Pregnancy Brings Many Rewards Including Great Massages
The Bodymind
In the light of the development of modern psychology and a more sophisticated knowledge of anatomy and physiology, health care professionals are beginning to reexamine touch therapy. As we confront the challenge of understanding how personal growth, character, physical structure, and health and disease relate to one another, we begin to create a new matrix -- "the bodymind". Bodymind is a term coined by Ken Dychtwald in his book Bodymind.
Bodymind is the concept that health and disease don't just happen to us,
they are active processes reflecting psychological and somatic harmony. As
more is learned in research on the brain, the connection between mind and
illness becomes understandable. The brain masterminds or indirectly
influences every function of the body: blood pressure, heart rate, immune
responses and hormones. The old saying "name your poison" applies to the
semantics and symbols of disease. People have long spoken of a "broken
heart" as the symbol of a disappointing relationship: research now shows a
connection between loneliness and heart disease!
Body biographies
Over the years, our bodies become walking autobiographies that tell friends
and strangers alike of the minor stresses and strains of our lives. If one
has an accident, distortions resulting from injury can become a permanent
part of our body pattern. Our musculature reflects old anxieties -- fear,
depression, bravado, stoicism -- locked into our bodies as patterns in our
sensory-motor systems. Our body's tight patterns begin to contribute to our
locked-in mental processes. For instance, just as the body is constricted
by the mind's grief, the mind is constricted by the body's stubborn memory
of what the mind used to feel.
The sum total of this is that massage has unlimited possibilities for human
development from two different angles. On the one hand, based on
physiological principles, massage can provide the means to relieve the
incredible stress and strain to which we are subjected day after day in
modern living. For those to whom pain and stiffness are a habitual way of
life, bodywork can provide a means to experience how it feels to have a
body that can breathe, stand and move more freely, unconstricted by tight
muscles and not drained by energy-consuming tension. On the other hand,
there are a diverse array of therapies that deeply massage, manipulate,
loosen and change the body's neuromuscular system, its orientation to
gravity, and its symmetry.
The influence of touch on pregnancy
There is no other time in which bodywork can have as important an
application than during pregnancy. When we begin to visualize pregnancy as
far more than a physical state, and see it as a profound emotional, mental
and spiritual process, it is clear that massage can be of great benefit to
the pregnant mother. Woman have long held the amazing ability to influence
the state of their bodies with their thoughts and feelings, and conversely,
to allow their physical appearance or state of health to dominate how they
feel about themselves as individuals. How many of us have created an acne
breakout when nervous about a new date, or allowed the "bad hair day"
syndrome to taint an otherwise perfectly normal day with irritability and
gloom?
During pregnancy and childbearing, the enormous influx of hormones combined
with weight gain, altered body shape, and the normal biophysical and
structural discomforts caused by increased blood volume and a shifting
center of gravity, all contribute to many pregnant women feeling downright
uncomfortable, emotionally and physically! Massage can provide an excellent
means not only for relieving body stress, but also for helping her deal
with emotional fears and concerns. When a woman feels integrated and
healthy in her body and mind, she will manifest a more positive birth
experience.
Skin: our largest sensory organ
How is it possible that simply "rubbing" the skin can presume to live up to
claims of being one of the most effective means to influence the structures
and functions of body and mind? The skin is the largest sensory organ of
the human body, arising in the human embryo from the same cell layers as
the nervous system, the ectoderm. Ashley Montague writes in Touching:
"The surface area of the skin has an enormous number of sensory receptors receiving stimuli of heat, cold, touch, pressure, and pain. A piece of skin the size of a quarter contains more than 3 million cells, 100-340 sweat glands, 50 nerve endings and three feet of blood vessels. It is estimated that there are some 50 receptors/100 sq. mm., a total of 640,000 sensory receptors. The number of sensory fibers from the skin entering the spinal cord is well over half a million."
In a sense, the nervous system is part of the skin, or the skin is an external nervous system, conveying knowledge of the environment to the organism. In the evolution of the senses, the tactile system was the first system to come into being in all species. The sense most closely associated with the skin, the sense of touch, is the earliest to develop in the human embryo.
