interaction too on our side.

That’s the willingness we bring to, to touch someone that may not be present in another medical context, say. Yeah. 

Whitney Lowe: You had posted a question here I was curious about, Yeah. Asking about a transformative experience you’ve had while receiving body work. We talk all the time about giving it, but I’m, I was curious to hear what you have, if you had anything like that, that really shaped your understanding of the practice.

Til Luchau: Sure. I mean, I’m just thinking I got really interested in Rolfing when I was in high school, one of my teachers was going through it and I remember her talking about it and it was intriguing. She said, this is not how Rolfing would describe itself. But she said, Rolfing is something like where they rip your muscles apart to get down to the bone.

And I was like, what? Why would you do that? But that sounds really interesting anyway. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And I don’t know what it says that, but I saved up my money. I found a Rolfer to work with and at 19 I went through the Rolfing series.  It was a revelation into my body.  I remember my hopes and expectations were pretty specific around posture.

That was the way it was being presented a lot of times back then. What I got was some of that, but a lot more body awareness, or body experience, or body presence that I even knew was possible, the very specific tour through my body. And no, he didn’t rip my muscles apart and get down to the bone, it was firm, old style work, but it was, what it evoked in me was a much subtler and nuanced understanding and experience of my, of being a body and being in my body.

That was a revelation. It really was. I go, Oh, this is what it’s about. It’s about feeling my body and being there and staying present with that. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: That was the revelation from that one. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: Did you have a…

Whitney Lowe: I, I did have something that always comes to mind when I think about something like this in terms of, a transformative kind of bodywork experience.

And this was, oh, I don’t know, three or four years after being out of massage school. And I got introduced to this woman who is doing a lot of energy work which was something I wasn’t really into at that point, but somebody had encouraged me to go have a session doing something with her. And she had done, you know, a moderately long typical kind of hour long session, we were doing something like that. And we were probably 30, 40 minutes into it or something like that. And she had me supine on the treatment table and she, had just encouraged me to try to relax as much as possible. And she just said, I want to try to do some mobility things with you.

And she had my feet flat on the massage table, but my hips kind of flex. So in, you know, like knees bent up and she just told me to relax there. And I started feeling something really weird. There’s like. I was swaying from side to side, and then it got bigger and bigger, and so like, I felt my legs swaying from side to side.

I felt like she’s doing some kind of like really rocking movement thing. And like I opened my eyes, and they were just sitting there. And she was just waving her hands back and forth across my legs. And I was like, that is weird. You know, that is really strange. But I absolutely felt that sense of movement happening in there from energetic work that was going on.

So it really made me start thinking like there’s, I do not know how to explain what this just was, but I will not deny that I felt something really interesting there. 

Til Luchau: That’s, I think that’s common for me too. And for a lot of people that we get, or we get opened up to other experiences that might not be explainable in our usual frame.

That exists right alongside being really valuing critical thinking. Yeah. And evidence, et cetera. But at the same time, there’s a lot that’s possible that isn’t necessarily easily explainable and understandable. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And so many of those things are what make the experience powerful, impactful, especially.

Whitney Lowe: I don’t know if we touched on this when we talked about our sort of background stories and things like that in that early episode, but and I’m not sure if I remember you telling me ever before, but how did you get started in teaching and making that transition from practitioner to teacher?

Til Luchau: I took a leave of absence from my job at the Esalen Institute to go study as a Rolfer in Boulder.

Went back, I was going back and forth to keep my job some and there’s intervals in the training. I remember on one of my trips back, the practitioners are so like, okay, so what are you learning at the Rolf Institute and they were very clear they weren’t supposed to teach what we’re learning at the Rolf Institute, but they I said I can give you an anatomy catch up with what I’m learning from anatomy.

 I remember we just sat in a circle in the yurt there at Esalen and I took them through like foot anatomy, what I’d learned about foot anatomy. And then they were like, Whoa, this is so cool. This is great. Just to have like the map of the structure and the stuff in there, they were doing very skilled and intuitive work, but to go through the step by step technical aspects and the possibilities that opened up was exciting for all of us.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And then the other part of that is both of my parents were teachers. 

Whitney Lowe: I think I remember you telling me that.

Til Luchau: Yeah. All four of my grandparents were teachers. I have aunts and uncles on both sides. I have siblings on both sides that are teachers. Yeah. So there’s just some teacher gene going on. For sure.

That, that’s where, that really drew me. And then I started getting invitations and started looking for them and that eventually became one of the big focuses of what I did. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And you, how did you make that transformation? 

Whitney Lowe: I was one of those many people who have had that experience from years of being on staff at a massage school, doing some sort of assistant teaching.

And the curriculum director said, okay, you’re going to be a teacher now. And I said, I am not ready to do this. And they said, Oh yes, you are. And you basically just got thrown in the classroom. And in hindsight, of course, I feel like that is a terrible method of teacher training preparation 

Til Luchau: Really? That throw ‘em in thing? You don’t?

Whitney Lowe:  No I am not into that at all, very unsatisfactory for the students because we have you know, teachers not knowing really what they’re doing in all those situations, so but I sort of also recognized at this point  they had put me in there with teaching like nobody wants to teach in the night program.

So that’s where all the people who don’t want to do stuff in the daytime get thrown into the night program and this is like you’re working with adult learners a lot who are working all day long and they’re coming to school at night and they’re tired they’re burned out. They’re tired.

They’re just not into this and you know, I was about, I was like 27, 28 at that time or something. I don’t think and I have always looked really young, and I looked like I was 17, you know, at that time, like I really looked young, and I thought I’m never going to get any respect from these people if I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

And so that was for me, kind of like the kicker that got me going on, like, I’m going to have to really know what I’m doing to be able to talk about this stuff and get any kind of credibility from people. And so. that just got it started. Then I realized I really like this. I really like sharing things and opening people’s eyes and seeing the light bulbs go off and everything.

Til Luchau: That’s the reward. Yeah. And the way that keeps us honest and for me, accountable is nothing like a deadline or, you know, having a class to teach to make sure that I’m current on what I’m saying and that I’m connected to it. And that’s been helpful for me too. As a learner and as a practitioner to need to stay out more on my cutting edge than I might if I wasn’t teaching.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: Yeah. All right. How about relationships? Have there been impacts on your relationships outside of massage and body work because you do this work? 

Whitney Lowe: I think so. I mean, I think just in general it’s certainly encouraged me to be a far more compassionate person because I’m seeing so many situations of recognizing the difficulties that so many people are grappling with.

So, I think that’s just, that’s probably the biggest thing. And then just sort of seeing and watching a lot more personal dynamics because there’s so much about our client therapist interaction process. That’s about you know, how do we get into that therapeutic space with another person and you know be empathetic?

But you know also be a listener and really pay attention to what’s going on with them. So it’s sort of forced and encouraged me to be a lot more of a quiet listener person to really kind of get a sense of what’s happening there and relationship-wise with people. So, those things cross over a great deal, I think for, from personal life and relationships into what we do and how we act in the clinic.

Til Luchau: I think that’s true for me too. I’ll just for counter point, say it’s also taught me a lot about boundaries. 

About the other side of that, which is to the limits of when I can and can’t help or engage. And just needing to develop the boundaries around a practice or client interactions. And the ways those would become challenging maybe with friends or family and working through those, and sometimes muddling my way through for sure.

I think it’s, you know, and the pendulum swung back and forth over the decades as I see between being really open and willing and really cautious and careful about my own time or energy, but I think it’s helped me find a much more generous place in myself as well as compassionate because it’s, I mean, the point of boundaries is to have enough containment or protection that our hearts can be open.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And that’s, that finding that navigating that, being able to manage that, talk about it if need be, or just embody that has really helped me I think give a lot more. Yeah. In a way that’s sustainable and is actually useful too. 

Whitney Lowe: There’s, it… It’s so interesting that I think it’s a lot of times very difficult to kind of find the bare the boundaries, you know between those kinds of things of what we are doing and learning as part of our practice and what we are doing and learning as part of being in our life outside of that treatment room, but bringing those things together in many different and unique ways and you know, I talk to the students a lot about this and just say like: who you are really matters, probably a lot more than what the techniques are that you have under your belt or the certifications on your wall and things like that.

It’s really crucial to put attention to those kinds of things and be that person as much as you can, everywhere in your life, because it really does cut across and really share so much. 

Til Luchau: It’s very true. I mean, we could talk for a while about that. We got more questions we could talk about too.

What’s important here as we’re winding up the conversation? To touch on as well. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. So, what else did we have that we were going to try to touch base on here? You had said, this is another question too, you wanted to that, you had put on there. I thought it was really good. Balancing sort of the physical and emotional demands that this work has while maintaining your own wellbeing.

And, you know, obviously. That has a lot of things everybody has to think about, like with what’s going on in their own lives and how do they not bring that into the treatment room, things like that. So.

Til Luchau:  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to hear your views on it too, but I’m just, I think immediately about raising a kid and I work in my neighborhood.

I don’t work in my home, but I worked, my office is very close by. And there were times, especially in the teenage years, where it was like going right from time with my difficult kid into a session. And just, the practice I got at that separation and yet still being very present and genuine with someone.

Or the personal challenges I went through with my health and then having to navigate working or not working during that time. Again, how to balance or, you know, make room for myself and still show up for other people. When to say yes, when to say no, but then also, I think in those examples, it was, it being able to be completely present with the client in a way that left both of us usually feeling much better at the end of the session.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. So would you say that you have some particularly specific or useful strategies about how you make that shift? You know, I think about like what you were saying and I get that completely. 

Til Luchau: I’m glad you’re asking me to be specific. I think it’s present moment awareness. That’s my basic strategy or technique.

It’s okay. I’m here now. I’m with this person now. Let me look at them. Let me see them. Let me feel my body now. And if I’m being, if I’m remembering that, What just happened with my kid? I’m gonna bring my awareness back to this moment and just rest into what this person’s telling me. If I had to pick one thing I’d do, it’s present moment awareness of both where I am and how I feel in my own body.

That maybe sounds really simple, but that’s not easy. And that’s been a big one. Yeah.

Whitney Lowe:  You had asked something earlier too, in our sort of list of questions that we had put together here about how you approach what you’re doing in the treatment room, is it kind of meditative for you or how do you kind of like orient your mindset around that?

I think that has oftentimes a lot to do with this, with that. Would you say that’s been true for you? Yeah. 

Til Luchau: That’s the practice. It’s how do I, especially balancing like strategy for the session, the time left, what the client wants, what I want to do, and present moment awareness and helping the client track their own present moment awareness, that’s that’s the dance.

Yeah. And that’s the weaving of that, of the moment there. Yeah. What do you do? 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. I was going to say that’s very similar to I, I’m again, so very thankful that I spent a lot of years studying meditation and mindfulness and those kinds of practices because it is easy to kind of get off track and let your mind start, you know, really running things and then you’re all of a sudden you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing and Clearly I think that degree of attentive awareness is so critical for being very effective in what we’re doing at every moment in the treatment room.

So for me, I try to really be in both a space of openness and quiet and listening to what’s going on, but also really try to zero in on a degree of intense awareness, like really, you know, visualizing anatomy as I’m working on person, you know, listening to what I feel in terms of tissue responses and tissue reactions.

And really, it’s that, you know, super hyperfocused, intent awareness about what’s happening there. That I think really allows you to be very good and highly specific with people. And I just want to say this too, because I think a lot of people recognize this, or maybe they don’t recognize why this is an issue, but when you do that all day long, you’re drained.

I mean, you are really drained with that kind of intense, hyperfocused awareness about what’s going on with people. It takes a lot of mental, emotional energy, I think, to do that well, so taking care of yourself in that process, I think, is absolutely critical for everybody. 

Til Luchau: I know what you mean by drained.

And I’m also thinking about how sometimes I’m so nourished, I’m so filled. Maybe it’s a question of how much. Because I’ve had a very small practice for a number of years. In fact, I’m just now, after taking about a year off to care for my wife and walk through that process. I’m just now getting back into seeing clients again.

But because I’ve had the teaching and other things, I had the luxury of seeing very few clients. And I found that to be very nourishing. I mean, certainly days that I was seeing five clients a day, five days a week, long sessions. I know what you mean by drained. Yeah, I do. It was a question of scale, but that’s, for me, it’s been one of the lessons too, is how to arrange things so that I really am nourished by what I do.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah, and I find that too from the, for the teaching perspective also to be very different for me because I, at the end of a long teaching day, I am a totally different kind of tired than I am after another kind of day at work or day working in the yard doing physical labor or something like that.

It’s really an emotional, attentive, like, There’s too much brain synapse stuff that needs to rest, you know, it’s like, you feel like, at least I do, like I’m, you know, traveling and then there’s the hotel stuff, like, all I can do is go back and just watch, you know, very bad television at night, that’s all my brain can handle, you know, just sort of, to sort of unwind.

Til Luchau: Yep. Yeah. I know what you’re talking about. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. But it’s sort of a place that we may wind up a little bit I’d love to hear what you have advice for seasoned practitioners or even for the people just getting going here in terms of how this may impact, influence, or change your life. Do you have any kind of tentative advice that would be good for folks?

Til Luchau: I put that question in there, but. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: I didn’t think about it yet, so this is going to be off the top of my head. I thought I was going to ask you that question, that’s good. What advice would I give seasoned practitioners or people just starting out? I would say look for the aspect that is meaningful personally for you. That means, maybe it is the professional fulfillment. Maybe it is having a way to help people. Maybe it is getting the flexibility that this could give you. Maybe it’s offering something of value. I don’t know. There’s some aspect of this that’s going to be meaningful to each of us personally.

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

Til Luchau: And that’s the gold. That’s the thing to shore up, build around hold and cherish preciously. And find ways to support. And I guess, I guess it’s also mentoring. I thank goodness for my mentors and the people that cared enough about me to spend time with me as a, even still, in a learning capacity

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. I’m sure you remember hearing this, but this is probably like late 80s, early 90s, something like that a marketing advertising slogan that the U. S. Navy put out there it’s not just a job, it’s an adventure, and I think that’s a lot of where it is too, of just recognizing this isn’t just, this isn’t just a job or an occupation really, it’s, it is in fact a calling.

For many people who get into this and recognize that they have a really unique place in doing things for people in a very different way, it’s an important calling to take very seriously and not just look at it as, you know, here’s what I do in my nine to five.

Til Luchau: There’s, if it was just a job, it would kind of suck as a job, even it’s not that great as a job, but as a calling, wow, really amazing. 

Whitney Lowe: We learn so much and we have so many opportunities. Just one other thing, I just wanted to put a plug in here and say about this whole thing that we were talking about in terms of how it has changed your life.

I have to admit, You know, I am so incredibly fortunate to have met so many wonderful people throughout our field and throughout the time that I’ve spent here. You know, yourself included, of course and many other wonderful, inspiring individuals from the people that everybody knows about that are famous to the people who are doing things in very unique ways and don’t get any credit or attention to what they’re doing, I just I feel so inspired by the work they do on a day to day basis and it reinvigorates and refreshes my belief of why I’m still at this, three and a half decades on.

Til Luchau: So I think you’re right. There’s inspiring people that get called to do this and I get a lot of inspiration and companionship and joy from those connections too, that I’ve made in this field, including with yourself, Whitney. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. So, I think I’m going to still do it next year. I’m going to keep doing this. Yeah. At least one more year. 

Til Luchau: Yeah. 

Whitney Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Well, that was an interesting discovery process down that road. We also we’re gonna give a big thanks and shout out here to our sponsor Books of Discovery who has been a part of the massage therapy and body work world for over 25 years. Nearly 3,000 schools around the globe teach with their textbooks, e textbooks, and digital resources. Books of Discovery likes to say learning adventures start here and they find that same spirit here on the Thinking Practitioner podcast and are proud to support our work knowing that we share the mission to bring the massage and bodywork community thought provoking and enlivening content that advances our profession.

Til Luchau: And we got to get them on the podcast. We need to get some of those good people here to tell their stories somewhere too. And while I’m thinking about it, thank you Books of Discovery for that nice Christmas package you sent me of some nice snacks and a nice card. I’m going to send you a thank you card back.

But in the meantime, instructors of manual therapy education programs can request complimentary copies of Books of Discovery’s textbooks to review for use in their programs. Please reach out at booksofdiscovery.com. Listeners can explore their collection of learning resources for anatomy, pathology, kinesiology, physiology, ethics, and business mastery at booksofdiscovery.com, where Thinking Practitioner listeners like you save 15 percent by entering “thinking” at checkout. 

Whitney Lowe: And of course we would like to say a thank you to all of our listeners for hanging out with us here today and to our sponsors. You can stop by our sites for video, show notes, transcripts, and any extras.

You can find references to that over on my site at academyofclinicalmassage.com. And Til where can they find that for you? 

Til Luchau: Advanced-trainings.com and hey, we do want to hear your story. How has massage or body work or manual therapy changed your life? Send us a message or record a short voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected] or look for us on social media. I am @Til Luchau.  Whitney, where can people find you? 

Whitney Lowe: And they’ll find me also under my name, Whitney Lowe, on social as well. You can rate us on Apple Podcasts as it does help other people find the show, and you can hear us wherever you happen to listen to your podcast.

So please do share the word, tell a friend, and we’ll look forward to seeing you in the next episode. 

Til Luchau: I’ll look forward to that. Thanks, Whitney. 

Whitney Lowe: All right, thank you.