This week, I am going to have my first ses­sion with Howard Rontal, my body worker, in more than a month.

Strong hands and a sharp mind

I stopped mas­sage ther­apy when it became clear to me that I needed to take a step back in deal­ing with my iliop­soas melt­down because the “injury” was not going away and, in deed, seemed to be wors­en­ing. I needed to take a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, and also back off my own efforts to get a han­dle on my body. I also stopped going to yoga classes because I felt that my approach to yoga (tak­ing it deeper, find­ing my edge) might be com­pli­cat­ing the con­di­tion even though I was try­ing to be mind­ful when doing my vinyasa prac­tice. My neuro-​​myofascial sys­tem oper­ates at a sub­con­scious level: I don’t explic­itly decide to use spe­cific sets of mus­cles to twist or turn; it’s han­dled by another part of the neural system.

In any case, I felt that I needed to reduce my treat­ments in order to see if and how I was improv­ing and what was hav­ing an impact. I only had so much time and money to throw at the problem.

How body­work changed me

The break from Howard‘s hands allowed me to reflect on how six months of treat­ment (since Sep­tem­ber last year) has affected me.

Work­ing with a mas­sage ther­a­pist requires a sus­pen­sion of per­sonal bound­aries: each ses­sion, I strip down to my box­ers, lay down on the sheet-​​covered table, and allow Howard to rub and probe with his hands, fore­arms, elbows and assorted instru­ments over the sur­face of my body and dig in deep to reach other lay­ers of fas­cia and mus­cle. I sub­mit myself to his expe­ri­ence, skills and apti­tude to some­how trans­form my flesh into some­thing that’s more sus­tain­able, healthy, func­tional. My orig­i­nally inten­tion — that this treat­ment will relieve me of the bizarre com­bi­na­tion of numb­ness and pain (periph­eral neuropathy) — may not be com­pletely attain­able, but it will alle­vi­ate the stiff­ness and lack of range in my neuro-​​myofascial matrix. I know that the expe­ri­ence was trans­form­ing my yoga prac­tice: every time I get on the mat, there are sparks of dis­cov­ery, as I am able to access mus­cles more deeply, over­come resis­tance caused by the years of stress that I’ve stored in my sinews.

Because Howard comes from the Heller­work tra­di­tion, there is a strong psy­cho­log­i­cal com­po­nent in his tech­nique so we can talk about a lot of emo­tional issues that are being expressed in my mus­cles and tis­sues. So as I am tak­ing off my clothes, I am telling him about the aches, pains and numb­ness of my body, the stres­sors of my job and my inten­tions for the ses­sion. I am expos­ing myself to him, but also becom­ing more self-​​aware of my own mind-​​body connection.

As the focus of the treat­ment moved away from the neu­ropa­thy issue to the mus­cle spasms, Howard and I engaged in a kind of detec­tive work to find out which were the protest­ing mus­cles, and which mus­cles were merely squeal­ing in sym­pa­thy. We nar­rowed it down to the illi­a­cus and psoas on the left side, and maybe the lig­a­ments con­nect­ing my hips to my sacrum or the SI joint. But these mus­cles may have been over-​​compensating for the right side being over rigid. But these tis­sues are so deep in the body that it’s really hard to access them, but it was amaz­ing to expe­ri­ence how Howard could influ­ence that inner core.

What I learned about body care

There are things that I can do for my body that Howard can’t: in a yoga vinyasa I can employ the whole span of my body and bal­ance it in grav­ity. Howard has to be more focused on sin­gle mus­cles, fas­cia, torso or limbs. In cres­cent lunge, I can engage the full anatom­i­cal chain from my fin­gers down to my toes as I swing through full extension. I can also treat myself to self-​​message, either by using a roller or Yoga Tune-​​Up balls (or other balls of var­ied form and den­sity), with the advan­tage that I can focus on tight areas, deepen or soften the touch at the point of con­tact, or explore at will. Each evening, as a min­i­mum, I roll my rhom­boid mus­cles and it is one of the most deli­cious sen­sa­tion — ten­sion spills out of the tis­sues. I had not real­ized that stress had been build­ing up there, a kind of secret repos­i­tory. I’ve also start mas­sag­ing my feet, espe­cially my arches, dur­ing the day to pre­vent ten­sion from build­ing up in my legs. In other words, I’ve been learn­ing to self-​​heal and self-​​soothe.

I now real­ize that I have to take charge of my own process of heal­ing and well-​​being, but also recruit the inter­ven­tion of other spe­cial­ists to help me take the best path for­ward, which means that I will have to explain what I have learned from under­go­ing treat­ment with a chi­ro­prac­tor and an acupuncturist.