Written by: Jack Blackburn, Licensed Massage Practitioner, Counselor, Teacher
Assertion: The Trager Approach has diminished to the point of evaporation over the last 20 years. In almost no country or region is Trager thriving. Much to Milton’s demise… his contributions to hands-on and movement professions; e.g. clinical massage, physical and occupational therapy, movement therapies, somatic approaches, and mindfulness, have hardly affected those approaches. Instead the Trager Approach has been imploding as an organization and as a known treatment alternative. It is not important why this has taken place. Instead we should a asking what we still may contribute to the world of professional care. Are we depriving clients/patients we can clearly help, by not passing on what we learned from Milton? What steps can we take to share our learnings and experience in those fields?
What do we have to offer to them? Here are a few examples; focusing on particular modalities:
Cranial Sacral: We can add client somatic awareness and conscious participation in sessions
Feldenkrais: We can add Hookup and shared presencing between client and practitioner
Rolfing: We can add two-way proprioceptive interaction and other forms of client somatics
Reiki: We can add verbal interaction, client self-awareness, presencing, and client self-attunement
Palliative Care: We can add client participation, proprioceptive interaction, and shared presencing
Clinical Massage: Can add gentle touch and movement, somatic interaction, and client empowerment
Somatic Approaches: We can help clients shift from past memories, to self- authorship and presencing
Medical: We can add informed and empathic listening and touch; the client is a person not a specimen
PTs and OTs: Adding interactive touch, positional release, reflex response, client self-authorship
Post-Descartes: Shifting from mind-body dualism and mechanistic body paradigm to conscious being
Some Unique Trager Features: Body movement awareness, tensegrity, matching clients body rhythm, soft hands, presencing, less is more, no pain, feeling cues of resistance, improvisation, changing direction, weighing, positional releases, vary types of support and movement, reflex response, effecting mind change, promoting body-mind function rather than overwhelming the body, bolster client’s feeling awareness and retention, underwhelm resistance with subtlety rather than overwhelm with pressure …
Trager is Missing: verbal interaction, shared presencing, client authorship, formal intake, session notes, case reports, source books, links to Integrative Movements in science, medicine, and care, activating client somatic awareness, in-depth anatomy, physiology, and knowledge of other treatment modalities.
Questions to ponder: What have we already learned from the other modalities? What else can we learn from them? What have been our own developments? Milton always saw his sessions as treatments… how have we been limiting our own skills and credentialing to give treatments? How can we authentically join the Integrative Care Movement, which includes all forms of treatment? What are your challenges and goals to accomplish? What are your individual doubts and concerns as a practitioner?
Growing the Field of Bodywork: When I decided to become a professional bodyworker I was accepting insights and understandings of the human body and mind. Shared touch has tremendous effects for ameliorating human suffering and the growing personal consciousness. Where do we go from here?
Respectfully submitted to my caregiving colleagues. ©Jack Blackburn 2021