Hello and welcome to Yarrow and You Therapeutic Bodywork Blog! My name is Heather

and I have been a bodyworker for 13 years now. My office is in downtown Aurora, Oregon, not too far from Woodburn. I specialize in the therapeutic benefits of bodywork and massage. I primarily do Myofascial bodywork, Cupping, Polarity Therapy, and Craniosacral Therapy with a focus on allowing the nervous system to unwind… Oh and I love to use hot stones this time of year too!

I understand the body to be a valuable messenger…

letting us know when things in our broader life may not be lined up with our higher Self, or it sometimes tells us there are unprocessed emotions from the past. Those can show up as pain, illness, and even injury and they can be chronic conditions or something more acute. I think of bodywork as one way to talk to the messenger. The messenger is the body. The message itself can be something conscious, that we know is happening like, “My job is causing some stress these past couple weeks and every time I get stressed out my… shoulder, SI, little pinky toe, etc., flares up causing pain..”.or the message can be in the unconscious like, “I have been having this weird pain in my shoulder recently but I don’t know why, I didn’t do anything in particular to injure it…” These unexplained pains are what I find fascinating.

 To keep the client’s information confidential, I will use fictitious details about gender, body part, etc, in the following example, but the idea behind this story (and other similar stories I have experienced) is true. I had a person come in with a backache. He never really had this type of issue before, not in his back. It was completely debilitating, uncomfortable and foreign to his athletic nature. I asked him what might have spurred on the pain. Did he lift something heavy? Twist in an odd way? He said “No” but mentioned being really stressed about major areas of life- work, friends, and marriage. We proceeded with the bodywork session. He relaxed. I had him breathe in a couple of key areas where I was feeling tension in his body and did some myofascial and cupping.

As we wrapped up the session he told me he felt “relaxed, better”

and also that he knows now that he, “Just has to let go of a couple things.. Just make some decisions…” I mentioned that back issues can sometimes be that we are metaphorically/energetically “carrying too much burden/there is too much on our plate.” I saw him a few weeks later- He had absolutely no pain in his back– like it was never there. He also mentioned he had made a few big decisions in his life that were hard to make but that needed to be done. 

As a bodyworker of 13 years, I have seen this over and over and over again.

I know in my heart that the body and mind talk to each other and that sometimes, the unconscious things that we tend to shove to the bottom or try to forget about–the body always remembers. The body seems to be really good at storing it–somewhere–unless we process it. I find that processing it through the body has the most profound impact. Processing can be done through running, yoga, dance, yelling, punching a pillow, getting bodywork and many other things. But the good news is that the body is giving us messages- we just have to listen deeply.

Now, yes, sometimes there are legitimate reasons/accidents/injuries/illness/misalignments/etc, but I find it fascinating to see links between what is going on in our lives and what is going on in our bodies. I am not a psychologist, nor am I trained in practices like Somatic Experiencing or other psychosomatic modalities that you may want to look into. However, I do often ask clients to use their breath and imagination to visualize the place in their body where we are working. 

I’ve recently learned how to use more of my own imagination to bring healing to my own

wound/illness/pain from a book I am reading called The Imagination Matrix by Stephen Aizenstat. First, by using what he calls the Curious Mind, give it a name. Then, draw a picture of what it is doing to you. Then, describe how it is mechanically limiting you and, finally, how this is affecting your broader life. Then, by using your imagination and these factors to tell a sort of story, merging all of the factors. There is more to this process you could read about yourself, but it’s yet another way we can bring awareness–to “hear the message of what our body might be trying to convey.”

I love to learn about how the body works especially in connection to our mind and our own healing capabilites…I am also never surprised by how unique we all are and what we need to heal. There is no “one thing” that works for everyone…

Please let me know if you have any questions about my approach to bodywork! I’m open and look forward to hearing about yours. Hope to see you soon here in Aurora! Go ahead and Book some You time at Yarrow and You Therapeutic Bodywork.