The dog’s truth: Who he is in contrast with who he could be.
The dog’s truth: Who he is in contrast with who he could be.
The only way we can sense something is if it is against a contrasting backdrop. Activity in stillness, stuckness within flow, moist against dry, hard against soft, sponginess against denseness, tangles in the smooth, threadiness in the midst of fullness.
When you notice, you gain access to a precious and evocative moment that is happening within the recesses of the dog’s body, mind, and spirit. It’s the dog’s truth of who he is now.
During a canine massage, while palpating around a region on the dog’s body, you sense something. It could be heat, coolness, an unexpected texture, a reaction. You have discovered an aspect that informs the dog’s quality of life in this moment. Balance, wellness, happiness, and full function all pivot off the ability of this area to function.
Now that you have noticed where the dissonance lies, you have the opportunity to channel the dog’s resources to resolve it. With your canine massage, you guide the dog back toward comfort, balance, and greater function.
There are many ways to get the job done. Here are 2 methods.
Confront it straightaway.
Place your fingertips on it. Press in, apply pressure, and force it out. The aberration appears gone. You displaced the symptom. Here’s the problem: the cause has not been addressed. Why was it there, and where did it go?
When I was in massage school (for humans) we referred to this type of massage as “search and destroy.” We were on constant lookout for rice in the sand. The straightforward confrontation does provide immediate relief. However, since the cause-stressors are still present, the “fix” doesn’t hold; it is temporary.
When you located the contrast, it was not an isolated issue. It was part of a larger system.
For thinly muscled dogs, pressing on a muscle knot until it softens is not the best way to free its restrictive grip within the tissues long term.
Another approach is PetMassage Positional Myofascial Release.
The purpose and activity of PetMassage Positional Release is to create a venue for debate, deliberation and resolution for the good of the body politic.
The fascia holds stored memories of long forgotten wounds, injuries, and traumas that have all been part of that area’s experience. Their residual effects are present here and now. It hasn’t all been negative. Each point’s history also includes the residual effects of delightful baths in the endorphins that accompany ease of movement, full function, even joyous extremes of hyperactivity that pushed its boundaries and helped it grow and strengthen.
Here’s how it works. Call a meeting. A meeting of fascia. Collect the dog’s skin and coat around the contrast in your hands, and with it everything in the surrounding fascia. You are engaging the tissues cranial, caudal, laterally on either side of it, above it and below it. These are the elements of the localized fascial system of that area. They are stakeholders. They depend on this area of the body to fully function so that they can function fully.
Observe how it moves in your hands. It is never completely still. Where there’s life, there’s movement. The movements are often small. They might be extremely subtle; yet, you can still feel them. You may need to close your eyes and block out distractions. The skin! It moved! You detect movement beneath the coat! Back and forth, turning and sliding, it adjusts, allowing the out of sync behaviors within the tissues, the causes, to resolve themselves. Complicated interrelationships within the tissues begin to de-tangle, simplify and sort themselves out.
What do we feel? We feel the tissues around the contrast release and breathe. We feel the absence of contrast. That is, what we feel is no longer remarkable. That’s all we can know for sure.
Aha; but a lot more is going on within the dog
- the muscles relax
- the triggerpoints soften
- energy gates open
- dormant acupoints are stimulated
- constrictions around nerve plexuses are loosened
- scar tissue from long ago dissolves
- a holding pattern is let go
- and the rich flow of blood, lymph, spinal fluid, energy, chi, and Prana is restored.
These are the life and times of the dogs viewed through the filter of the canine massage practitioner. It’s all about the identifying of the contrast, facilitating the fascia in a MasterMind session, and witnessing the resolution of a problem.
Would you like to learn more about canine massage? Would you like to learn how to massage your own dogs? Would you like to train to practice it well enough to create a canine massage business?
I invite you to visit www.petmassage.com. Order my books, DVDs, and register for vocational training workshops and continuing ed home study courses.