I have had the good fortune to give treatments and trainings in two different palliative care facilities in Japan. I have taught the staff how to work with presence and touch with dying patients as well as working with presence in support of one another. The biggest change for both patients and staff is the diminishment of fear. In both situations the receiver is interacting proprioceptively with the practitioner and becoming aware of his/her own influence on pain and tissue tonicity.
Bodyworkers are in a unique position to share end-times with patients because the body is a great communicator of sensory information. Because all sensory information is occurring in the present moment, when the patient is attuned to their own felt sense, there is a shift out of past-centered thinking into present-centered feeling. This allows the patient to enter a self-exploration guided by curiosity. The sharing of presence takes place between practitioner-palpation and patient-proprioception. Both can feel one another’s participation and both can feel the bodily changes that are occurring. This interaction can be accompanied by a verbal interaction which adds feedback to the mix. As each person becomes more articulate and entrained verbally, many physical changes correspond; especially the reduction of pain. The underpinnings for this approach include Thomas Hanna’s somatic awareness, Eugene Gendlin’s implicit philosophy, and Martin Buber’s I and Thou. “When someone is dying we can no longer fix them.” This opens the door to sharing sentience, beingness or life force together. The body is an opportune instrument for such sharing because it contains many systems of communication. With our personal consciousness we can train ourselves to feel and be informed by the presence that is implicit in every moment, NOW.