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Student StoriesDRAPED — An online journal about what is going on in (and out of) the mind of Christopher Shelley, began in May 2008 when he was a massage therapy student. Now a recent graduate, he still contributes his much welcome perspective on all things elemental to massage therapy. -------------------------------------------------------------------- June 1, 2009 WoodOur journey through the five elements continues with WOOD, the angry element, just in time for spring. In your Shiatsu classes, you will learn about the Five Elements: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. Each of us has traces of all these elements inside us, and they are in constant motion, jockeying for position, battling for air time, struggling to attract the coveted 25-45 year old market. Last time we examined Fire and how important it is at auditions. This week, we examine Wood, recently paroled. I caught up with the Wood element the other night at a saloon in midtown after a bar brawl that left the Earth element bruised and shaken. "Wood controls Earth, and don't you forget it!" shouted Wood, before asking me what I was drinking. "I'll have what he's having," I informed the bartender, and the bartender brought me a steaming mug of green tea. My first question was obvious ¡V why on earth was the Wood element soaking wet? "Water is the mother of Wood, as you know, Jimmy -" "Chris." "Whatever. Water doused me when I got a little vehement with my Earth buddy. Does the trick every time, calmed me right down. The green tea helps as well. Plus the sweet knowledge that springtime is upon us, so I can finally get back outside to the parks and forests. You want to find out what makes Wood tick? I'll tell you what makes Wood tick. You got a pencil and some paper? Good. That piece of paper is my cousin, and the pencil is my nephew." For the next five hours, Wood told me about the plight of Wood-kind. He told me about the horrors of being a tree, the existential black hole of being a match, and his least favorite television show. "Do you understand how difficult it is for me to watch 'Ax Men'?" Trees, according to Wood, are a peaceful group, at least on the East Coast. West Coast trees are all about Hollywood, all about being seen. "That's why they call it HollyWOOD, not HollyEARTH or HollyWATER. ¡¥Look at me, I'm a mighty redwood.¡¦ Yeah ¡V nobody thinks about the mighty redwood or any tree in California until their children act up and they all get together and have a forest fire. Fire is the child of Wood, as I'm sure you know. Then the Earth element gets all competitive and starts mud slides. I'm not fond of California." Trees in general are misunderstood, according to Wood. For the most part, trees just stand there. A lot of people assume that trees stand around because that's all trees do. Not so. "For one thing, the view is spectacular up there, and when the wind blows, we get a fantastic stretch. How come Wind isn't one of your elements?" I explained that the Swedish Institute only teaches Five Element theory, which doesn't include Wind, but that there are Ayurvedic and Thai philosophies that include Wind, to which he replied, ¡§What in the name of Splinters McGee is the Swedish Institute?" I encouraged him back to the point he'd been making. When I asked him to specify exactly what kind of competition he was referring to, he got angry. "I just told you - it's the longest standing competition in the world. Which one of us can stand the longest? Did I stutter? I don't stutter - that's an overactive Fire element, I don't need to tell you that." To calm him down, I asked him some innocuous questions, like, what was his favorite film. "'Ed Wood'. Hilarious. Johnny Depp is a gem." And his favorite musical? "'Into the Woods', hands down, is the best thing Bernadette Peters has ever done." His favorite actor? "Woody Harrelson." When he seemed to be sufficiently calmed, I asked him about his difficult relationship with Metal. He instantly shuddered and looked around the bar, his green eyes wide. "Metal isn't here, is he? If he's here, you never saw me, we never talked, I never said anything about him." I assured him that Metal was not in the bar. Metal, apparently, controls Wood, more than people realize. "How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood? If he had a power saw, he could chuck pretty darn near all the wood in the world, and that's something I just don't want to think about. This is why I can't watch 'Ax Men', on the History Channel. You'd have to be a masochistic hunk of Wood to watch that show. I can't do it. Too painful. Why'd you have to bring that up?" I asked if Wood was crying. "I'm not crying. I'm... I told you, I'm soaking wet because of Water. Look, the only good thing that comes from being... chopped down... is that you get to become stuff. Like baseball bats, or ships, or bungalows at vacation resorts. But oh, the agony we must endure for such pleasures!!!" To beef up his ego again, I asked him how he felt about Wood's association with springtime, and what a dichotomy this seems considering his well-publicized anger. "At the start of spring time, what do you get? Easter. If you were that amped up on chocolate bunnies, you'd be angry too. Besides, how do you feel when winter lasts all the way until the end of April? Pretty cooped-up and angry, right? You feel like you're in a coffin, which is the last thing Wood ever wants to become. Come on, spring! Bring it on! Let's do this!" That seemed to do the trick. Wood stood tall and seemed renewed. He asked me to tell him more about the Swedish Institute, and what this interview was for, anyway. When I explained how in Shiatsu classes, students learn all about Five Element theory, he asked me to tell him more about that, and I did. It took a few beats, but the following thought finally dawned on him. "Oh terrific. Now I'm just being used as a metaphor. Wait till my court-appointed shrink hears about this."
Johnny Depp: Formerly American, currently French, actor made entirely of finely carved Wood. California: State on the far-western edge of the United States; giant holding pen for Randy Newman; a place to go back to. Forest: Something you can't see because of the trees
------------------------------------------------------------------- December 3, 2008 Can’t Get it Out of Your SISTEMLike sports massage? As part of your off-site clinics, you may get the chance to perform post-event massages at flashy NYC sports events like the NYC Triathlon, The MS Bike Ride, the Westchester Triathlon, and the NY Marathon. And if you enjoy these events, and Charles Pegg gets any hint that you are interested in doing more of them, you can be recruited to join the SISTEM team (Swedish Institute Sports Team and Event Massage). My indoctrination into the SISTEM world was one of the best things for me during my time at Swedish – you get to work with athletes who are serious about their muscles and serious about how massage can help them. These people are the best clients to work on because it’s not often that you get such informed feedback during a session with the general public. This past summer, on the hottest day of the year, with the sun sitting on top of a Central Park tree and dozens of squirrels with bad breath looking on, I was lucky enough to work in the massage tent for the NYC Triathlon with several dozen of my fellow students. The athletes began that day with a swim in the Hudson River, continued with a bike ride through Brazil and finished up with a run through the Sahara desert, which that day happened to be right next to Central Park. Thom Paul, who, despite the heat, remained cool as the first slather of Biotone on a winter’s day, walked around announcing the time, encouraging us and keeping us moving. Charles Pegg, who competed in the race, strolled around keeping an eye on our body mechanics, reminding us that we, too, are athletes with hydration needs. The athletes who found their way to our tables had swum through a fence of jellyfish in the Hudson River, and the ensuing bike and run had not improved the delicate bouquet of their persons. I found that I didn’t care; besides, I must have been pretty ripe myself that day. The Hudson River still lingered on my first client’s wet back as I leaned into it. And while I am of course client-centered to the core, I still took the opportunity to look around at the massive massage scene before me. We must have had 30 massage tables out that afternoon under that big tent. My immediate neighbors, Pavarin and Poy, from Thailand, were moving their athletes through shoulder ROM with effortless confidence. Adrian from England stretched a hamstring with dancer-like grace. Bethany from Jersey cradled a neck like she was cradling a neck. Each of them employed moves I knew and moves I intended to steal. Further across the room were students I’d never met, bending limbs and leaning with forearms in all the familiar ways, talking with their clients as they worked, sharing a laugh and a smile, providing 7-10 minutes of relief on a terribly hot day. (Did I mention it was hot? It was hot. Summer Subway hot. Interview Armpit hot.) The sea of blue clinic shirts, white pants, bodies and massage tables I saw matched a photo I’d seen long ago of an event just like this one; it had been just the kind of photo that made me want to go to the school, so I could be a part of events just like this. And there I was. The best part though, was that it wasn’t just me, that I had become a part of an ‘us’, a ‘we’. There we all were, working together, sharing what we’d learned in classrooms since the previous September. Suddenly I understood why some of the classrooms are kept at boiling-hot temperatures: to acclimate us to days like that July day. I knew there was a reason!!! Thank you, Swedish Institute Climate Control Overlord! (SICCO) The changeovers between athletes were swift, and I noticed that I felt fine while I was working, but in-between clients something inside me felt allowed to consider fatigue and be tempted by it. I felt certain that it had less to do with the heat and intense humidity than it did from the notion that I gain energy from people as I work on them. “Welcome to PARADISE,” I’d say to my next client. Turns out, exhausted people who have swum through a sewer, biked through a series of underground subway tunnels and run through a dense thicket while being chased by basset hounds will laugh at nearly anything. They like to keep their medals on during the massage. It’s adorable. And good for them, completing an event like that. At these events, everybody is a winner (especially the people who actually win). And that can make you feel good inside, depending on how corny you feel that day. And corny that day I felt! In those 7-10 minutes, no matter how much communal excitement and noise echo around you, it’s still just you and the client. They fill out a form and use the word ‘sore’ in a sentence. They lie down. You try to help with the muscles that bother them most, but mostly they just like lying down. They’ve spent the past days and months experiencing pain and accustoming themselves to great effort, so any sensation in the opposite extreme is welcome. Now and then an athlete will cramp up, and you unload massage magic on that cramp until it behaves. You stretch ‘em and lean on ‘em and congratulate them. They fill out the rest of the form and go away. Then the process repeats. The highlight of the day came when I saw an athlete I’d worked on weeks before in a SISTEM clinic, at school. She had finished the race, and that was all she cared about. I like to think that the massage helped. SHAMELESS PLUG FOR SISTEM: Check with the receptionist on the 5th floor for sign-up sheets for SISTEM clinics. You will be glad you did. When it comes to practice, more is better, and better is what we are. VOCABULARY Triathlon: a three-sport event for multi-skilled athletes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- October 29, 2008 In Shiatsu class, you will learn about the five elements and how a Shiatsu practitioner can use them to understand their clients’ energy. The five elements are Water, Wood, Metal, Earth, and Fire. Last time, we examined the Water element and how important it is to surfers. This time, we’ll explore Fire, the hottest element. Fire is a complicated element, and you will discover that your instructors will keep you from only the most basic principles of this hot element until you reach third semester. Fire has four meridians, which right off the bat makes it twice as difficult to learn as all of the other elements. Part of the protocol for the Heart meridian is to raise your partners arm over her head, as if she is holding up a lighter at a rock concert. For her Pericardium meridian, place her arm straight out to her side, as if she is presenting a new vowel on Wheel of Fortune. When working on these two meridians, it is helpful to imagine flattening your partner into the ground as if she was a chalk outline, because this is just the kind of calming, flattening type of attention a fire person needs. Dr. Evil would raise his pinky to his lips to stimulate Small Intestine 1, which helped him discern what he needed in order to be more Evil. Triple Energizer begins on the ring finger, so to remember it I think of Rudy Giuliani – can you guess why?** New York is a great town for spotting Fire people, much more so than, say, Missouri or Wisconsin. New York is full of drama queens, dancers, opera singers, comedians, performance artists and talk show hosts. Fire people are look-at-me people. Fire people want the microphone at every wedding. Fire people sizzle with personality, spark, and shine. Fire people shake their jazz hands and smile even when nothing particularly good is happening. Fire people are, for lack of a better way of putting it, on fire. To control a Fire person, throw a bucket of water in her face. Water controls Fire. Plus, Fire people hate to have their clothes and makeup ruined, although I must warn you of Fire peoples’ ability to turn misfortune such as a ruined outfit into further Fire-type drama. Fire people are very much like those annoying candles at birthdays that just don’t go out no matter how many times you blow on them. They are very much like California wild fires, which not only burn through and destroy millions of dollars in property, but always always always end up on TV. Look at me, I’m a blazing Fire! Jazz hands! Go ahead sugar, water me down, I’ll just get all smoky, and then I’ll burst through with more flames! Woo hoo! Yes I’m on fire, Fire people sing karaoke. Fire people lead the conga line at the office party. Fire people say things like “OH…MY…GOD, BECKY,” and “You betcha I’m gonna help out the economy.” Fire is associated with the color red, which is why toreadors flash those red capes at bulls. To antagonize a bull, use a red cape, or put an Actor with 16 bars and a dramatic monologue in the ring, sit back, relax, and watch the bull ruin four years of training at Juilliard. Wood is the mother of Fire, which brings us right back to Smoky the Bear, who warned us about how trees burn, creating fire. See how it all works? Wood is the mother of Fire, which is one of the clearest metaphors in all of Eastern philosophy. We can’t have fire without wood. You can think about that the next time you go camping. Also note that wet wood doesn’t burn. (You can actually use Duraflame logs to make a fire, but don’t tell anybody, it would ruin the metaphor.) Earth is the child of Fire, which is like saying ‘Brick House’ is the child of The Commodores. Earth is what’s left when Fire burns out. One might also say that Kate Hudson is the daughter of Goldie Hawn, although that’s really Fire giving birth to Fire. Fire controls Metal. Just put a Musical Theater performer on stage with an Accountant, and you’ll see what I mean. Writers are essentially Water people who are Fire people in their minds. Writers can have the Fire elements of extroversion, wit, and charm, without the need to hop onto a stage with a microphone or a troupe of dancers behind them – a quiet café will do, with good espresso, ideally while it’s raining out (Water balance) and as long as the other people in the café suspect that he is a genius, typing away like that. All these quiet Fire types need are a column on a website and an occasional book deal. This particular kind of Fire person really isn’t asking all that much, just one book deal to get them started, that’s all, even for some low-output soft market paperback type thing with an option for a second novel should the first succeed. Of course a regular column for a local paper or weekly magazine wouldn’t be that objectionable for a quiet Fire type. People like Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris are absolute HEROES to this kind of quiet Fire type. HEROES. Anyhoodle, Fire! Fire causes the Emmys, and the Oscars, and really the entire Entertainment Industry. Thank you Fire! Without Fire types, we wouldn’t have ‘House’ or ‘Family Guy’ or ‘Saturday Night Live.’ That’s it for Fire, the Drama Queen of the elements. Next time, we’ll explore Wood, the angry element, currently out on parole. VOCABULARY Triple Energizer: furry, battery-powered bunny inside your abdomen controlling your temperature. Dr. Evil: Mike Myers’ last humorous role. Juilliard: Arts school near Lincoln Center; hard to get into, mostly because it’s hard to spell Anyhoodle: blend of ‘anyway’, ‘anyhow’ and ‘poodle’ Book Deal: an offer by a publisher to buy a writer’s book; harder to get than one might think – see also Winning Lottery Ticket. -------------------------------------------------------------------- September 22, 2008 Flexion 180. Extension 10 to 15. Adduction 30 to 50. Abduction 50. Sound familiar? If you've made it through the school as far as second semester, it should. At some point, you will have muttered these words out loud while standing on one leg, swinging your leg through its ranges of motion, probably staring at your partner without seeing her, your mind a mesh of photos and numbers from the Assessment Book. Legend has it that the Assessment practical exam may be one of the most feared exams that the Swedish Institute inflicts upon its students. Many a student have lost their wits upon being faced with a special test they neglected to study, a Resisted Isometric Test they forgot how to perform, or, worst of all, a scenario they could not figure out. To help stave off some of the anxiety that students may feel upon approaching their Assessment Practical Final Exam, the Swedish Institute has asked me to compose a few scenarios in such a way to make them easy to unpack, in clear language that anybody can understand. There is no way of knowing which scenario you will get in your exam, so you'll have to learn all of these, but anyway here are a few that I came up with. The Assessment teachers will use these going forward, so at least you'll have a little time to start thinking about these. Hope these help!!! (Hint: they won't.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------- July 29, 2008 The five elements are Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. First, let’s explore Water. Grab your snorkel. Where would our oceans be without water? How would we shower? And what about the ice capades? In Shiatsu, the water meridian flows down the back, down the back of the legs, up the inner thigh and then tastefully up the chest. Our bodies are composed of 75% water (15% muscle, 10% attitude), and most of our meals in restaurants come with water. When it rains, water is Yang. When you press the button on the water fountain, water is yin (although it goes right back to yang, which just goes to show you how tricky water can be and why it is so important to understand it.) When your girlfriend throws water at your face after you make a disparaging comment about her choice to become a vegetarian, water is yin, but as it dribbles down your chin and onto the expensive steak you’d prepared for her, it is yang again. In Shiatsu class, you will learn about the Generation Cycle, the Control Cycle, and the Wash Cycle. In the generation cycle, Water is the mother of wood. I would kill to be a fly on the wall in that delivery room. Congratulations, Mrs. Water. You’ve given birth to a tree. Allow me to give you a demonstration of the Control Cycle. Water controls Fire. Find a building you own, on which you are well-insured. Light that building on fire. Watch the blaze and imagine the large insurance check you will receive. Observe the Fire department arrive and douse the flames with water. See how the water puts out the flames? That is because Water controls Fire. In the Wash cycle, you have to do your laundry. Wash your sheets, and your socks, and your school uniforms. This has nothing to do with Shiatsu; I’m just saying. Wash your stuff. Seriously. Eww. The water element is associated with winter, and fear, and cold, and ice, and the National Hockey League. Water is blue and black, like our school uniforms, and members of Blue Man Group. Water is the child of Metal, and frankly, Metal is a horrible Mother. I mean, look at Water: trembling, bruised, crying, diapedesing all over the place, sold in bottles, polluted by tankers, flushed down toilets, rinsed through teeth, frozen in freezers, tossed into pitchers of Sangria, flattened under zambonis, cut by figure skaters, dropped thousands of feet by clouds. Is Metal too busy working multiple jobs (Razor Blade, Elevator Shaft) to take care of Water? And yet, Water has done well for itself, all things considered. At any point, it lives simultaneously in Europe, the US, South America, South Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and parts of the Great Lakes region. It attends sporting events and dines in the best restaurants around the world. Water is everywhere, like CNN or gossip. Water makes fish possible, which therefore makes Sushi possible, which therefore makes Japan possible. Without Japan we might not have Shiatsu. What would surfers do without water? Learn how to read? Water is bladder and kidney. Bladder helps us move forward in life, which makes sense, right? Sometimes, if you have got to go, and you don’t get to a bathroom, I don’t care who you are, you can’t do a thing before you take care of business. Am I right? High five. Kidney is hearing. I said, KIDNEY IS HEARING. Kidney is that part of us that is hunkered down in the fetal position, wrapped up in our L.L. Bean Weather Challenger Jacket with waterproof, breathable TEK2.5 nylon shell, removable Polartec Windbloc polyester fleece inner liner, wishing the howling winds of winter would die down and the lovely wooden sounds of spring (baseball bats whacking baseballs) would return. When our Water element is in imbalance, we’re a mess. We freak out when we hear a noise in the other room, convinced it’s a zombie. We dwell on bad things. We can’t sing in the shower the way we normally do. We don’t say that perfect joke that we’re thinking, or ask out the girl of our dreams. We hide from risk. We buy mutual funds instead of single stocks. We write poetry instead of humor. You know what’s really good for water? Cups, aquariums, pools: structure, the kind provided by Metal, Water’s workaholic Mother. Also, sometimes Water needs to gather its thoughts by becoming a lake or a pond, therefore surrounded by Earth, its controller. Sometimes it just needs to rain down on all of us. In Shiatsu class, people like to brag about what element type they are, and after the first thirty seconds it can get pretty annoying. So the next time a fellow student starts moaning about being a Water type, don’t hesitate to throw a plant at this person. If he complains, tell him that the plant represents Earth and that Earth controls Water. You’ll feel smart and he’ll feel like he’s covered in plant sod. The rest of the class will thank you privately in the lounge, or when you’re partnered in Swedish the next day. That’s it for Water, the wettest element of them all. Next time we’ll explore Fire, the Drama Queen of the Elements. Until then, may your kenbiki be rockin’. VOCABULARY: 5 Elements: An elaborate metaphor for balance which takes 16 months to fully explain to massage students. -------------------------------------------------------------------- July 7, 2008 Break Time An hour and a half into each class, no matter how fascinated we are by IT bands or cross-fiber friction, our gaze turns to the clock, and to our instructor, waiting for her to tell us to take a break. Dunkin Donuts makes me think of Boston, where I grew up, and all the fine hospitals and medical facilities there that have massage for the sick, and the injured, and the dying. And the tourists. Tyra Banks: talk show host, works on 26th St across from Swedish Institute; I hope to get her to invite us to be on her show. -------------------------------------------------------------------- June 16, 2008 When Hara Met Shelley
All of us have a hara. You have a hara. That person next to you has a hara. I lived 37 years before I knew I had a hara. I went through high school, undergrad and grad school, all with no knowledge of the hara under my shirt. In undergrad, I had a bald acting teacher who convinced all of us that we had an aura. I had heard that my aura was blue, though others swore it was grey. May 14, 2008
Greetings, Fascia-nistas!
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