Yin Tui Na

Hands-on therapy for traumatic injury

Dr. Janice Hadlock, DAOM, LAc

Artwork by John Bateson

Cover design by Ben Bateson
 Other books by Janice Hadlock, available at JaniceHadlock.com

Hacking Chinese Medicine

Tracking the Dragon: advanced channel theory
Stuck on Pause*
Recovery from Parkinson’s*
Medications of Parkinson’s: Once Upon a Pill*

* also available for free download at www.pdrecovery.org

Yin Tui Na: Hands-on therapy for traumatic injury

Copyright 2012, Janice Walton-Hadlock
Second edition (revised) 2018

Cover design by Ben Bateson.

Foot bone and arm artwork by John Bateson.

Published by Raja Books, Santa Cruz, California

ISBN 978-0-9979783-1-5

All rights reserved, including photocopy, e-copy, and translation.

Copyright includes text, artwork, photos, and cover design.
Permission to use these copyrighted materials must be obtained from Janice Walton-
Hadlock at pdinfo@cruzio.com.
 Table of contents

Chapter 1 Yin Tui Na p. 1

Chapter2 Dissociation p. 5
Chapter 3 About treating Parkinson’s disease p. 9
Chapter 4 Yin Tui Na: overview of techniques p. 15
Chapter 5 Turning off dissociation: medical Qi Gong p. 17
Chapter 6 Turning off self-induced dissociation p. 27
Chapter 7 FSR technique: setting your hands on the patient p. 33
Chapter 8 FSR technique: following the movement p. 43
Chapter 9 FSR technique: letting go p. 51
Chapter 10 FSR as a diagnostic tool p. 57
Chapter 11 Advanced FSR techniques p. 67
Chapter 12 Foot and Ankle work p. 73
Chapter 13 Testing the feet p. 101
Chapter 14 Shoulders and hips p. 107
Chapter 15 Head and spine p. 115
Chapter 16 Psoas muscle release p. 127
Chapter 17 Fun facts about Yin Tui Na p. 133
Chapter 18 Studying with the masters p. 139
Chapter 19 A proliferation of light-touch therapies p. 149
Chapter 20 When and where to perform Yin Tui Na: a review p. 155
Appendices
Appendix I Diagnosing dissociation and self-induced dissociation p. 169
Appendix II Diagnosing Pause p. 179
List of drawings and photos P. 197
About the author p. 198
 Dedicated to my teachers and to all students of Yin Tui Na and Qi Gong, with
special gratitude for the lessons of Sensei Shinzo Fujimaki and Dr. Lee Pu Long.
Chapter one

Yin Tui Na
In Chinese medicine, the term “Tui Na” refers to any hands-on therapeutic
technique. These techniques are divided into two types: Yang Tui Na and Yin Tui Na.
Yang Tui Na refers to forceful, overt hand movements such as the abrupt
manipulations used in popping a displaced shoulder back into position. Vigorous types of
physical therapy such as “bone-cracking” chiropractic and powerful, bruising “deep tissue”
therapies such as Rolfing fit under the heading of Yang Tui Na.
Yin Tui Na refers to any “light-touch” or subtle therapy that uses the hands. The
various gentle, slow, and/or “invisible” techniques, ranging from subtle chiropractic and
myofascial release to craniosacral therapy and Forceless Spontaneous Release (FSR)
therapy, are all forms of Yin Tui Na.
This book teaches Forceless, Spontaneous Release (FSR), one of the most firm, yet
least invasive, most motionless therapeutic techniques, as well as providing an introductory
version of craniosacral therapy and instructions on a very gentle technique for psoas spasm
release.
FSR is a subtle yet powerful way to help a patient address traumatic injuries or
pain. This book explains, in great detail, how to use FSR or craniosacral therapy on a person
with displaced or injured bones and/or soft tissue.
Sometimes, a person psychologically dissociates from a trauma, which can then
cause “failure to heal.” FSR brings a person’s attention to an injury in a non-threatening
manner, and thus is particularly well suited for treating injuries and traumas, recent or long-
standing, from which a person has dissociated.

Hey Ma!
Tui Na is pronounced “tway nah,” as if to rhyme with “Hey! Ma.”
“Tui Na” doesn’t translate easily into a specific English term. It is often translated,
inaccurately, as massage. A more accurate translation would be “any form of hands-on body
work.” Literally, Tui means push or shove, and Na means hold or take. 1, 2

1
The Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary. Commercial Press. Hong Kong. 1979. p.698
2
Although the title of the official Chinese government’s English translation of the official
Tui Na textbook is Chinese Massage, most of the techniques of Tui Na, both Yin and Yang types,
bear little or no relation to massage, as we understand massage in the west. See: Chinese Massage;
Publishing House of Shanghai College of Traditional Chinese Medicine; Shanghai; 1988.

1
A brief introduction to Forceless, Spontaneous Release
Forceless, Spontaneous Release technique is extremely “Yin”: firm but passive,
often motionless, with no “intention” on the part of the practitioner.
The technique consists of this: the patient’s unhealed injury or location of pain is
held firmly between the two hands of the therapist, which have been firmly placed on the
skin or the clothing in the vicinity of the injured or painful area, until the area responds with
some sort of spontaneous movement.
FSR is extremely easy to learn. A person does not need a medical background to
learn how to provide firm support to an injured area. A child can quickly learn how to do
FSR, and do it very, very well.
The two hands don’t do anything except hold, firmly, until such time as the
patient’s subconscious mind starts to feel safe enough to pay attention to the area being
held, at which point the patient’s injured or painful area starts to move on its own – often in
motions that suggest relaxation of tension or motions suggesting a delayed follow-through
and response to the original injury. During these movements, the therapist keeps his firm,
supportive hands (usually the palms) pressing on the patient’s skin or clothing, while
allowing his hands to be carried along by the spontaneous movements being made by the
patient.
That’s it.
Sounds too simple? It is simple. And yet, much of this book is spent explaining
what is meant in the above paragraph by terms like “firmly,” “don’t do anything,” “move on
its own,” and all the other terms and questions that arise when doing this extremely non-
invasive work on a person who has an injury or pain that is not healing quickly or who has
dissociated from an injury, thus preventing that injury from completely healing.
Another focus in this book is showing the actual hand positions that might be most
supportive to the patient while still being comfortable for the therapist.
Still another subject addressed in this book is techniques the patient can do to assist
and speed up the healing process and terminate the dissociation, if any.

Forceless, Spontaneous Release technique is a type of Yin Tui Na that is

particularly suited for the following types of injuries:
Injuries in which some body parts have been displaced, have tightened up and can’t
relax, or don’t seem to be healing on their own.
Injuries from which the patient has dissociated so that there might not be obvious
pain, but the area just doesn’t “work right.”
Injuries the patient doesn’t want anyone to touch or even look at.
Recent injuries that are causing pain.
Old injuries that might or might not be causing pain.

Bone medicine
Tui Na, historically, was referred to as “bone medicine.” “Bone medicine” in the
ancient Chinese tradition refers to both types of Tui Na, Yin (subtle) and Yang (overt).
These two types of Tui Na are used, among other purposes, for structural realignment work
on bones, tendons, ligaments, and fascia.

2
 Yang Tui Na is used in relatively “strong-arm” work such as the physical
repositioning of displaced, unbroken bones.
At the other end of the spectrum, Yin Tui Na can be used for painlessly supporting
broken bones and/or displaced soft tissue so that the micro muscle relaxes and the displaced
bones and /or tissues reposition themselves back into exquisitely correct alignment.
The Yin, or “light-touch” techniques in this book were also used historically for
setting broken bones. Supporting the site of a broken bone with Yin Tui Na can allow any
displacements of the broken parts to elegantly, cleanly re-set themselves. This often
immediately reduces the pain of the break as well as greatly speeding the knitting of the
bone.
These Yin techniques can be helpful and speed healing for almost any physical
injury or pain, whether new and painful or old and painless. Injuries ranging from
concussion or a broken toe to post-surgical pain or pain from a kidney stone that has gotten
stuck while passing can usually benefit from treatment with Yin Tui Na, speeding the
healing and/or relaxing the area that’s in pain.
In my many years as an acupuncturist, I’ve seen that most patients recover far faster
from their injuries or physical pains if some Yin Tui Na precedes the administration of
acupuncture. Very often, after the Yin Tui Na work is finished, the pain of the injury is
greatly reduced or gone and the “channel Qi” (electrical currents in the sub-dermal fascia
that give instructions to nearby tissues) has restored itself to its correct pathway –
eliminating the need for any acupuncture needles at all.

As an aside, some people assume that the term “Chinese bone medicine” refers to
the use of petrified bones in medicinal teas. This is incorrect. For certain medical
conditions, including calcium deficiency, fossilized bones (poetically referred to as “dragon
bones”) are ground up and boiled to make “tea” that provides calcium and other
biologically-bound trace minerals for patients deficient in these nutrients. This usage is
traditionally taught under the heading of “medicinal herbology and substances.” It is not
referred to as bone medicine.

FSR is a valuable and extremely simple medical tool, one that every acupuncturist –
and every person – should have in his repertoire.
Whether you are an acupuncturist, a hands-on therapist, or a support person for
someone with an unhealed, maybe even dissociated injury, I hope you will benefit from the
instructions in this book. Maybe you will share or write up your own experiences with Yin
Tui Na and even post them online. In this way, awareness of this ancient medicine can
continue to thrive and prosper.

3
4
Chapter two

Dissociation
Our bodies are designed to heal.
When a person has an injury or trauma that fails to fully heal, the problem stems
from inhibition of healing. When an insightful therapist or doctor is working on a patient, he
isn’t trying to heal the patient, per se. He’s trying to figure out why the person’s body isn’t
healing correctly, in the way the body is designed to heal from trauma or injury.
Very often, if the body doesn’t heal from some painful event, it’s because the mind
still feels stunned by the trauma or has mentally dissociated from the injury.
The basic definition of psychological dissociation is “compartmentalization away
from normal consciousness” of some unpleasant event, some body part, or some person or
memory. Another way to put this is “mentally blocking out unwanted information.”
This might mean that a person doesn’t remember an event, or isn’t able to feel the
actual pain of an event, or might not be able to imagine himself even having the body part
that was injured during the event.
The consequences of dissociation from some body part can range from having a
body part that’s clumsy or “gets banged all the time” or is frequently painful, or hot, cold,
stiff, or cramps easily “even though there’s nothing wrong.” The word “painful,” in the
above usage, includes any pathology, including painless situations such as lesions, tumors,
numbness, or being subject to fungal growth.

Temporary, short-term dissociation is normal

While a person is caught up in a traumatic event, it is perfectly normal for his brain
to temporarily put on hold any non-crucial details, including pain. For example, while
running from a lion, a person might not even notice that he has broken his leg. A person in
danger might be able to run for miles, appearing perfectly normal, even though a leg bone is
broken.
However, once the immediate danger is over, it is also normal and healthy for a
person to get himself to a “safe place” or “among friends that will care for me” and then
process any trauma that had been put on hold during the actual crisis.
Again, a person in the midst of a crisis might not feel pain or emotion at the time.
However, when the crisis or trauma has ended and he’s in a “safe place” and/or “among
friends,” it is normal and healthy for the person to self-assess. He will realize that he’s been
physically and/or emotionally hurt, feel his physical and/or emotional pain, and respond to
it, usually with touch or snug wrapping, or maybe even a good cry.
After this acknowledgement of the trauma by himself and/or by others, the injured
person’s fear can turn off. His innate healing capabilities can kick in.

5
 Temporary, “automatic” dissociation is a healthy response to an injury or traumatic
situation at the time of the crisis. Dropping everything in order to nurse the injury back to
health right there on the spot might not be wise, as in the above example of running from a
lion.
Even very young children can automatically dissociate.
For example, a young child who hurts himself while playing in his room might not
react right away. Instead, he might silently wander through the house looking for his mother
or father. When he finds a parent, he will burst into loud sobs and the injured area will
begin to throb with pain.
The child might then be wrongly accused of “putting on a show” to garner
sympathy. This would be an incorrect interpretation of events. A child innately knows to be
guarded and quiet, and to automatically dissociate from pain until he is in a safe place.
For another example, if my dog gets a thorn in her paw while we are out walking,
she will not limp or allow me to remove the thorn if another dog is in the area. As soon we
are alone or as we near home, she will start to limp again and allow me to remove the thorn.
An animal, after getting to a safe place, will steadily lick or groom the injured area.
Fellow animals might join in with the licking. Humans, after getting to a safe place, should
likewise put their focus on their injured areas.
The ability to automatically, temporarily, dissociate from pain is a normal ability. I
suspect most mammals have this ability. (The possum does not. He automatically goes into
the immobility of pause mode – the neurological mode of severe shock or coma.) The
ability to automatically dissociate from the pain of an injury until one gets to a safe place is
a very helpful survival tool.
For that matter, dissociation isn’t necessarily a response to a bad thing.
A healthy person should be able to temporarily dissociate from his surroundings, as
needed, in order to focus. The more focused and calm a person is able to be, the more likely
he will be able to dissociate from distractions and focus his attention.
For an example of healthy dissociation, a person who is deep in a book or
meditating deeply might not hear the phone ring. A person playing a musical instrument or
doing some creative craft might not notice the passage of time. He might miss a meal or two
and not notice until he changes his focus. These are just a few examples of healthy
dissociation.
In my decades of experience working with injuries and movement disorders, I’ve
noticed that the greater degree of self-control, analytical thinking, and word-based
engagement with life that a person has, the more likely it is that the person will be able to
stay undistracted and even dissociate from sensory distractions while focusing on his
preferred subject.
Unfortunately, such a person is also more capable of staying mentally dissociated
from negative experiences and body parts, thus potentially making it difficult to fully heal
from trauma.

Self-induced dissociation
Some people make a conscious decision to dissociate.
For example, a patient of mine told me that fifteen years earlier, when he was in
college, he had been angry at his knee because his constant knee pain from an injury was

6
keeping him from playing sports. He commanded himself repeatedly over several days to
not feel his knee pain.
His command was successful. Fifteen years later, he was in my office with a weak
ankle, numb foot, and a knee that kept freezing up on him. In response to my questions, he
remembered his college-days instruction to his knees. I did Yin Tui Na on his knees while
he worked at consciously rescinding his instructions to his own brain – doing one of the
mental Qi Gong exercises in this book.
I refer to this type of dissociation as “self-induced” dissociation.
A person has to work a little harder to destroy a long-implanted self-instruction. It’s
do-able. Instructions on how to do this are included in chapter six.

Whether a person with a lingering dissociation had a spontaneous, automatic

response to a trauma but just never got around to addressing it at a safe time or is using
self-induced dissociation as a coping mechanism, like the above patient with the knee pain,
the results are the same: the brain will inhibit the person from having access to some or all
of the memories or body parts associated with the trauma…until the dissociation is turned
off. If some part of the body were physically injured, displaced, or even broken, those
dissociated body parts might not be able to fully heal.
Once the brain gets involved in trying to hide things away from normal
consciousness, infinite variations are possible. Dissociation is a very personalized brain
process – no two people will necessarily dissociate from a negative experience in the same
way, if they even dissociate at all.
Sometimes a person is never able to process his dissociated physical and emotional
pains on his own. He might never arrive at a metaphorical “safe place” or feel “among
trusted friends.” In this case, the trauma and injury may stay in place indefinitely. The
person has become “stuck.”
If a person gets stuck in automatic dissociation or gives himself a dissociation
instruction (self-induced dissociation) and never rescinds the instruction, thereby preventing
his own ability to heal, then he might, down the road, develop some some physical problem
“for no reason,” a problem that doesn’t heal in spite of treatment or therapy.
The Yin Tui Na technique called Forceless, Spontaneous Release (FSR), can help
terminate a dissociation: help a person become unstuck.

As an aside, the word dissociation has many meanings. Other meanings include
separating oneself from a given individual, community, or religious group. Yet another
meaning is the shift in perception that occurs when a person is in a coma or severe traumatic
shock (the neurological mode of pause) so that his consciousness perceives itself as being
located outside of his body.
For example, many a person has reported to his doctor after his heart surgery that
he watched the whole procedure from the ceiling. He can describe in perfect detail what
was done and said during the surgery. Unfortunately, from a semantics point of view,
doctors refer to this out-of-body behavior as “dissociation,” thus giving us two very
different medical meanings for the word “dissociation.”
In this book, the meaning of “dissociation” is the usage I’ve first described:
compartmentalization away from normal consciousness of some event or body part.

7
8
Chapter three

About treating Parkinson’s disease

Some people use this book in order to apply light-touch therapy across a wide
spectrum of health concerns. However, some people seek out this book in order to learn the
very specific applications for treating someone with Parkinson’s disease. This very short
chapter is addressed to the latter group, the people planning to work with someone with
Parkinson’s. A few paragraphs specifically focused on working with patients with
Parkinson’s are also included in many chapters.
If you never intend to work with anyone with Parkinson’s, you can skip this chapter
altogether.

First, Parkinson’s disease has a very high rate of misdiagnosis. Brain autopsies
show that over thirty percent of people diagnosed with Parkinson’s never actually had it. If
you have not yet read Recovery from Parkinson’s, please do read that book, available for
free download at www.pdrecovery.org. Please read the chapters on diagnosing Parkinson’s,
and confirm or contradict the diagnosis, before starting to work on healing yourself or a
loved one.
Parkinson’s disease is also known as “idiopathic” Parkinson’s. Idiopathic means
“unknown cause.” Or you might just call idiopathic Parkinson’s the “normal” type of
Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s disease is a syndrome, meaning a collection of symptoms. The
name of the syndrome does not suggest a single or specific cause.
Some people are diagnosed with syndromes referred to as drug- or toxin-induced
parkinsonism. In terms of the underlying cause, parkinsonism is very different from
idiopathic Parkinson’s. They are completely different syndromes even though they might
have some very similar looking symptoms. The book Recovery from Parkinson’s has
information to help a person determine which syndrome he is probably dealing with.
Most MDs never bother to distinguish between the underlying causes for
Parkinson’s disease and parkinsonism. They aren’t taught how to distinguish them. Since all
symptoms even remotely resembling those of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease are
automatically – and incorrectly – presumed to be “incurable,” there is no reason for an MD
to distinguish between the similarly named syndromes.
Second, if you are able to determine that you do in fact have “normal,” or
“idiopathic” Parkinson’s disease, you will next need to determine which of two possible
causes is responsible for your own syndrome of idiopathic Parkinson’s: dissociation or
being stuck in pause mode (the neurological mode of severe shock or coma). Then, you
must use the appropriate treatment for that cause.
You will have to figure out on your own what it is you’ve actually got. Western
doctors are not trained to do this. Neither are acupuncturists. At least not yet. The book
Recovery from Parkinson’s can help you. It’s really not too difficult.

9
Type 1 Foot injury dissociation: five percent of people with Parkinson’s
Yin Tui Na, especially the technique known as Forceless, Spontaneous Release, can
be the best treatment modality for treating Parkinson’s due to dissociation from an injury.
In nearly five percent of the hundreds people I’ve treated for Parkinson’s, using
FSR to help the patient mentally re-associate with the injured body part so that his body
spontaneously begins the long-suspended work of healing it, this therapy, together with the
patient’s mental exercises, has been enough to turn off the dissociation and trigger the
healing of the injury. This, in turn, turns off the weird sub-dermal electrical schematics that
cause the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
In these cases, the person very often told himself, maybe in childhood, something
along the lines of “I don’t want to feel my injured foot,” “Pretend this foot injury didn’t
happen,” or even, “I don’t have a foot.” This mental instruction causes self-induced
dissociation.
The key point to notice in the above is that the instruction is very specific, and
relates only to the injury or the part of the body that was injured.
This type of self-instruction can cause the person’s brain to dissociate from the
injury, mentally walling off self-awareness of the foot or the injury, as if the injury never
happened or the foot doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, if the injury “never happened” or the
body part “doesn’t exist,” the body cannot initiate healing of the injury.
Over many decades, the electrical errors in the vicinity of a foot or ankle injury can
snowball, eventually leading to errors in the electrical schematics of the whole body. This
can culminate in the electrical currents starting to flow in the somewhat bizarre schematics
that are supposed to flow during coma or severe traumatic shock – schematics that, over the
long-term (usually decades), can also cause the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
In my own experience working with people with Parkinson’s, I’ve had only a very
few patients who had basic dissociation, as opposed to self-induced dissociation. A person
who has become stuck in basic dissociation has naturally and normally dissociated during a
trauma, but he never got around to turning off the dissociation. He became “stuck” in
dissociation.
In these rare cases, the person did not give a self-instruction to dissociate. This
situation will be discussed more, later.
This book provides instruction for treating both of these types of Parkinson’s
disease: Parkinson’s from either basic (or you might say “automatic”) dissociation or from
self-induced dissociation.

Type 2 Stuck on pause: most people with Parkinson’s

Based on the numbers I’ve seen in my own practice, most people with idiopathic
Parkinson’s, nearly ninety-five percent of my Parkinson’s patients, had symptoms that were
not due to basic or self-induced dissociation from an unhealed foot or ankle injury.
Most people with Parkinson’s, in my experience, maintain the electrical schematics
of Parkinson’s disease by using the neurological mode of pause.
“Pause” mode is the name I use for the electrical and physiological behaviors that,
ordinarily, only kick in during coma or near-death.

10
 Most people with Parkinson’s have taught themselves, usually in childhood, to use
the neurological mode of pause in order to disconnect themselves from (very often
terrifying) physical or emotional pain.
Turning off the long-established, mentally-induced neurological mode of pause is
the most effective treatment modality for these people: for most people with Parkinson’s.
Yin Tui Na might not help people with this type of Parkinson’s and might even worsen their
symptoms.
The majority of my patients with Parkinson’s gave themselves self-directed
instructions, usually in childhood, to “feel no pain,” “play dead,” or some similar self-
numbing, self-protection instruction. Often, the instruction was understood to include
emotional pain as well as physical pain. This body-wide type of instruction appears to be
met with a very different brain response than the simple dissociation that can occur when a
person denies a specific event or body part.
The more-generalized, body-wide instruction to “feel no pain,” if given forcefully
enough and with grim determination, can allow the person to mentally dissociate from the
whole body, very often causing a person to perceive himself as if outside his body, along
with instituting other near-death electrical patterns and mental behaviors such as excessive
risk assessment and feeling “apart from others.” After many decades of using self-induced
pause, the sub-dermal electrical schematics of pause can lead to the symptoms of
Parkinson’s disease.
If a body-wide “feel no pain” instruction was issued and never rescinded, causing
the person to become stuck on pause, a person with Parkinson’s from pause mode who
plans to recover will need to first turn off this instruction, whether or not he also happens to
have an unhealed or incompletely healed foot injury.

Pause
I gave this near-death neurological mode the name “pause.” This mode is not
recognized by western medicine theory. It is recognized in ancient Chinese writings, where
it is referred to as “Cling to life.”1
Since ancient times, Asian medicine has recognized that there are four neurological
modes: parasympathetic; sympathetic; sleep; and pause. Western medicine only recognizes
two: parasympathetic and sympathetic. Western medicine considers the low heart rate, low
breathing rate, and immobility of coma to be an extreme variant of “fight or flight” mode.
This makes no sense in terms of spinal nerve and neurotransmitter behaviors, and of
course doesn’t consider the extremely different sub-dermal electrical schematics of the
modes. Western medicine is only very recently beginning to look at these currents, usually
in the research of people who study sub-dermal fascia.

1
A Complete Translation of the Yellow Emperor’s Classics of Internal Medicine and the
Difficult Classic;; Henry Lu, PhD; International College of Traditional Chinese Medicine;
Vancouver, BC, Canada; 2004; Su Wen, chapter 13-9.
“Change of colors [Qi Se] allow for the pulses [changes] of the four phases [modes] that
allow a person to be close to the Divine [parasympathetic mode], run from danger [sympathetic
mode], [sleep mode], or cling to life [pause].”

11
 The Chinese medical system’s recognition of four neurological modes provides
answers to many biological and neurological questions about sleep and pre-death / coma
behaviors, and includes the fact that four very different, easy to distinguish sets of
subdermal electrical schematics are the drivers for the four modes.1
Pause mode is most often used very short-term, in cases of coma, life-threatening
injury, or life-threatening shock. As soon as the person has stabilized enough to come back
to full alertness, the person might tremor, briefly, and then should automatically, without
thinking, execute a series of very quick mental assessments and quick physical movements
that turn off pause.
Most of my patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s have lived in pause mode since
childhood.

When a person who has Parkinson’s from using pause mode successfully turns off
his instruction to use pause mode, then, and only then, if he does have foot or other injuries,
should he receive FSR or craniosacral therapies to address any injuries that haven’t yet
healed.
Then again, after turning off pause, treatment of the foot injury(s) might no longer
be necessary. Often, as soon as the person turns off the use of pause mode, any decades-old
unhealed, dormant injury(s) often become physically obvious: painful, even appearing to be
newly bruised or swollen. The mind is then able to recognize that these injuries want
healing, and they quickly heal on their own, as they should. Often, no additional treatment
is necessary. Sometimes, additional injuries do want attention, in which case, FSR is usually
the best way to address any remaining injuries.
This book does not provide instruction for turning off pause or self-induced pause.
The instructions for turning off a long-held mental command to “feel no pain” or “rise
above pain” are provided in Stuck on Pause, available for free download at
www.pdrecovery.org.

Although nearly everyone with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease has one or more
unhealed foot injuries, the injury(s) might not be causative.
As mentioned earlier, in a person who is merely dissociated from a foot injury,
whether basic dissociation or self-induced dissociation, that dissociated foot injury might
very likely be the cause of his Parkinson’s symptoms.
However, if a person has Parkinson’s because he is using pause mode (usually
consciously induced so as to block physical and/or emotional pain), that usage is what
causing his idiopathic Parkinson’s.

1
Most acupuncturists are never taught about the four modes, or even about the constantly
fluctuating, minute-by-minute changes in the flow patterns of channel Qi in response to thought,
activity, and environment. Although this information has been passed along for over fifteen hundred
years in the classic literature, it is not currently taught in schools of Chinese medicine, and has not
been taught for over half a century. This is due, in large part, to the modern Chinese government
making the concepts of channel Qi and channel theory illegal.
This subject is addressed more fully in my book Hacking Chinese Medicine, available at
www.JaniceHadlock.com.

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 Most people with Parkinson’s are stuck on pause and also happen to have one or
more unhealed injuries.
A person on pause often does not heal from injuries other than experiencing the
crudest forms of healing, such as stopping bleeding and making scars. Truly elegant and
complete physical and emotional healing of displaced and damaged tissues is rarely
performed if the brain is using pause mode, a mode that is supposed to be used when one is
teetering on the brink of imminent death.
A person who is stuck on pause may well have an unhealed foot injury: nearly
everyone injures or bangs his feet at one time or another. But a person who has commanded
himself to “feel no pain” who then hurts his foot might never be able to heal from, or even
fully feel, his foot injury(s) because he’s already on pause: unable to fully process or maybe
even acknowledge any problem that is not a life-or-death issue.
By the time a person who is using pause mode is diagnosed with Parkinson’s
disease, he might have a collection of unhealed foot injuries, but they might not be the
underlying cause of his Parkinson’s disease. His use of pause mode is the underlying cause.

Warning
If a person pursuing recovery from Parkinson’s is using the mental behaviors of
pause mode, he should first turn off the mental instruction that is keeping him on pause.
If a person who is stuck on pause receives Yin Tui Na treatment for his foot injury
and the foot recovers before he has successfully turned off pause, the person may find
himself in partial recovery and far worse off than before.
He may behave as if his brain is still using pause for most of his body but his brain
also has the conflicting information that some part(s) of his body, the location(s) of one or
more of his recently healed injuries, are loved, safe, and healed…even though the rest of
him is still trying to obey the mental command to pretend to be at body-wide risk of
imminent death.
This mixed mental state can lead to extreme emotional confusion and wariness, and
extreme over-reaction in response to unexpected negative stimuli, including one’s own
negative thoughts. This mixed mental state can manifest in periods of feeling safe,
accompanied by effortless, even giddy movement interrupted by periods of extreme, hyper-
paralyzing symptoms of Parkinson’s, much worse than the symptoms prior to healing the
injury(s): new symptoms that might last for days in response to a passing negative thought
or an event that activates anxiety.
This condition, one in which a person is still using pause mode most of the time
despite having healed from one or more long-time physical injuries, I have named “partial
recovery.”
This condition is “partial” in the sense that one or more injuries have begun to heal,
but the mind is more confused: at times behaving normally, with no symptoms of
Parkinson’s, and at other times even more horribly immobilized, and mentally clinging to
pause even more desperately than before.
Because of the confusion, most people respond to partial recovery over time by
becoming more fearful, and thus more entrenched in pause than before. People in partial
recovery often create an “extra personality” or “inner voice,” which I have named “the
blocker.” The “blocker” is a dominating, internal voice that constantly warns a person to

13
never turn off the “protection” of pause. The presence of the blocker makes turning off
pause extremely difficult. This subject is addressed in great detail in Stuck on Pause.
Please note: these weird responses are not related to the use of the psychoactive
antiparkinson’s medications. I will not work with any person who has ever taken dopamine-
enhancing antiparkinson’s medications for a period longer than three weeks. I do not
recommend making an attempt at recovery for a person who has used antiparkinson’s
medications for more than a few weeks.
For more on this subject, please read the medications warnings at
www.pdrecovery.org and/or read Medications of Parkinson’s: Once Upon a Pill, available
for free download at the same web address.
The two appendices at the back of the book can help you assess whether you are
merely dissociated, have self-induced dissociation, are stuck on pause, or are using self-
induced pause.
If you, the patient, are merely using psychological dissociation from an injury or
body part, the Yin Tui Na techniques in this book will be appropriate.
If you are stuck on pause or using self-induced pause, you will be better served by
using the techniques in the book Stuck on Pause. You will be better off not using the
techniques in this book until after you have turned off pause.
Then, after you have successfully turned off pause, then you might safely benefit
from having someone use the FSR techniques in this book to address your foot injuries or
other unhealed injuries, if any.
I repeat, premature use of FSR or any other type of Yin Tui Na on a person with
pause-induced Parkinson’s disease might lead to the mental confusion that accompanies
partial recovery and even the creation or strengthening of a blocker personality.
I do appreciate that this abrupt introduction of something so weird as an internal
voice or “extra personality” may be extremely off-putting to a skeptical reader. However, I
have seen this many, many times and have written about it extensively in the book Stuck on
Pause.
The phrases “extra personality,” “someone in my head, ” and many others are terms
that some of my patients have used in trying to describe the “voice” or “the devil” that’s
“inside my head.” “The voice is telling me not to listen to anyone who will take away my
protections” or “telling me it’s not safe to let go of my protections or even listen to any
person who wants to help me change how I think and behave.”
This “voice” usually appears in response to doing therapeutical work such as FSR
on injuries prior to turning off pause.
It can be much, much harder to turn off pause if a blocker personality has been
activated.
Please, do not use Yin Tui Na therapy on a person with Parkinson’s disease who is
using pause mode.
Again, the appendices can help you assess whether a person is merely dissociated,
have self-induced dissociation, are stuck on pause, or are using self-induced pause.
Also, redundantly, before working with a patient with Parkinson’s, please read the
warning about attempting to recover after having used dopamine-enhancing medications for
more than three weeks. This medications warning is posted on the website of the
Parkinson’s Recovery Project: www.pdrecovery.org.

14
Chapter four

Yin Tui Na: overview of techniques

1) The first therapeutic techniques discussed in this book are the mental therapies
that the patient can perform by himself. This can be done while receiving physical Yin Tui
Na treatments or during one’s spare time.
Techniques of mental medical Qi Gong can help the patient in re-associating with a
dissociated body part, greatly accelerating healing. “Qi Gong” literally means “energy
control.” Mental medical Qi Gong is the general name for healing protocols that encourage
or destroy certain thought patterns. For example, the widely practiced, extremely helpful
modern technique of “cognitive behavioral therapy” can be considered, in Chinese
medicine, a type of mental medical Qi Gong.
Qi Gong techniques that can help eliminate a dissociation pattern in the brain are
taught in chapters five and six.

2) The second technique discussed in this book, Forceless, Spontaneous Release, or

FSR, instructs in a certain tempo of treatment (slow), amount of pressure applied with one’s
hands (firm), and the lack of intention that the practitioner brings to the treatment. The
physical and emotional support provided by this technique can bring a patient’s attention to
an injured area so that healing can begin.
The comforting effect of “firm but passive” is similar to the deeply soothing
comfort given to an infant by firm, tight swaddling.
This technique does not apply particular vectors, force in specific directions of
movement, to the patient. However, corrective movement in twisted or displaced tissues
often occurs, spontaneously, as the patient responds to the firm support.
This technique can also be used diagnostically, to detect injuries and pathological
holding patterns in the body.
FSR can be performed anywhere on the body that has unhealed injuries. In people
with Parkinson’s from dissociation, the legs, feet, and ankles are areas that nearly always
call out for treatment, but there may be other injured areas, as well.

3) The third technique discussed uses extremely gentle nudges to suggest

directional movements in muscles that have become stuck in a particular holding pattern.
This technique of gentle nudges can be used in almost any body part that has
become locked up. This book has examples of this technique, including examples for
rotational joints of the hips and shoulders. This particular technique of “gentle nudging”
does not have a name. It uses the tempo and support principles of FSR, but has intentional
movement.

15
 4) The fourth technique, craniosacral therapy, is a method for restoring and/or
improving the flow of cerebrospinal fluid via correcting displaced cranial and spinal bones
or turning off micro-muscle holding patterns in the joints of these bones. To assist in
healthy movement of cerebrospinal fluid, gentle, directional pressures are applied at the
various cranial and spinal joint articulations. (An articulation is a meeting point between
bones that move.) The vectors for the induced movements at these articulations are highly
specific, and are aimed at maximizing the openness of these joints.
This book describes the hand positions and some of the possible vector directions
most commonly used in craniosacral therapy.
When treating craniosacral injuries from which a person has become dissociated,
you should not use the tempo, amount of pressure, or the degree of intention that is typically
taught in craniosacral protocols. Instead, in these patients, the very specific hand placements
of craniosacral therapy are best combined with the FSR tempo, degree of hand pressure, and
a lack of direction and intention.
Instead of the usual craniosacral therapy directional forces, a very firm but much
more passive approach is used while gaining the trust of a brain that’s been automatically
dissociated from a trauma or that has been consciously instructed to dissociate.
Many health practitioners consider the directional nudging used in most styles of
craniosacral therapy to be extremely minimal and non-invasive. However, even this very
small amount of forced movement is often perceived as manipulative and threatening by
many people who are dissociated, on pause, or who have Parkinson’s. Using FSR
guidelines while using the various craniosacral hand positions is much less invasive than
traditional craniosacral work and much more likely to lead to re-association with the
restricted area (if dissociated), and/or the release of tension in a post-injury holding pattern.

5) The fifth technique in this book instructs in an extremely gentle, or “Yin”

technique for releasing psoas muscle spasms – a spasm that is not uncommon in people with
conditions ranging from ear ringing or back pain to Parkinson’s disease.
Many techniques have been developed for releasing psoas muscle spasms. Some of
them are quite forceful. The very Yin method of psoas release taught herein, which people
can do on themselves, is very soothing. Unlike the painful, forceful, and even brutal
methods for forcing the release of a psoas spasm, this gentle approach is simple and
painless.

6) In the appendix are two chapters lifted from the book Stuck on Pause to help you
determine whether you are using dissociation or pause. Before starting to use the Yin Tui
Na techniques in this book, please read about and perform the diagnostic tests in the
appendix.
If you determine that you are dissociated and, for people with Parkinson’s, that you
are not stuck on pause, feel free to jump into the next chapter to start work on turning off
the dissociation.

16
Chapter five

Turning off dissociation: medical Qi Gong

Yin Tui Na therapy can promote healing and can help turn off dissociation. Turning
off dissociation can be greatly accelerated if the patient does certain mental techniques
during his Yin Tui Na treatment or at any other time. In the field of Chinese medicine, this
type of mind-work is referred to as mental medical Qi Gong.
This chapter will teach the mental exercises a person can do to help turn off
dissociation. The chapter after this one teaches the exercises for turning off self-induced
dissociation.
By the way, not everyone with an injury has necessarily dissociated from it or is
stuck on pause. Please visit the appendices to determine if you have dissociated from an
injury.
Think of dissociation as an instruction in your mind that forbids you having access
to some particular bit of brain information, information that has been stored in your brain’s
“Events Memory” area and/or your “Somatic Awareness of Body Parts” area. The
information is there, but it’s been sealed off.
The goal in turning off dissociation is to destroy or re-route the brain cell (neuron)
“walls” or “bypasses” that your brain constructed to block off these areas. The information
is still in there. It’s just walled off. If you like, you can imagine that a brain cell has been
instructed to serve as a moat around the negative memory, making it inaccessible. The
techniques in this chapter will explain how to destroy that “wall” or “moat” or whatever
visual image or story line you’ve created in order to block access. You have the right to
regain access to your own mental history.

The light and energy technique

Lie down and relax.
If you already jumped ahead to the appendix to determine whether you are using
dissociation or pause, you will already know that, when visualizing injured areas in your
own body, the areas that are imagined to be dark and motionless are dissociated and those
that appear dark and agitated are stuck on pause.
If you haven’t already read the appendix, take a moment right now to read the
material on pages 169 to 171, the basic introduction to making a diagnosis of dissociation.
That material will explain what’s meant by “looking around inside” and “easier to imagine
as light or dark.”
After you’ve read this material, you will start the light and energy technique by
doing the same type of diagnostic exercises that is explained in Appendix I: Diagnosing
dissociation.

17
 You will mentally explore inside your body, noticing if various areas are easier to
imagine as dark or as filled with light.
As with the diagnostic exercises in that appendix, start with light in your nose, and
then move on to other areas until you are ready to home in on the problem area. The
problem area, as you have probably already noticed while making a diagnosis of
dissociation, is dark and heavy, or dark and immobilized: not moving. It might also be so
dark and immobile that it’s impossible to imagine.
Gaze at this most-dark area inside your body: at the area that is dark, cloudy, gray
or even “non-existent.”
Focus on the very center of this area: the area that is darkest, least visible or that
you least want to look at or are least able to look at.
When you’ve found the “darkest” spot, that’s the area you want to work on.
Imagine a small dot of bright, white, laser light right in the very center of the area that your
brain doesn’t want you to access. Hold this light for a count of ten. Then relax and let the
light turn off.
The light should be small: smaller than a lentil, bigger than the head of a pin, if
possible. If all you can get is a fleeting spark, fine. Start with that.
If possible, in addition to the bright light, you may also send a tiny bit of muscle
tone to the area. Not enough muscle tone to actually tighten or clench a muscle, but just
enough to make your brain think a bit about increasing energy to the area. This can make
the re-connection go faster.
However, if you have some emotional reluctance to imagining a few milliwatts of
energy going to this area, then don’t do it. In general, if there is pain in the area, only send a
small amount of energy. The greater the amount of physical pain, the less physical energy
you want to send to the area. If the area is in a lot of pain, as it might be if you have just
broken a bone, don’t send muscle-tightening energy. Just send light.

Only the very center

Do not send light or muscle tension to the entire area or the periphery. Just send it
to the very center of the dissociated area. Isolating the core of the problem area will force
your brain to grudgingly allow access to the exact spot it is trying to avoid.
Next, you will repeat, nine more times, the technique of “bright light and maybe
muscle tone to a count of ten.”
You already did one set of ten. When you complete nine more sets, you’ll have
done ten sets. Ten sets, each one to a count of ten. A total of one hundred counts.

After your first attempt to hold light for a count of ten, but before jumping in and
doing the remaining nine sets, first take a moment to talk to your brain.
You might want to silently say thank you to your brain for having protected you
from awareness of pain, as requested at some time in the past.
Then tell your mind, “Now it’s time to end that. I’m safe now. I’m going to re-
connect with the areas that are dissociated.”
Be firm but loving and understanding. Your brain might not trust that you are
sincere or that you are safe, at first, or it might be reluctant to abandon old habits. This isn’t
a “bad” thing. This is just how brains and habits work.

18
 After having established that you are, in fact, going to re-connect with the
dissociated area, repeat the “white light, hold for a count of ten, maybe use slight muscle
tone in the exact center of the area – and none in the perpiphery,” nine more times.
That’s it. That’s the technique.

When you are finished with ten sets, mentally look around inside and see if the dark
area is changing: getting darker, lighter, becoming even more motionless, changing to
agitated, or feeling more lively or “connected” to the rest of your body.
If it is still dark and immobile, do this technique again, maybe two or three more
times.
If it is still dark but now, in your imagination or visualization, the area appears to be
microscopically trembling or visibly agitated in any way (as opposed to locked down and
immobilized, or happily connected), you may well have exposed (opened the curtains of
awareness in) an area that is in shock. Very likely, in the past, you dissociated from the
signals telling you that you were in shock but those agitated on-pause signals are still there,
running in the background. Now that the dissociation is gone, the agitated pause-mode
behaviors (from shock) are exposed.
If this is the case, you will want do the steps for turning off pause. These are
explained in the book Stuck on Pause.1
It is not uncommon for an area that presents as dark and immobile (dissociated) to
be masking an area that is dark agitated (on pause). It is also not uncommon to see the
opposite: an agitated area that, when the agitation is turned off, becomes dark and
immobile.
Treat whatever situation is presenting at the moment.
If the presentation changes, then treat the new presentation. These multiple layers
of self-protection barriers can develop when a person either dissociates from an area that’s
already stuck in shock (stuck on pause) or the reverse: he has dissociated from some area
that subsequently is violently traumatized and gets stuck on pause – but he can’t come out
of shock because the area is inaccessible to his mind from having previously dissociated.
A person who uses his brain instead of his somatic awareness to deal with injury
and trauma can build multiple layers of denial. Again, treat whatever situation, either
dissociation or pause, that is presenting at the moment.

Self-induced dissociation
If the darkness is lighter for a short duration after doing the light and energy
technique but gets dark again or the dark area starts moving around and/or acting evasive,
you most likely will need to follow the instructions in the next chapter for turning off self-
induced dissociation.
If, after ten sets (one “session”), or maybe a few more sessions, the dark area gets
lighter and stays lighter, and is still lighter the next day, congratulate yourself and maybe
blow the previously dark area a mental kiss.

1
Available for free download at www.pdrecovery.org, in the Publications section. It is also
available at www.JaniceHadlock.com.

19
 You only need to do a re-association technique until the area is easier to imagine
being light and full of life instead of dark and immobile. Once the area is consistently light
and feels as if it’s a part of you, you don’t need to do this anymore.

Watch out for the detour

Very often, the brain will not want to comply with the light and energy technique.
After all, you once told yourself that you aren’t safe yet or you made some other self-
protection comment that caused your brain to stay dissociated from the trauma.
While you are trying to do ten sets of this exercise, your thoughts might suddenly
wander. You may find yourself silently saying something like, “What’s for dinner tonight?”
or “What should I wear tomorrow?”
This self-distraction ploy is extremely common. I would guess that around ninety
percent of my patients have experienced it.
If you notice your brain trying to distract you from the job at hand, just lovingly
refocus back into what you are doing: a small spot of bright light, hold it for a count of ten.
Repeat.
After all, who’s in charge here? Your conscious mind or your stodgy brain habits?
With increased determination, love, and compassion for yourself, finish your ten sets of
counting to ten.
The brain’s attempt at a mental detour usually occurs around the 5th, 6th, or 7th set,
right around the time that you are about to successfully modify your brain’s neural
behavior. However, it can occur at any point in the process. Don’t be angry with your brain.
It’s trying to comply with what it thinks you want, based on your days, weeks, or years of
the dissociation habit.

I can’t do this
If you can’t imagine even this small amount of light, just do the best you can.
If you can only imagine colored light, fine. Keep at it, and you will soon enough be
able to imagine white light.
If the light flickers or comes and goes, fine. Stick with it.
Do not worry about making it perfect in the beginning. You are changing a long-
term habit. It may take several repeats of the technique or even several attempts spread out
over a few hours or several days. Don’t be obsessively worried about it. If what you have is
simple, automatic dissociation that was never turned off, the brain will change fairly soon in
response to this technique.
Do this technique with loving understanding, maybe even with a sense of humor.
Don’t do it with grim determination.

If the problem doesn’t resolve or keeps returning

The very nature of the brain is to be obedient to your instructions. If you stick to
your new intention, your brain will rally round and make the re-connection changes you
desire if it is allowed to, according to the laws of biology and psychology.
If your brain doesn’t make lasting change in response to the light and energy
technique, you are probably using self-induced dissociation, which requires a different
treatment technique – one described in the next chapter.

20
 If the dark area(s) change locations, or are restored to “light” and “alive,” but
resume darkness and immobility sometime later, or have some new weird and unhealthy
presentation in a few minutes or in an hour or so, or in a few days, you may have self-
induced dissociation. You may have consciously commanded yourself to not ever feel or be
aware of that body part or event.
You will need to destroy the brain instruction instead of just re-connecting with the
inaccessible area.
Again, redundantly, if this is the case, you will want to use the technique discussed
in the next chapter.

My introduction to focusing on pain

Back in my undergraduate college days, I banged my head on an open kitchen
cabinet door and yelped. I caught my breath and told my concerned housemate, “Don’t
worry, I’ll just distract myself. If I think of something else, I won’t feel the pain.”
She drawled, “You know, In China, they focus on the area when it gets hurt. They
don’t try to avoid it.”
This was before president Nixon’s famous visit to China in 1972. For decades prior
to this visit, China had been a locked box to Americans. For Americans, anything having to
do with China was cloaked in mystery. One could say anything about China and have some
number of believers.
I snapped back, “Well that’s just stupid! Why would anyone want to make the pain
worse?”
I didn’t know then that pain from injury is usually just a message to the brain
saying, “Hey, we might have a problem here. Will you take a look at it?”
If the mind responds by calmly observing the painful area, the pain level quickly
drops. And if the observation is followed up by sending energy and love into the injured
area, the area can heal much faster than if it is ignored or denied.
Filling an injured area with light and/or power is an ancient, eastern way of quickly
activating healing and reducing pain in an injury. The light and energy technique is an ideal
way for immediately dealing with injuries. It is the opposite of dissociating from them and
waiting for a more convenient time to do your healing, if ever. 1

Yet another method: installing a beloved

Another ancient and elegant technique for dealing with an injury is imagining
someone – any inspirational figure who is trusted and loved – being miniaturized and
allowed into the injury site. Once there, he/she/it stays there, filling the area with warmth
and light. You can talk to the figure or just gaze at it. The more you engage with the
beloved figure that is sitting there sweetly in the middle of the injury area, the faster the
injury will heal.

1
I learned this yogic “light and energy, count to ten” technique, which is also a form of
medical Qi Gong if you prefer to think in terms of Chinese rather than yogic protocols, in the late
1980s, from materials written by Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952). I do not recall the title of the
book or article that shared this information.

21
 The beloved does not serve as protection against the problem area. Just the
opposite. He/she serves as your guide into the problem area. You give permission for your
loved one to fill the area with warmth, light, and love and you pay attention to him/her.
Because you love being with and communicating with your friend, you are happy to
watch/feel energy, light, and love flowing into the area that you’ve injured or from which
you might have dissociated. Your loved one is there to hold your hand as you focus on the
area.
You can do this until the darkness lightens up or the sharp pain, if any, starts to
climb down. Or you can keep your friend there until the area is completely healed.
For that matter, some people keep a mental image of a loved one in the area of their
physical heart at all times.

Busy miners with helmet lights

If you need to have helpers that are more dynamic than just a statuesque figure
ensconced in your injury, you can try this one:
This method was used by a highly respected Buddhist teacher whose name, sadly, I
do not recall. I learned of this method decades ago, from one of his students.
The teacher’s hand had been badly smashed in an accident. The doctors wanted to
amputate before gangrene set in. He asked for three days to work on it before they cut it off.
He spent the next three days in solitude, imagining work crews of tiny miners
marching into and out of his hand. They were pleasant, well-experienced miners. They
knew what to do. He didn’t have to teach them anything…but he constantly watched them.
He imagined the miners wearing little hats with lights on them. They had
wheelbarrows and picks and shovels. In the beginning, the miners were marching from his
healthy arm down into his smashed hand. They broke up the debris with their picks. They
shoveled the debris into the wheelbarrows and carted it away, up into the arm, up to around
the level of the elbow.
At some point, the tiny miners used hammers and new lumber, building new
scaffolding and supports. They continued to march from his arm down into his hand and
then back up his arm.
He observed them for three days, allowing no distractions.
By the end of three days, the smashed bits of bone in his hand had started
repositioning themselves, moving back towards their original layout. The blood flow in the
hand was healthy. No sign of gangrene. There was only severe weakness, soreness and
achiness – the body’s warning signs to be very careful.
After the first three days were over, he continued to do his visualizations now and
then with the miners, but he also allowed himself to resume some of his other activities.
Over time, the hand healed perfectly.

Case study: smashed fingers

Twenty years after learning about this technique, I shared the “tiny miners” method
with a friend whose four fingers on his right hand were smashed by a falling boulder during
a hiking accident. He was airlifted out.
The doctors wanted to amputate the fingers immediately.
My friend said no.

22
 The doctors found what little skin they could from the ruptured fingers and wrapped
it around the hash that had been his fingers’ bones and muscles. Humoring him, they
wrapped the “fingers” in gauze. Then they told him to come back in two days to have the
fingers removed, to prevent gangrene from setting in.
Instead, he called me. I started him on the visualization with the little miners.
That same day, I started doing Yin Tui Na on his bandaged palm and the vicinity of
his heart. My hands rested gently on the bloodied gauze or on his chest (I treated his chest /
heart because he was in shock.)
As soon as the skin had regrown enough around his fingers, I also did Yin Tui Na,
and eventually acupuncture, on them, as well. After a few weeks of daily treatment, with me
doing FSR and him doing various visualizations for hours every day, I switched over to
doing FSR only once a week, over the next few months. Every time I met with him, he
assured me he was constantly filling the area with light, love, tiny miners, or whatever
could hold his interest.
New blood vessels were the first tissues to regrow. His broken bones re-formed
more slowly. Muscle and nerve function also returned. After several months, he had
regained enough manual dexterity in his fingers that he was able to go back to his job as an
acupuncturist.
Today, a casual observer would be hard put to notice the residual stiffness in two of
his fingers.
You don’t have to use miners. You can use anything that amuses you or fills you
with love. The main thing to keep in mind is that something good is going into the injured
or traumatized area and the debris is being moved out.
Over and over, something, anything, is lovingly going in and coming out of the
injured area. This will keep your mind focused on the injured area. This will also help
realign the electrical currents in the traumatized area, if they have been disrupted. These
currents, when running correctly, carry instructions to the cells.
Most of the strongest rivers of current in the body run in fairly straight-ish lines, to
and from the torso or head to the fingers and toes. The largest parts of the currents run in
long straight-ish lines, parallel to the spine and the “straight-line” bones in the arms and
legs, fingers and toes.
This technique of visualizing correct movement in and out of an injured area will
not only restore the correct linearity to currents that, from injury or illness, have gotten
swirly or are mistakenly running sideways or in whorls, it will also make the point to your
brain that you do not want to be dissociated from this area.
The brain is not particularly clever. It doesn’t know what is best for you. However,
it is very, very obedient. If you repeatedly command your mind to do a particular thing over
and over, your mind will quickly get good at doing it.
Practicing a new mental habit that you want to encourage can stop a previous,
unhealthy mental habit, in favor of the new pattern. You don’t necessarily need to get rid of
the old dissociation habit or the negative thought pattern (unless, of course, you’ve given
yourself a mental instruction to stay a certain way). Very often, you just need to actively
work on the new, healthy pattern. This will change the way your brain works.
This ability to change a brain pattern is called neuroplasticity. “Neuroplasticity” is
just a fancy way of saying “Your mind gets good at what it practices, whether you practice
something healthy or unhealthy.”

23
 Ultimately, you alone are the boss of what your brain is practicing.

Summary
This chapter shared several methods for learning to mentally re-associate with an
injury or dissociated area. The one I usually teach my patients is the first one: imagine
highly focused light and energy – hold for a count of ten, relax, repeat, for a total of ten
times of counting to ten.
In this method, your attention is focused very narrowly, like a laser. This is because
you aren’t actually trying to fix or heal the injured area: you are trying to pinpoint and alter
the part of your brain that is saying, “We don’t even have that body part.”
Once the brain has been changed so that it says, “Huh. Look at that part of my
body. Hey! It’s injured.” the mind can then give permission for the body to heal that spot.
Healing will often kick in automatically.
The body is designed to heal.
The goal for treating dissociated areas is changing the way your brain is behaving:
turning off your neural blockades by mentally focusing on the areas that had been walled
off.
Then, you can resume active awareness of these areas. This will allow you to have
the most efficient responses to your Yin Tui Na treatments.
Even when you have resumed awareness of an injured area by re-associating with
it, both Yin Tui Na and the mental exercises can still be helpful to accelerate the healing.
Even a person who doesn’t dissociate from his injuries and/or pain can still benefit
by receiving supportive treatment such as FSR or some other light-touch therapy and by
sending light and a tiny bit of energy to the injured or painful area.

Most people don’t dissociate

Most of my patients presenting with injury or pain have not dissociated from their
injuries. However, I still treat these patients with FSR, craniosacral, or other light-touch
therapies, in order to hasten their healing and turn off their pain. I also teach most of them
the light and energy exercises, in order to accelerate the healing and to prevent the
formation of any dissociation mental behaviors.
If a patient has dissociated, I walk him/her through the light and energy technique
while doing Yin Tui Na techniques on the injured area at the same time.
Then, if the flow of a patient’s channel Qi is still disrupted after doing these
protocols, I might do acupuncture to get the currents running correctly again.
Often, if the FSR treatment(s) have restored normal movement and vitality to the
involved area but the electrical currents in the area haven’t yet kicked in (this is rare), I will
first try simply gently rubbing the area that had been disrupted in order to get the currents
running correctly, if they aren’t already. Almost always, no follow-up acupuncture needling
is required.
Please, do not get too worried over when and how often you should do these mental
re-association techniques. People with healthy, normal responses to pain and injury do
something akin to these techniques automatically, even subconsciously.
These techniques are not rocket science. They are simple reminders of how humans
are supposed to respond to pain or trauma, once the immediate crisis is over. These simple

24
techniques to help you re-associate are provided here just in case you got yourself stuck in
some dissociation mindset without even realizing you were doing it.

Finally, some people become extremely worried when they “see” that some part of
their body is dark. Don’t fall into this type of fear. Your body is not dark inside.
You aren’t seeing what’s actually in your body. You can’t.
When you imagine that you are looking inside your body, you are picturing what
your brain is willing to show you. If you see a dark place, it’s because your brain is telling
you that you are not allowed to see that place. In truth, the body part in question might be
perfectly functional. Well, possibly it’s injured and waiting to heal, and so it’s not perfectly
functional. But it’s not actually dark inside.
The darkness in some body part is your brain’s attempt at obeying your instruction
to pretend to not have that body part.

Fig. 5.1 The darkness you “see” in some body part is your brain’s attempt at obeying your
instruction to pretend to not have that body part. You actually do have that body part.

25
People with Parkinson’s
Many people with Parkinson’s are prone to ask far too many unnecessary questions
about these techniques, such as wanting to know exactly how fast to count, or how many
times or for how many minutes and under what exact circumstances they should do
techniques for re-associating, or which body part should they address first, and so on.
Please, don’t worry at all about the details. It truly doesn’t matter if you are wearing
jeans instead of sweat pants, or if the lights in the room are bright or dim or for that matter,
which injuries you start with.
As an aside, a person who is inordinately worried about these types of details
should consider that he might be stuck on pause mode rather than being merely dissociated
from one or two body parts. Excessive wariness and constant risk assessment is
characteristic of a person who has become stuck on pause. If you are stuck on pause, you
should not be receiving hands-on therapy or trying to re-associate. Not yet, anyway.
If you are stuck in pause mode, whether or not you are also dissociated, do not use
the techniques in this book until you have first turned off pause. Again, you can read about
how to diagnose your own condition in Appendices I and II.
To overcome being stuck on pause, please read the book Stuck on Pause, referenced
earlier in this chapter.
If you suspect you are only dissociated from some body part and are not stuck on
pause, you can do one or more of the mental techniques in this chapter and allow yourself
to be treated with Yin Tui Na.

After that, if the area is still painful or displaced tissues are still in need of
restoration, do continue with the Yin Tui Na, but you don’t need to do the exercises in this
chapter. Then again, so long as any trace of injury, displacement, or pain remains, it can’t
hurt and might be helpful to do this chapter’s “light and energy” exercise during your Yin
Tui Na sessions, or any time you feel like it.
Again, the “light and energy” technique you will learn in this chapter can be used to
accelerate healing even if there is no dissociation.

26
Chapter six

Turning off self-induced dissociation

Basic dissociation is a somewhat automatic process. A person has a bad experience
or a nasty injury that he doesn’t have time to deal with at the moment, and his subconscious
mind just puts it aside, to be dealt with later.
Pathologies can arise when “later” never comes. The event or body part remains
stuck in dissociation.
But sometimes, a person will consciously command himself, maybe several times,
to not remember a specific event, or to not have pain in a specific body part.
This can lead to a situation in which the darkness-and-immobility in a given body
part is well nigh impossible to get rid of without conscious work to first destroy the
command. In cases of self-induced dissociation, in the response to the basic dissociation
treatments described in the previous chapter, the dark area might re-appear following what
seemed like, at first, a successful treatment, or it might even move to a slightly different
location or become evasive – darting around in response to your attempts to focus on it.

Case study: I shall not feel my knee pain!

The previously mentioned patient with annoying knee pain remembered telling
himself in college, “I don’t want to have this knee pain. I refuse to notice it.” He did this
several times over two days, and it worked: his knee suddenly stopped hurting. He was able
to resume his sports activities. He never had knee pain again…until he gradually, years
later, slowly developed foot, ankle, leg and knee problems, “for no reason.”
When I met him, he had self-induced a condition of dissociation in his right knee.
His was not a case of automatically dissociating from knee pain during a crisis and
forgetting to get around to dealing with the pain at a later time.
Fifteen years after self-inducing dissociation in his knee, when he came to see me
for weakness and pain in his right ankle and feet, and even intermittent paralysis in his right
knee, I asked him to imagine that he was looking around inside his right knee and lower leg.
I asked him to view it as either filled with light or dark, whichever was easiest.
While looking around in his right-side leg, he “saw” that, as far as his imagination
was concerned, his right leg, from just below the knee all the way down to the toes, was
dark and immobile. In his mind’s eye, the right knee didn’t even exist.
He did the exercise of putting light and energy in his knee and holding it for a count
of ten, and then repeating until he’d done ten sets of counting to ten. By the time he
finished, the lower leg was filled with light. While he was doing this, I was doing FSR on
his knee for what felt like, to me, a displaced knee cap.

27
 About ten minutes later, mentally scanning his body again, he noticed that the
darkness had returned. He attempted to put light in the center of the darkness again, but this
time, the dark area kept moving around, sidestepping his attempts to focus on it.
That’s when he laughingly told me what he’d mentally done to himself in college.
With self-induced dissociation situations, such as the above, you have to actually
destroy the unhealthy mental command. If you don’t, the problem might keep coming back
or moving around indefinitely, trying to stay compliant with your still-active, self-created
instruction.

State of mind matters

As it turns out, it’s nearly impossible to destroy a negative instruction such as
“don’t acknowledge the pain” if you are in the same state of mind – you might say same
degree of sympathetic (“fight or flight”) mode – that you were in when you first created the
instruction.
In order to destroy or supersede a previous fear- or pain-based instruction, you have
to be in a more positive mindset than the mindset you used while creating the mental block.
A mental command issued from a greater state of peace (parasympathetic mode) is able to
counter or turn off a mental command issued while in a more negative (sympathetic) state
of mind.1
To destroy a conscious (self-induced), fear-based command, you will need to first
re-position your mind into what is sometimes called the “super-conscious mind” or “higher-
conscious mind: a highly parasympathetic state. Some people call this part of the mind the
intuitive mind or the heart-connected mind. It is a very circumspect, patient, loving, non-
judgmental state of mind.
As an aside, the super-conscious mind is also considered to be the state of
awareness that ideally might be attained by single-point meditation.
When one part of the “normal” mind – a blend of sympathetic and parasympathetic
mode thoughts – is arguing with another sector of the normal mind, for example, over
whether or not to quit smoking, or change some other stubborn habit, the battle can rage for
years, with one side winning temporarily, and then the other side, always flipping back and
forth, depending on one’s mood or thoughts at the moment.
In eastern spiritual teachings, it is said that the super-conscious mind has the ability
and the authority to immediately override and lastingly change the merely conscious mind,
what you might call the “normal” mind.

1
The word “sympathetic” in the case of sympathetic mode (fight or flight) does not mean
sympathetic. This nomenclature was adopted in the 1800s, when the electric responses of nerves
were discovered. The word “sympathetic” was used to describe nerves that activated muscles “in
response” to an electric shock. The work “sympathetic” in this case meant “responsive.” The (now
archaic) medical use of the word “sympathetic” means “responds to electricity.” This usage does not
match up with our modern meaning of the word “sympathetic.” In fact, it means quite the opposite.
I keep hoping that someone will change this outdated nomenclature.

28
An example: quitting smoking
A common example of this override is when a smoker, after decades of countless
attempts at quitting smoking, suddenly has a moment of deep internal clarity and realizes,
“I’m not a smoker anymore.” And he never smokes again.
What has often happened in this situation is that a burst of awareness from the
superconscious mind enabled him to see himself as a non-slave to the smoking habit. The
smoker’s-habit brain pathways that maintained a desire for and habit of smoking can then
be instantaneously, permanently altered or destroyed.
Changing this habit usually has very little to do with slowly diminishing the effects
of nicotine addiction. When a smoker, often unexpectedly, finds himself in a powerfully
altered mental state, as if he is seeing himself “from a changed perspective,” or “with
greater and/or altered clarity” he finds he has spontaneously made the brain changes he’s
been long struggling to attain. Ask an ex-smoker for details.1

Technique for destroying self-induced dissociation

It’s best to be relaxing in a quiet spot, sitting or lying down.

1. First, define the brain habit that you are going to get rid of.
For example, my patient in the above case study defined his habit as “ignoring my knee.”
He said this out loud a few times: “I have a habit of ignoring my knee.” Then he said it
mentally a few times.
By defining it, you will be able to simply use the words “the habit” while doing this
technique, instead of going into a long verbal description, a long song and dance, during
every repetition about what it is you are destroying.

2. Next, choose a short affirmation that resonates with you and confirms that you
are part of something larger than yourself.
Examples of this affirmation are, “(Universal) Love and I are one.” Or you might
say, “I am part of the loving universe,” “My heavenly Mother and I are one,” “I am one
with the Force,” “I am one with Divine Spirit,” or “My spiritual teacher/ guru/prophet and I
are one” or “are connected.”

3. Start silently saying your short, positive affirmation, one that confirms that your
self, or your “soul” if you wish, is connected to some aspect of Universal Love.
Say it over and over. Focus on the words. Be so focused that your normal, always
nattering mind stops its chatter and listens to what you are saying. Notice how your heart
area feels. (If you are stuck on pause, you will probably not be able to notice how your heart
area feels, and might even wonder what I mean by these words. This technique might not

1
This profound, sudden change can occur with regard to many other types of brain habits as
well. For example, the Jesuits (an education- and introspection-oriented monastic order within the
Catholic church) have named this seemingly spontaneous brain alteration a “conversion experience.”
A conversion experience is a somewhat common event that can occur when a person powerfully
turns his mind towards the greater perspective of an internalize sense of a higher power or suddenly
sees himself as others see him, as opposed to constantly staying focused on his ego-based version of
himself.

29
work for a person who is stuck on pause. A person on pause should first turn off pause.
After that, he might not need to do this technique.)
As you say this affirmation for at least thirty seconds, or even several minutes,
notice that, at some point, you start feeling calm.
That’s good, but it’s not good enough. Be pleased that you’re feeling calm, but
continue saying the affirmation.
At some point, a few seconds or a few minutes later, you will start feeling peace.
Peace is a more dynamic feeling than mere calm. Peace allows the heart area to feel as if it
is expanding, or even able to project its somatic (physical, in the body) feelings outward,
into the universe. It’s good that you are feeling peaceful, but that not’s good enough. Be
pleased that you are feeling peaceful, but continue saying the affirmation.
At some point, twenty seconds to ten minutes later, never wavering in your mental
intensity, you will start feeling joy and a definite sense of relaxation and expansion in the
heart area. Joy is expansive, radiant and, well, joyful. You will know when you are feeling
joy.
Note: if you are stuck on pause, you might not be able to experience a feeling of joy
because your mind is usually required to avoid feeling the sensations in the heart area and
must instead stay focused on assessing whether or not you are at risk. Then again, maybe
you might be able to. When a person uses self-induced pause, he might have the ability to
go back and forth into either a personality that uses parasympathetic mode, (a personality
who can feel joy) or into a personality that is uses pause. The ability to sometimes feel safe
enough to be in parasympathetic mode can diminish or even cease if a blocker personality is
created.
This rather complicated situation is discussed in detail in Stuck on Pause.

4. Once you get to joy, focus on the feeling of joy in the heart. Affirm, “This joy is
my real self. This joy is what I really am.
Then, use this joyful personality. Your loving, joyful self speaks silently from the
heart, sweetly and compassionately giving this command your brain: “Destroy the brain
cells of that wrong habit.” Or “Destroy the neural network of that wrong habit.”
(The specialized nerve cells in the brain are called “neurons.” The adjective form of
the word is “neural.”)
I read about this technique in a book on Eastern meditative science and yoga theory.
The author, Paramahansa Yogananda, suggests that the joyful self use the phrase:
“Cauterize the brain cells of this wrong habit.”
“Cauterization” is medical burning, with exquisite precision, of cells that must be
killed. He also suggests doing this brain-changing technique in the morning, when the mind
and will power are freshest. 1

1
The information on this technique is in a book of short essays on yoga: The Divine
Romance; Paramahansa Yogananda; published by Self-Realization Fellowship; second edition; 2000;
p. 56. In this book, in essay #5, “What is Fate?”, sub-heading, “How meditation changes your fate,”
the author discusses man’s ability to make modifications in his brain, an ability that was considered
impossible in the 1930s when these essays were written.
We now refer to this brain-altering ability as neuroplasticity. Most neuroplastic brain
changes occur in response to changing our habits or our thought patterns.

30
Kill my own cells?!
Some people are taken aback at the idea of destroying their own neurons. Don’t be.
You have billions of neurons.
Think of it this way: if a few of them were cancerous would you hesitate to destroy
them? No, you would cheerfully cauterize any cancerous brain cells.
These brain cell behaviors that you created in order to pretend you weren’t hurt are,
like cancer cells, not working in your best interest. You created these behaviors in a
moment of emergency or in error. Now, it’s time to get rid of them.
If neurons are creating mischief in your brain based on your own instructions,
instructions that created blocker cells or re-routed existing cells into a blockade, it is
reasonable to destroy them.
Think of it as cheerfully mopping up after spilling milk. It’s not a big deal. Don’t
worry about the loss of a few misguided brain cells. We have billions, and don’t even use
most of the ones we have. Thanks to neuroplasticity, you’ll be able to construct any new
brain pattern you need.

A case study example

The first time I used this technique, I was disgusted at my years-long habit of
falling asleep within a few minutes of sitting down for a long meditation.
After catching myself falling asleep, yet again, I performed this technique. I spent
about five minutes getting calm, five minutes getting peaceful, and needed nearly ten
minutes to build up a head of joy.
At some point, I realized I was overflowing with joy, so I stopped repeating the
affirmation and joyfully commanded my brain to destroy “the habit.”
I lovingly, joyfully commanded, over and over, “Cauterize the brain cells of this
habit!” I imagined my heart had a little mouth on is, and was speaking upwards towards my
brain.
After a few minutes, I felt an area of highly focused heat in one side of my head. At
first, I considered being alarmed by this heat, but my heart, still joyful, assured me that I
was OK.
Never again have I fallen asleep in meditation except for the times when I have
been over-tired or over-fed. These few times were not sleeping from habit. They were due
to my fatigue or physical grogginess.

This exercise is much more powerful that the techniques described in the previous
chapter. Those techniques were for merely turning off automatic, “basic” dissociation. In
those cases, the problem was that the brain had gotten stalled somewhere along the line of
normal trauma processing and so wasn’t able to move to the normal conclusion of “Now it’s
safe to process the trauma.”
In those cases of automatic dissociation merely becoming suspended, the treatments
described the previous chapter merely returns your attention to the place(s) in your body
where the trauma was still waiting to “get to a safe place” so that it could be processed.
Once processed, the body can resume the normal healing process that had been interrupted.

31
 In the case of a self-induced mental habit of dissociation, the treatment has to be
more powerful. You intentionally installed a wrong habit, a habit of evading a problem.
Now, that habit is causing trouble. You need to destroy the wrong habit that you created.

More than one session might be needed

Please be aware, if the mental habit has been present for a long time or was self-
induced, many, many repetitions of the technique might be necessary. Think of it as
“chipping away” at a long standing pile of clutter.
The case I presented above, in which a habit of falling asleep during meditation was
completely gone after one powerful session of self-instruction to “destroy the brain cells” of
the wrong habit, is an example of a fairly simple habit change.
However, a long-term habit or self-instruction might need to undergo this technique
in a short session every morning for weeks, or even longer, for as long as necessary, until
the habit and the mental side effects of that habit are completely gone.
Also, after a few sessions, you may want to change your way of referring to your
habit, or you may realize that the actual habit you want to get rid of is something else again.
Fine. Change it up. Doing tidying up, doing house cleaning in your own mind, is a
rewarding job. You can do it throughout your life.

What is this type of technique called?

You can refer to this type of self-healing as a type of yoga, in which you
consciously bring some subconscious bad habit or fear-based mental behavior under the
control of your peaceful consciousness or superconsciousness. (The word yoga means
union, usually in reference to union of the soul with God. Yoga can also mean union of the
soul with the mind – which is what you are doing when your joyful heart commands your
brain to change. In the case of physical yoga exercises, the point is feeling the union of the
mind and soul with the body.)
You can refer to this type of self-healing as mental medical Qi Gong (energy and
mental-self control).
You can refer to this type of self-healing as “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.” This
term just means consciously changing your mental behaviors. This type of powerful,
effective therapy practiced by western psychologists since the 1980s has been rapidly
replacing the “analysis” methods of psychological self-change that were based on outdated
Freudian psychology.
It doesn’t really matter what you call it. The main things to remember are:

You can change your brain habits.

No one else can do it for you.
You get to do it, cheerfully, and with a light heart, all by yourself.

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Chapter seven

FSR technique: setting your hands on the patient

FSR is the most “Yin,” the most subtle and non-invasive form of Tui Na. FSR
technique can be broken down into four steps: 1) setting your hands on the patient, 2)
following the patient’s ensuing relaxation movements with your hands, 3) diagnostically
making use of relaxation responses, if any, and 4) letting go.
This chapter and the three following chapters are devoted to these four steps.

Positioning the hands

With you and your practice partner sitting down, place the palm side of your hand
flush against some part of the forearm of your partner. Then place your other hand on the
opposite side of the forearm.

Fig. 7.1 Two examples of placing your hands on opposite sides of a body part

33
 It does not matter exactly where your hands are. The important thing is that your
two hands are more or less opposite each other.
Your own physical comfort is important. Position your chair so that you are
comfortable.
If your patient or practice partner has an injury in the area you are holding, you may
need to keep your hands fairly still for several minutes. If you are working on a Parkinson’s
patient, you may be sitting in one position, barely moving, for an hour. So your ability to
get comfortable and stay relaxed is more important than the exact placement of your hands.
Slumping back in a soft chair may seem like a comfortable way to sit, but this type
of “comfortable” is not easy to maintain for very long. You will be able to work longer and
better if you can learn to sit upright, with good posture, while your arms suspend softly
from the shoulders. Your wrists should be relaxed – able to move or flex in response to the
patient’s movements.
It’s easiest for the beginner to practice FSR on a partner’s arm. No physiological
reason – it’s just that arms are far easier to access: you can both be sitting in chairs when
you work on arms. When you work on legs, the subject usually needs to be lying down.

Duration of treatment
I usually make one-hour appointments for working with a patient, and see patients
once a week.
If you are doing FSR at home on a friend or loved one, the session can be whatever
length of time is convenient for you. If fifteen minutes is the most time you have in a day,
that’s just fine. If you can do a little more, that’s fine too.
More than an hour at a stretch can be draining for both of you. Remember, the
patient is mentally working as well, putting light and energy into the area you are working
on.
It is fine to do FSR every day, every other day, or once a week. The main thing is
you don’t want to stress the patient or put pressure on him to “hurry up and heal!”

Asking permission
Before grabbing your patient’s or your practice partner’s arm or leg, ask permission
to hold the arm or leg.
After getting comfortably settled into your work chair or stool, with the patient
sitting in a chair or lying down on the treatment table with his shoes off, ask, “May I hold
your arm?” or “May I hold your leg?”
Ask permission every time you begin to work on a patient. This simple question
becomes rather ceremonial. It is a very polite way of honoring the patient’s autonomy. You
aren’t just going to hold fire until your patient looks comfortable and then grab for his arm
or leg. You ask permission to hold, and then after the patient says, “Yes,” you start.
This may seem very formal and unnecessary, but you will see very quickly that
patients learn to anticipate this little bit of courtesy and respond pleasantly.
Of course, the first time you work on a patient and ask this, they may reply, “Of
course! That’s what I’m here for!” But after a few sessions, they will understand that they
are participating in a respectful ceremony.

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Use your palms
The firm support and contact over the widest possible area is the main thing
Usually, the palms of your hands are the main contact points. Do not try to hold the
patient with your fingers. Your fingers can of course be making contact, as well, but the
center of the strength of your holding comes from the palms of your hands.
When we hold something with our fingers, our fingers curve inward (flexed), which
is to say, with the fingers moving towards the “fist” position. Notice in the illustrations that
opened this chapter, in Fig. 7.1, how the fingers are the opposite of flexed – they are slightly
extended. In terms of muscle movements, “extended” means the opposite direction of
“flexed.” This finger extension is not always necessary, but sometimes, depending on the
curve of the patient’s skin, the fingers need to be relaxed enough that they assume either an
extended or flexed position in order to get the center of the palm of the hand firmly
connected to the patient.
Of course, there will be times when the palm of the hand doesn’t fit easily. For
example, when holding the arch of the foot, you will place one hand over the top of the foot
– directly over the arch area (the “saddle” of the foot) – and the other hand on the sole of
the foot, under the arch. But, if the size and angles of the arch prevent the palm of your
hand from getting solid, flat contact on the sole of the arch, you might use the back of your
hand, or even the backs of your fingers, instead of the palm of your hand, to provide firm
support to the sole of the foot in the arch area.

Fig. 7.2 Using the back of the hand to make firm contact with the sole of the foot

You should not grip with your fingers just because you’re working on an area that
is hard to access with your palm; you should find some way to make firm contact with some
part of your hand that will create the sensation that the patient’s body is being held in place

35
with an ace bandage (also known as an elastic bandage) – but not held in place with vice
grips.
Again, the firm support and contact over the widest possible area is the main thing
– not the electrical properties contained in the palm of your hand.

Pressure
The amount of pressure that your hands exert on the practice partner is very
important. You should make firm, fairly complete contact even if there is clothing in
between your hands. You want to create the sensation of firm contact over as large an area
as possible. Your hands are like a snug blanket. The goal is to hold your practice partner
with such complete support that, very soon, he doesn’t notice your motionless hands.
Because the sensation of support is more important than the exact, precise location
of where you are holding, it is important that you find a way to nestle your hands into the
contours of your partner’s body part, even if such a holding position is not exactly the
location of holding that you originally had in mind. Sometimes, when you have gotten your
hands nestled into a place that feels comfy and “settled in,” your practice partner might
even volunteer that you have put your hands in “just the right place” even though he didn’t
know there was any place that particularly wanted to be held.

Now let’s back up a bit and look more closely at what you are doing, looking at one
hand at a time. Let’s assume in the following explanation that you are putting one hand on
the upper side of your partner’s forearm, and your other hand underneath his arm. In actual
practice, of course, one hand might be on the left side and the other on the right side. But
for clarity, let’s assume that your hands are on the “top” (closer to the ceiling) and “bottom”
(closer to the floor) of the partner’s forearm.

Upper hand
If you are sitting in a comfortable position, you will be able to let your upper hand
drop gently from your shoulder and come to rest on the partner. Your hand should be
resting like a dead weight, with the full weight of your hand plopped down on your partner.
Now, add just a bit more pressure – enough so that your partner’s skin isn’t possibly going
to slip out from under your hand. You should be using a fair amount of force, by the way. If
you are using any muscles to prevent your hand from pushing too hard onto your partner,
you are holding too lightly. Use gravity, and then a bit more.
If you aren’t sure what I mean by “dead weight” and then a little more, you might
want to abandon your partner for a moment and try this practice exercise: sit in an armless
chair. Let your hand flop down onto your thigh. Let your hand just sit there, held in place by
gravity. Notice that your hand isn’t making complete contact with your leg: there’s a gap on
the palm of the hand where air is present. Now, leave your hand in place and lean forward
just a few inches so that your hand is supporting the weight of your torso. Notice that your
hand is now making firm contact with your leg. It’s not that you are trying to push against
your leg. It’s more that the weight of your torso is causing your hand to make a very
complete contact with your leg. The force needed to make a complete contact is the exact
right amount of pressure to use in FSR.

36
 Again, don’t push your hand hard into your thigh as if you were trying to leave an
imprint of your hand: that would be too much pressure. Don’t rest your hand gingerly, as if
your thighs were sunburned: that would be not enough pressure. Let your shoulders relax
and sag down. Let your hand rest heavily on your thigh while supporting your slightly
forward body. That is the exact correct amount of pressure for your top hand. Now, take this
hand off your thigh and respectfully allow it to plop back down with the same degree of
weight onto your practice partner’s arm.

Lower hand
Use the exact same amount of pressure with the lower hand that you use with the
upper hand.
If you want, you can abandon your partner again for a moment and practice holding
your thigh again, but this time you will use both hands. Let your first hand flop down onto
one side of your thigh, and place your other hand on the opposite side of your thigh. Lean
your torso forward just a bit so that the hands must make a more complete contact in order
to stay where they are.

Another image: imagine that your thigh is a mound of bread dough. Use as much
pressure between the hands as you would need to use to keep the lifeless bread dough from
dropping to the ground. Do not hold the limp “bread dough” gingerly and do not hold it
with your fingertips. You might even spread your fingers apart so that you can get the
centers of your palms as close to the “bread dough” as possible. The fingers might be
slightly flexed or slightly extended – whatever position best enables you to have the palms
of your hands as firmly connecting to the thigh as possible. Have a firm grip on the two
sides of the “bread dough” of your thigh, but don’t be leaving imprints of your hands or
fingers in your flesh. Just hold it enough so that even if the thigh goes completely limp, it
won’t fall to the floor.

The point that your hands need to be making to your partner is this: even if your
muscles in this area were to become as limp as bread dough, I am giving you enough
support so that you won’t fall to the floor.
Your hands are saying, “I’ve got you, you are safe, you may become as limp as you
want, and no harm will come to you.”

Try placing both hands on your partner’s forearm again, using the same amount of
support that you used to support your thigh when you imagined it was as limp as bread
dough.

Always use two hands

When your hands are on either side of the partner’s body part, your two hands
should be pressing on each other with the necessary amount of force.
You never press down on the partner’s body part with just one hand. If you do this,
the partner will reflexively use energy to push back against your hand. When you are
“holding” your partner between your two hands, the pressure you are using is NOT pressure
being applied to the partner – your two hands are applying equal pressure against each

37
other. By supporting the partner with two hands, and the two hands are pressing against
each other, your partner doesn’t need to “push back” against anything. Your partner is
being supported. The two hands are pushing firmly on each other, not on your partner.
Again, when you are holding your partner, what you should really be doing is
pressing your hands together. It just so happens that a partner’s body part is in between your
hands. Ignore the partner’s body part. If you want to focus on anything, focus on how your
two hands are pressing on each other even though something has come between them.
When your focus is on your two hands applying firm pressure on each other, and
you are ignoring the body part that is resting between your hands, you will be feeling what
it’s like to provide firm, supportive holding.
Eventually, you will be able to notice all sorts of things going on in the partner’s
body part, while keeping your primary focus on your own hands.
You will then be able to notice subtle changes or tensions in your partner’s body
part, and you can then use this information to modify the exact placement of your hands, or
the exact amount of pressure that you are using, so as to help the partner relax even more.
These modifications will be almost automatic, even reflexive. They will occur in response
to what your partner’s body is silently telling you. Don’t worry about what your hands will
do at this point – soon enough, they will be working with your partner on their own, without
your mind getting involved.
Much as a good dairy farmer intuitively knows how to touch each of his cows to
keep them calm, at some point your hands will know just how much pressure to use in
response to each of your partner’s body’s signals, even if you don’t consciously know how
much pressure is needed.

How much pressure to use – yet again

“How much pressure?” is the most frequently asked question.
I repeat, you should use as much force as you need to make your practice partner
feel perfectly supported. If the effect of gravity should suddenly stop working on your
partner’s body part, your pressure would continue to hold the partner in the same place.
All of us maintain a certain amount of unconscious pressure in our muscles – at
least enough to combat gravity.
If you are holding with at least the force of gravity, the partner will be able to stop
unconsciously fighting the force of gravity in that particular body part. This unconscious
work of combating gravity (on the part of the partner) can cease. The part of the partner’s
body that you are holding can relax much more deeply than usual.
Oddly enough, when you provide enough support, supplanting all the tension the
partner was maintaining to combat gravity and to support his anticipation of needing to
move in self-protection, the partner’s body soon will be unable to tell that you are applying
any force at all. The partner will feel as if, for all intents and purposes, your hands are not
even there.

Have you ever swaddled a crying baby? Swaddling blankets are wrapped so snugly
around a baby that he can’t even move – not at all. And when the baby is swaddled snugly
enough, he is able to relax. When he is so constrained by the tight blanket that he can’t
move his own muscles, when he doesn’t need to move his own muscles to combat the

38
strange, heavy world that is such a contrast to his previous, weightless world in utero, he
relaxes as if he was once again floating and weightless.
When ranchers need to calm a frantic calf, they usher him into a “squeezer,” or
“press,” a simple device consisting of boards on both flanks of the calf. A rope pulls the two
sides of the press together, squeezing the calf until he can’t move. When the calf feels
sufficient support, he relaxes. His muscles, being supported by the press, don’t need to
maintain any tension of their own. The calf calms down both physically and mentally.
The principles of swaddling and pressing are the same principles used in Yin Tui
Na: solid, firm support applied to a patient in a particular body area can physically and
mentally relax that body area.

Don’t be “gentle”
Do not hold gently; nothing can be more annoying. Resting your hands or fingertips
ever so lightly on a partner is a sure way to either tickle or irritate him.
Hold the body part with such support that even if the table on which your partner’s
body is resting was to be pulled away, your holding would prevent his body from falling to
the floor.

Don’t manipulate
Don’t try to physically or even mentally manipulate the limb you are holding. At
this stage, when you are practicing how to hold without either insufficient or excessive
physical or mental pressure, consider that any intention on your part, even for the good of
the patient, is a form of psychological manipulation. So don’t be imagining any particular
outcome as a result of your support. Have no intention in mind for how the practice partner
should respond.

Pressure without intention: the harried parent example

The following example illustrates what I mean by solid support without intention.
Picture the scene: a harried mother (or father, of course) is trying to cook dinner.
She is standing at the stove, stirring food in two pots. One pot has almost come to a boil and
needs to be watched closely. The other pot is bubbling away and needs frequent stirring.
Just out of arm’s reach, her four-year old child is pestering her two-year old child. The
younger child is starting to scream in frustration. The mother cannot reach them because she
is stirring the dinner, plus she is talking to her friend on the phone; the phone is the old
fashioned kind, attached by a cord to the wall.
She is not using her hand to hold the phone, the phone is cradled between her ear
and her raised shoulder. She is alternating between telling the youngsters to stop fighting
and trying to arrange a babysitting swap with her friend for tomorrow.
Meanwhile, she is also holding a baby on her hip. It is not her own baby; she is
babysitting for another neighbor, who should be home shortly. The mother has the
neighbor’s baby wedged up against her left hip and she has her left arm wrapped around the
baby. Baby is stuck between the firm left hip and the snug left arm. Baby is in solid. Baby is
going nowhere.

39
 With her right arm, mother is now alternating between adding some spice to the
dinner and tasting it. Mother is still listening to her friend on the phone and is stage-
whispering to the older child a command to stop hitting the younger child with the stuffed
weasel.

Here is my question: who is the most contented person in the room?

If you guessed the neighbor’s baby, you are absolutely right. The baby is looking
around, taking it all in, reveling in the fact that he doesn’t have any social interactions going
on. Baby is being held so closely that he can’t move. With this level of firm support, baby
doesn’t even notice that he is being held. Baby has such complete trust in that firm support
coming from the hip and the embracing arm that baby does not notice the pressure from the
mother’s hip and arm. Also, and most importantly, the mother is not paying any attention to
the baby with her eyes or words. The baby is physically relaxed and comfortable.
Of course, when the baby’s mother returns, baby will probably go into its regular
routine of crying or cooing at its own mother, doing all the things it has already learned to
do to fulfill its mother’s expectations. But while the baby is being held tightly on the busy
mother’s hip with no one looking at him, no one cooing at him, no one expecting anything
of him, being completely ignored, he is able to take it all in with wide-eyed wonder,
amusement or contentment, and his body is physically at peace.
How is the above mother holding the baby? Snugly! That’s the way you hold a
person with an unhealed injury.
The biggest mistake that therapists make in the beginning is that they give support
to their patients as if the patients were their own babies: cooing over them, worrying over
them. You should hold a person with an unhealing injury as if you are busy with thinking of
something else and your are holding someone else’s baby: a baby that you don’t need to
emotionally interact with.

Comfort for the practitioner

In the example above, the mother is doing whatever she needs to do to be
comfortable. No doubt she has one hip swung way out to the side to support the baby. This
isn’t an example of “good posture,” but by having one hip out to the side as a seat for the
baby, the mother is able to be very comfortable while holding that extra weight.
What with gravity, the mother’s hip, and the additional, very firm lateral support
provided by the left arm, the baby is nice and snug.
The amount of pressure you should use is the same as the mother is using on the
baby: enough so that the baby can breathe easily, but can’t really move around too much.
This amount of pressure should be comfortable for you. If you find that you are
getting tired arms or sore hands, possibly you are using too much pressure or your chair is
not at the right height. If you are not relaxed, it will be hard to give perfect support to your
patient.

Comfortable pressure becomes imperceptible

We can quickly become used to external forces pushing or resting on the skin.
When we wear clothes and shoes to which we have become accustomed, we no longer

40
notice them. Within a few moments of putting on a comfy pair of old shoes, we have no
awareness of the shoes pressing against our feet.
When we wrap on an ace bandage over a weakened, sprained area, we quickly
forget that the bandage is there: we very quickly stop perceiving the force of the bandage,
but we move better because, deep inside, we know that bandaged area is being supported.
One excellent FSR practitioner that I know says that, when he sits for an hour not
moving, with his hands cradling a wounded foot, he feels like a human cast. That’s a very
good analogy. Of course, a plaster of Paris cast or a more modern plastic cast gives solid
support, but it is rigid, cold and cannot conform perfectly to the changing contours of a live
human. A “cast” made of human hands gives a far better level of support: it is warm and
conforms more perfectly to the skin of the patient.

Practice time!
Ask permission to support whatever area you are going to hold.
Place your hands on your practice partner’s forearm or leg and experiment with
positioning your hands until you find a pose that is very comfortable for you.
Have your partner tell you if your hands feel too pushy, too light, or if they feel just
right.
Have your partner then try the same on you.
Take turns seeing how it feels to hold someone’s forearm. If you think you are
comfortable with the forearm, try holding the upper arm. Try holding the partner’s thigh or
lower leg. Play with this. See what it feels like to hold supportively but without expectation,
and how it feels to be held.
Above all, notice that, sometimes, especially as you get faster and more relaxed
about putting firm pressure on right from the start, the practice partner’s muscles will
almost instantly respond by relaxing or moving a bit, or sometimes moving a lot, in the area
where you are holding.
As you get more familiar with this type of holding, try pretending that your
confidence level has increased to the point that, as soon as you set your hands on your
practice partner, you are instantly applying just the right amount of pressure. In other words,
you don’t want to get in the habit of spending five minutes figuring out exactly how much
pressure to use. Have confidence.
Practice resting your hands firmly and opposite to each other until you get to the
point that you know, even before you set your hands on your partner, just how much
pressure you will be wanting to use. From the moment you start to place your hands on your
partner, do it confidently.

Working through clothes

As mentioned, this technique can be practiced on a partner’s clothed limbs. At the
very beginning, it may be easier for your mind to accept the fact that you can feel a
partner’s response if you are working with bare skin, so you might want to work on a
partner’s bared arm, to start.
As soon as you feel ready, work on clothed areas, as well, in order to increase your
confidence.

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Review
Though I’m being blatantly redundant here, I repeat that touching, if done too
lightly, is an irritant. Oppositely, when touching is done with too much pressure, so that it
causes pain, it may even generate a pulling-away response. If there is one-sided pressure, as
opposed to two-handed pressure, the subject cannot help but push back, instead of relaxing.
The type of touching used in FSR is the confident, firm gentleness with which a
mother holds someone else’s child while she’s ignoring it by being mentally occupied with
something else. FSR requires supportive contact that does not impose a command, but
conveys non-judgmental stability and safety.

“Forceless” touch
Most often, the beginner is far too delicate, employing an irritating, “gentle” touch.
The problem is that he is trying to be “forceless.” The pracitioner isn’t supposed to be
“forceless.”
The word “forceless” in the name Forceless, Spontaneous Release applies to the
perception of the patient, not to the amount of pressure used by the practitioner. It also
applies to the intention of the practitioner, inasmuch as the practitioner isn’t using any
directional force on the patient, but is just sitting there pressing his own hands against each
other, and not thinking that he’s applying force to the patient, per se.
The more pressure you use, to a point, the less the patient will notice it. When the
patient perceives no directional, instructional force coming from your hands, and instead
only perceives that he is being firmly supported, little movements in his muscles will
manifest. These movements are spontaneous relaxations in response to this support.

Many, many times a health practitioner has come to visit my office, bringing along
his patient, in order to see if he is doing FSR correctly. Within seconds of me setting my
hands on the patient, the patient says to his practitioner, “Janice is using way more pressure
than you do! Way more.”
Use plenty of pressure. Unless your patient complains, or you are leaving
indentations in your patient’s skin, you are probably not using too much pressure.
You are using some firm force, pressing your hands against each other and paying
not much attention to whatever’s in between them.
Your patient, very soon, doesn’t notice it. To your patient’s perception, the
treatment is forceless.

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Chapter eight

FSR technique part II: following the movement

The relaxation response

When you practice holding your practice partner’s forearm, you will notice,
eventually, that at the moment when you place your hands on your partner using firm
support, an immediate or fairly rapid and, sometimes, visually perceptible change occurs in
the position of those muscles in your partner which are immediately under your point of
contact.
This movement arises from the immediate, localized relaxation of the partner’s
body part in response to your support. The change may even be visually perceptible to you
and/or your partner because your hands, making firm contact, will perceptibly move even as
your partner’s forearm relaxes. The movements might be subtle or glaringly obvious. If
subtle, so that you can’t see the movement in the partner’s arm, you might nevertheless
notice that your hand positions have been immediately altered ever so slightly from the
exact position in which you started.
Because of your commitment to supportive contact on your partner’s skin, when his
skin/underlying muscles move, your hands move along with him. If you notice that your
hands are resting in a slightly different position than they were when they were very first
placed on the partner’s arm, then you can be assured that this is because the partner’s
muscles and skin have moved.
If your partner’s skin moves, keep holding: follow the movement. Maintain contact,
and let your hands be carried to a new position by the movement.

Types of relaxation movement

Often, the relaxation response is small and gentle.
Sometimes, the relaxation response is a bit jerky.
Other times, the relaxation response will actually move back and forth, instead of
being a simple, one-way move. Fine. Keep your hands in place while the area being held
moves back and forth.
Now and then, the relaxation might even feel as if circular movement is occurring
in the skin under your hands, or in the fascia that’s just under the skin that’s under your
hands. You may feel as if one or both of your hands needs to move in a circle in order to
adhere to the skin or fascia’s movement.
It’s actually impossible for your hand to move in complete circles while
maintaining contact, so what you’ll do is let your hand rotate a bit, maybe as much as forty-
five degrees, following the movement. Then, when you’ve rotated at the wrist as many
degrees as you can comfortably tolerate, quickly pull your hand off the skin and bring it
back to a comfortable wrist position. Set your hand back down on the partner – and let it
continue following the rotation, if any, in the partner. If the partner’s fascia feels as if it’s
doing a lot of “unwinding,” you may need to pull your rotated hand off and quickly set it

43
back down a dozen times, or more, to provide the illusion of constant support on your
partner without making a corkscrew out of your wrist.

Fig. 8.1
These two pictures are the first and last of a continuous photo group, with the camera mounted on a
tripod. The camera started when the hands were placed on the partner. The photo group ended after
two seconds, when the partner’s skin stopped moving.

Fig. 8.2
Notice in the second photo the very slight tilt in the wrist muscles of the practitioner’s upper hand.
The third finger is no longer visible. In the lower hand, the index finger is no longer visible: it has
rotated away from the camera. The arm just above the wrist has elongated slightly.

A question
You might ask, “What if my partner is already relaxed? If so, he cannot relax in
response to being held.” Don’t worry. If your partner is fighting gravity, he is doing work
and, therefore, is not perfectly relaxed. One can safely assume that all healthy
patients/partners are not in a state of perfect relaxation and will relax somewhat in response
to being supported.

44
 When your hands are applied to his forearm (or any body part), your hands will
supplant some of the partner’s inherent tension; the touched area will relax its share of
internal muscular grip accordingly. This small release of muscle tension will create a
movement in the skin and underlying muscles, such that the practitioner’s hands will find
themselves resting on the partner in a slightly different position than when they began.
This change might not be perceptible to the receiving practice partner if he has his
eyes closed. Because he felt no vector of force being applied, the partner will most likely
think that nothing has happened except that he briefly felt the initial contact from your
hands. If the partner sees that your hands have moved slightly in the first moment after you
placed your hands on him, he will most likely assume that you have initiated some
movement: you were moving your hands around.
This may seem redundant, but here goes: even if you feel a significant relaxation in
your practice partner’s arm so that your hands move a tiny bit or even a good quarter of an
inch or more, if your partner’s eyes are closed during the time of contact and subsequent
movement, he might not detect that anything has happened at all other than the fact that you
are supporting his arm. If he does notice that his muscles have moved, he may very well
accuse you of having moved them. Because he did not give any conscious movement
command to his muscles, it may be hard for the patient/partner to realize that his muscles
moved reflexively of their own accord. It is very common for students, working on each
other, to accuse the “practitioner” half of the pairing of having imposed the movements that
occur in the area in question.

The patient’s sense of what’s happening

Sometimes, though not often, the practice partner might say something like, “My
muscle movement wasn’t reflexive: I was consciously doing that. I felt that I had a choice as
to whether to move, or not.”
This description of the inner conflict, or choice, can be a correct understanding, in
some cases. The body might have been somewhat reluctant to move, and yet wanted to
move. Healthy relaxation occurs when the person allows himself to move in the manner that
the area seems to “want.”
Consider this: when you firmly hold a startled, panicked child until he calms down,
that child does not perceive that you have done anything to him. And yet, he calms down
quickly if you hold him firmly enough, with enough confidence. So you have done
something, and you can feel him relax in your arms as a result. But he won’t have felt that
you’ve done anything. Not only that, the child may be aware that he made a choice when he
relaxed: he could have stayed upset, but he chose to relax. But actually, he was more easily
able to relax because of the support that he was getting.

Sometimes, when people see me, as teacher, demonstrate this technique on their
partner, they want to protest that the partner’s arm movement was not due to relaxation on
the part of the partner. They accuse me: “You were shoving their arm around!” I have to
insist that I was doing nothing of the kind.
Other students take the opposite stand: “Nothing happened in response to your
hands, the partner just happened to relax a little at the same time you put your hands on
him.”

45
 Well, of course. That’s the whole point: the partner will relax when supportive
hands are placed on his skin. This relaxation can be extremely fast and it may seem to the
person being held as if nothing significant has actually happened.
Because the response is so unpredictable, sometimes hard to feel on the part of the
partner and so startling to the new practitioner, it is possible that both the practitioner and
the partner may want to insist that the other person must have been intentionally “moving
the forearm around.”
Don’t try to think it through too much. Just practice holding someone and observe
what happens.

How many sessions will be needed?

Sometimes enough relaxation can occur in response to this type of brief holding
that a significant release of tension or repositioning of displaced bone or tissue will occur.
Sometimes – and this is the point – in response to this supportive touch, relaxation and
awareness of the area can increase in an area that previously, due to tension or dissociation,
was resistant to healing.
Then again, sometimes it takes longer to get a response. In people who have
dissociated from a body part or who haven’t yet healed from some trauma, it might take a
long, long time, even weeks or months of once-a-week, one-hour treatments, in order to get
a response. Then again, if your patient does the mental work in chapter five, or chapter six,
if needed, the responses almost always come much more quickly – sometimes even in the
first session.
Then again, I had one patient with forty-year old (since childhood) neck vertebral
displacements. She was dissociated and was using self-induced pause. When we started
doing work together, little signs would pop up in her head, in her imagination, with lettering
spelling out: “Don’t let anyone work on you! Go hide in the cave! (Her mental image of the
inside of her head, when she was finally brave enough to imagine looking there, was a cave
surrounded by barbed wire.)
Slowly, over a long time, we figured out that she needed to do the mental exercises
for self-induced pause, for dissociation, and for self-induced dissociation. Even so, after
doing all this, she still needed more than a year of weekly craniosacral treatments and FSR
on her neck, back, and shoulders before she felt deeply at peace inside. Unexpectedly, after
she’d been feeling peaceful inside for over a year, her neck bones suddenly all slid back into
place while I was holding her neck. Instantly, she could once again turn her neck from side
to side for the first time in decades. I am certain that any method that used any amount of
force would never have been able to get through to her. I share this rare case study to drive
home the point that some people need more time than others.
But most people, if they do the mental exercises for getting rid of whatever is
inhibiting healing, be it dissociation, self-induced dissociation, pause, or all three will
respond fairly quickly to FSR once the mental blocks are gone.
Still, no two people are the same.

Maintain the support during movement

Holding on, keeping the hands in supportive contact even while the person responds
with a small tiny movement or by more obvious moving around, is a critical part of the

46
support. When you hold a person with supportive touch, you are rather implying that you
are there for him, holding him for as long as needs be. This means that, if your patient’s arm
(or whatever body part) does move in response to being held, you have an unspoken
obligation to continue to follow the movement wherever it goes, providing support until you
receive a “let go” signal. This signal is discussed in the next chapter.
Sometimes this means that a practitioner’s hands may end up in a very different
position than where he started. But wherever the patient goes, there you, the practitioner,
must follow.

Letting go temporarily, moving to a more comfortable position

If, in response to your support, the partner’s arm (or body part) moves in such a
direction that you can no longer hold on comfortably or keep your balance, then, of course,
you should let go and smoothly, quickly, reposition your hands in a way that will allow you
to be comfortable while continuing to provide support.
The partner will not go to pieces if you let go for a quick moment.
Sometimes, if you sense that the partner’s body truly does not want you to let go,
but you simply must move to a more comfortable position, then rotate your arms around or
move your torso in such a way as to accommodate to the new holding position without
actually lifting your hands off the skin, if possible. As soon as the partner’s body part stops
moving and is getting settled in in the new position, you can smoothly and quickly lift your
hands off and resettle them in a more comfy position.
Use your common sense with this; there is no value in having the practitioner get a
crick in his neck. Picture a worried child wanting to be held tightly by a parent: the parent
can move as much as he needs to get himself in a comfortable position and the child will
not fall apart while the parent does so. However, once the parent gets to a position of
maximum comfort and stops fidgeting, the child also settles down more deeply.

A common mistake that students make is that they assume the response will not
occur for several seconds. Students often ignore that first, instantaneous “flinching”
movement, and settle in to watch for something dramatic.
The tiny “flinch” may well be the reflexive relaxation response that you are looking
for.

Sudden jerks
The practitioner must be prepared to hold on during those rare response movements
that are large or jerky. If your hands are committed to supporting your patient and suddenly
the patient’s arm (or whatever) twists or bounces, you need to hang on even though you
may feel, for a split second, as if you are being carried somewhere unexpected.

The warning signal

As you become more experienced with this technique, you may begin to notice that
a faint electrical discharge that feels sort of like static energy moving through your own
hands and even up your arms will often precede a major jerk or twist on the part of the
patient. If you are in tune with this sort of thing, you can use these static discharges as a

47
warning to brace your feet on the floor or loosen up your elbows in preparation for a sudden
lurch or lunge.

An anecdote
I was holding onto a patient’s thigh and getting no response at all. She’d been numb
in that leg following a bad bicycling accident. I was standing at the side of the treatment
table, mentally settling in to a comfortable daydream. My hands were holding firmly on her
left thigh but my mind was rapidly moving to a place a thousand miles away.
After about ten minutes, I felt a flash of static electricity in my arms, but before I
could even steady myself in response, I found myself lying across her legs, my head
hanging down the opposite side of the table from where I’d been standing a moment earlier.
My hands were still gripping firmly on her thigh, which had rotated medially so abruptly
that the force of the rotation had lifted me off my feet and flung me towards the opposite
side of the table.
She laughed. She had felt nothing at all in her leg even while she saw me sailing
through the air, over her legs. A moment later, she sighed with relaxation and announced
that she had feeling in her leg.
This extreme tossing around has only happened to me once. But many times a
patient’s head, arm, leg, or foot has shaken me like a terrier shaking a rat.
You never can know just what’s going to happen. So tell your hands to hang on,
and tell your mind to relax and mind its own business.
This simple holding and the almost immediate response (in uninjured areas) that
you can notice by movement occurring under your hands are the basic events of FSR.
Practice it on someone else. It is very hard to practice it on yourself.

Doing FSR on yourself

Then again, I received an email from a person with Parkinson’s, whose diagnosis
had been confirmed by three different doctors, who had moved to “the middle of nowhere,”
to care for her aged, ailing father. There was no one around to help her, so she did FSR on
herself.
She wrote that sitting on the sofa in the evenings after her father went to bed, she
held her long-injured foot. Sometimes, she placed her hands over her heart, to comfort
herself. She found herself enjoying the therapy. She wrote that doing FSR on herself
changed her ability to notice how her body was feeling.
She recovered from Parkinson’s disease, and used no physical therapy other than
the holding provided by her own hands.
Of course, it’s far easier to have someone do this for you. But anything is possible.
Everyone’s different.

An old, forgotten injury on your healthy practice partner

If your “healthy” practice partner’s arm does not respond in any way, if there is no
relaxation response, it is very possible that the partner has an old injury in the arm you are
holding. If so, use the other arm. If the other arm also does not respond, try having the
partner lie down and work on the partner’s calves.

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 When I’ve taught classes in this technique, there’s usually one person out of the
twelve students whose body part doesn’t relax as predicted. A quick verbal interview
usually uncovers a medical history of broken bone or injury in the area that didn’t relax in
response to being held.
In the classes I teach, every once in a great while, maybe once every few years, a
practice partner will turn out to be stuck on pause or dissociated. He is not going to be able
to have a relaxation response. If your practice partner doesn’t seem to respond, try working
with a few other people.
So when choosing a practice partner, you might not want to work, at first, with
someone with a history of many broken bones and/or a “high tolerance for pain.” A high
tolerance for pain is often an indication that a person has become very good at dissociating
from pain or is even using pause mode.

Again, if your partner doesn’t respond, at all, to your holding, don’t worry, don’t
assume that you are doing something wrong. The unresponsive partner may well have an
old injury in the area(s) in question and might not even remember the old injury. But do
consider working on someone else, if you don’t get any responses with your first practice
partner. If you can work on several people, that would be best.
Don’t be shy about recruiting practice partners from among your friends; most
people don’t mind having their arm held for a few minutes. If someone does mind, or feels
uneasy about it, that person may well have some unhealed injury or history of trauma in the
arm and might not consciously be aware of it.
Never force yourself on someone who does not want to be touched.
Having said that, I’ve observed that most people quickly learn to enjoy and
appreciate this supportive therapy.

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50
Chapter nine

FSR technique: letting go

Now that you know to keep holding on to your patient no matter where or how
much his skin and muscles move around or don’t move around, you need to learn when to
let go. The rule is: let go when the patient’s skin tells you to let go.
A person’s skin in the area where you are holding will perform what feels like an
electric-charge reversal when your support is no longer wanted. If you keep holding when
the support is no longer wanted, the person’s skin will start sending you an electrical
message that pushes you away, ever so slightly, breaking your skin contact. This is a “Let
go” signal.
To improve your awareness of these small but distinct Let go signals, you may want
to practice the steps below.

The “Let go ” signal

Ask permission to hold some body area. Hold that area. This time, while following
with your hands the movement of the practice partner's skin as he relaxes, notice that there
has been a tiny, momentary sensation of magnetic pull or “connectedness” between your
hands and the skin of the partner. This sensation can be felt even if clothing is between your
hands and the partner’s skin.
The sensation might be described as feeling magnetically bonded, or “pulled in” to
your practice partner’s skin. A moment later, or maybe as long as ten minutes, or even an
hour, later, you will notice that your skin ceases to feel bonded to your partner’s skin: the
magnetic bond seems to be broken.
In fact, your hand may detect the opposite sensation: it may seem as if your
partner’s skin is pushing your hand away ever so slightly. You’ll notice that, without your
realizing it, your hand has slightly lifted itself off the skin or clothing of your practice
partner. This is the signal to Let go.
The Let go sensation is similar to the sensation of trying to put two similar magnet
ends together. The force that repels the north end of one magnet from the north end of
another magnet is very much like the force that a person’s skin exerts on the hands of
someone who has been holding on for long enough.

Going back to the first feeling, the feeling of being magnetically attached, this
sensation of magnetic connection has been compared to the feeling that exists between two
socks that have been tumble dried together and have become charged with static. The socks
can be pulled apart, but the pulling will require a small amount of force: there is a
perceptible magnetic attraction between the two socks.
A similar attraction may be palpable between your hands and the skin (even
through clothing) of the partner. This feeling of magnetic attraction occurs when the patient
or practice partner’s skin or muscles want you to continue holding.

51
 This feeling of magnetic attraction may occur before, during, and/or after the
relaxation response.

Do not let go of your partner so long as you can feel that magnetic attraction that
seems to be keeping your hands attached to your partner.
If you try to remove your hand while your hand is still being magnetically attracted
to your partner’s skin, it will feel as if you must use a bit of force, as if you are wrenching
your hand up off of the partner. It will feel somehow wrong.
If you wait until the magnetic pull has dispersed, your hand will come up easily off
of your partner. If the magnetic pull disperses and it feels as if the patient’s skin has
reversed its charge, your hand may almost feel as if it is being subtly repelled away from
your partner.
If you feel as if your hand is being pushed away, then do not impose your hand any
longer. Gently remove your hands. You are finished, at that location, at least for the time
being.

Let go!
Sometimes, a Let go signal is not an indication that the relaxation response is
finished. Sometimes, a person’s skin will issue a “Let go” signal” immediately, even if there
was no relaxation response. This behavior suggests that the partner is feeling very
protective of this area. This may be an area that genuinely needs to be held, and will benefit
from being held, but is not yet ready to be held. If this is the case, do not impose yourself on
the area. Instead, the person might need to do some work to mentally turn off his
dissociation and/or fear before you can work on the area.
You can move on. Your partner can work on turning off his dissociation or fear
while you continue to assess his responsiveness elsewhere.
Choose another location a few inches away, and see if this new area is more willing
to accept your hands’ offer of support.
At some point, possibly after you’ve held the new spot for awhile, the partner’s
body may allow you to return to areas that previously didn’t want you.
Of course, if the patient seems uneasy or begins verbally trying to distract you as
you prepare to hold some part of his body, don’t impose yourself. Try some other area first,
and slowly win the confidence of the patient’s subconscious at the same time that the
patient is working on mentally changing his dissociation habit, if any.

Electric resistance to being touched

Sometimes, a person with strong emotional associations with his injury will have
such strong resistance to being touched, particularly in the vicinity of an injured area, that
when you first begin working with him, you cannot rest your hands on him for the first few
minutes, or maybe the entire hour, of the treatment. It might feel as if a strong electrical
charge is pushing you away. Sometimes this palpable resistance to being touched can be
evident at every session for many weeks.
This extreme level of aversion to being touched in a supportive manner, even after
doing mental exercises to terminate dissociation might mean that the person is using pause
mode.

52
 When I have a patient with this level of fear around being touched, I might do one
of several things. I might place my hands on an area very far from the injured and resistant
area. For example, if the injury is down in his foot, and his leg, all the way up to the hip, is
pushing me away, I might hold his upper arm…if it will let me.
In a case like this, the best you might hope for in the first few sessions is letting the
partner’s body learn to trust your hands while you use them in a “safe” place: a place far
away from the injury.
Or I might suspend my hands in the air space several inches immediately away
from his injured body part. I support my hands with the muscles of my arms and shoulders,
as if my hands were resting, nonchalantly, up against the electric field of his injured area
that is emitting a powerful Let go! signal. Usually within a few minutes or a few weeks, the
area is less afraid and allows me to set my hands down on the skin.
Then again, if this is the closest I can get to the partner, I might lead him through
the steps for diagnosing pause (in the back of this book), at this point, to make sure that the
patient is not using this neurological mode. If he is, I will not do FSR until pause has been
turned off.

Taking too long to say “Let go”

Sometimes it will seem a bit awkward at first if you are working on a patient and a
full minute goes by before you get the signal to let go. This awkwardness may be coming
from completely unrelated social conventions that tell us not to shake someone’s hand for
too long, or not to hug a person for too long.
Please, if your skin feels as if it is adhering to the partner’s body, don’t worry about
the social conventions for holding too long. If the patient’s body wants continued contact,
go ahead and give it.

The hug that lasts too long: an example

Oppositely, when you give a social hug that lasts too long, you can (if you are
sensitive to these things) feel the electrostatic repulsion force coming from that person –
even if you are both wearing heavy suits. Hopefully, most of us who are planning to do this
type of work already know, via our intuition (which is to say, in this case, our awareness of
the changes in static charge) exactly how long to keep hugging someone and when to let go.
Is there anyone among us who has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling after
being hugged for a bit too long? Oppositely, haven’t we all wanted, at some point in a
harried or stressful day, to just be held tightly for an indefinite period – until we feel that
we’ve had a chance to collect ourselves?
When holding small children, it is always obvious when they want to be held
steadily and snugly. They snuggle in and almost burrow into your chest. And yet, the
moment that they’ve decided that they don’t need a hug anymore, they are impossible to
restrain; they squirm and fidget, making it obvious that the time for holding is over. Period.
No one should need to be taught how to recognize when someone needs a hug, or
when someone wants the hug to end. However, in our somewhat non-touching culture,

53
when it comes to therapeutic touch, we actually have to study and practice in order to be
able to perform these basic, human functions correctly.1

Working through clothing

Electromagnetic fields are not significantly inhibited by thin clothing, any more
than the pull of a refrigerator magnet is significantly diminished by a thin piece of paper
between the magnet and the door of the fridge.
The force of these fields does decrease over distance, whether or not there is
clothing in the way. Therefore, thin clothing, which does not make a huge difference in the
distance between your hands and the skin of your patient, will not diminish the signals
being sent by the patient, but very thick clothing such as heavy parkas can diminish the
sensations simply because it increases the distance between your hand and your partner’s
skin.

Relaxing all over

As you get more accustomed to paying attention to what is happening to the skin
under your hands, you may notice a faint feeling of relaxation in your own hands, or even in
your arms or torso, a feeling that occurs at the same instant that the magnetic clinging
feeling goes away. As you become more comfortable doing this work, you may even begin
to notice that your own body perceptibly relaxes at the same time as the partner's skin says
“Let go.”
Sometimes it can feel as if you had been unintentionally holding your breath, and at
the moment when the partner relaxes, you find yourself exhaling, or relaxing your
abdomen.

Review
When should you not let go? Do not let go as long as the feeling of being “stuck” to
the partner’s skin via magnetic attraction is ongoing. Do not let go if you feel as if your
hands are being pulled in to the practice partner’s skin. Do not let go if, when you try to
remove your hands, you feel as if you have to use any force whatsoever to extricate your
hands.
When should you let go? Do let go if the magnetism or subtle feeling of attraction
has dispersed and you feel that you are no longer electrically attached to your partner’s skin.
Do let go if you feel an electric sense like that of two positive ends of a magnet being
pushed at each other, repulsing each other, between your hands and your partner. Do let go
if you feel uneasy in any way. Such a feeling of uneasiness may be coming from some

1
Some people do have trouble recognizing these signals. I have noticed that people taking
certain drugs, notably antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, and dopamine-enhancing anti-Parkinson’s
drugs, are sometimes not able to ascertain when they are receiving a Let go signal. And some people
just seem to be insensitive to the signals from others, but it may be that this is learned behavior, and
not a physiological lack.
Then again, genetic research in 2018 suggests that the capacity for empathy has a genetic
component as well as being related to cultural influences. “Genone-wide analyses of self-reported
empathy: correlations with autism, schoizophrenia, and anorexia nervosa”; Warrier, Toro,
Bhakrabaris, et al, Translational Psychiatry DOI:10.1038/s41398-017-0082-6

54
energetic turmoil that has been stirred up in your patient, and, if you don’t want to be a
party to it, that’s perfectly reasonable.
Of course, do let go if your partner verbally asks you to do so.

Working with a person with Parkinson’s disease

When you first start practicing this type of therapy, you should not try to learn this
awareness of when to let go by first working on a person with Parkinson’s. The skin of a
person with Parkinson’s may repel you for months. Oppositely, it might not emit a Let Go
signal for months. It may not do anything for a long, long time. The skin of a person with
Parkinson’s is the wrong place to learn sensitivity to shifts in electrical signals.
The absence of signals in the skin of a person with Parkinson’s is closely related to
the absence of signals in a mouse whose skin has been perforated by the claws of a cat: a
mouse that has gone rigid and feels dead to the touch, a mouse that has slipped into the
neurological mode of pause. The absence of electrical signal in the skin of the mouse
contributes to the cat quickly developing a disinterest in the seemingly lifeless mouse.
I repeat, when you are first getting used to supportive holding and looking for
signals regarding continuing the holding or letting go, practice on someone who does not
have Parkinson’s disease. You must first learn to recognize these feelings on a healthy
person.
Then again, if you find that, right off the bat, your “Parkinson’s” patient has
normal, healthy responses to FSR treatment in his injured areas, there’s a good chance your
patient was misdiagnosed. He might not actually have idiopathic Parkinson’s. Or maybe
your Parkinson’s patient has already read this material and turned off the dissociation or
pause, and that’s why he’s able to respond.
It is possible that your Parkinson’s patient will give off attraction or repulsion
signals but then again, it’s more likely that he won’t. At some point he may begin sending
these electrical signals. That will be a good sign that things are going the right direction.
But, in the beginning, learn to recognize the basic human “Hold Me” magnetic
attraction force or the Let go repulsion force while working on healthy people.
There are many cues that tell you whether to stay attached or to let go: the magnetic
attraction (holding) force, the repellent (letting go) force, the partner's tension (which
usually wants you to keep holding) or relaxation (often resulting in a Let go signal), and
even a feeling of tension or relaxation somewhere deep within your own body. These are all
signals telling you to either hang on or let go. You may notice one or several of them. When
you feel anything telling you to let go, let go.

You are ready to Practice FSR

You now know the basic technique of FSR. It consists of:
1. Holding: first, ask permission. Then, hold supportively: in such a way that your
hand’s force is met with an opposing force by your opposite hand.
2. Follow: hold snugly enough to the person’s skin with your hands so that if the
skin or underlying tissues move, your hands move with them. You continue to give steady
support.

55
 3. Diagnose: If you get a response, even a flicker at the first moment, fine. Move on
or, if there is a strong attraction between his skin and your hand, then wait for a Let go
signal.
If the person’s body does not respond to your holding, you might need to settle in
for a long holding session at that location, or make a note of the location of the
unresponsive area so that you can return to it later. This subject is discussed in greater detail
in the next chapter.
4. Let go: when the patient’s skin turns off or reverses the magnetic attraction to
your hand, or when he verbally tells you to let go, then let go.

Get out there and practice

There is not very much about these techniques that can be taught in words. The
techniques are very simple. The trick to mastering these techniques does not lie in
intellectual understanding. The best way to become proficient is to jump right in and
practice these biologically simple techniques. It is the practice, not the intellectual
understanding, that will make you skilled.
So many students have told me, “I’m not sure what I’m feeling.” The solution?
Stop thinking about what you’re feeling. Thinking about what the patient might need and
feeling what the patient does need are two different things. Go with the feeling. Trust your
hands.
Practice, practice, practice. At some point, you’ll realize that your hands know what
they are feeling, and they convey any pertinent information to your brain, without your
analytical intelligence getting in the way.
Practice will teach you more than any words can.
Even a few hours of practice, on maybe half a dozen people, might be enough to
teach you what a normal response is, and how to know when to let go. Even with this small
amount of practice, you might soon be able to notice, through your hand’s instincts, when
something is “not right” and therefore wants to be held, firmly, calmly, with no intention on
your part, until the area is ready to relax.

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“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the mind has struggled with in vain.”
– Carl Gustav Jung

Chapter ten

FSR as a diagnostic tool

Healthy areas in normal people usually relax quickly in response to firm, non-
intentioned support. Injured areas in people who are guarded, dissociated, or on pause with
regard to the injured area usually do not relax quickly in response to being firmly held.
This response, or lack of, allows you to use FSR as a diagnostic technique to
determine where, exactly, an unhealed, dissociated or guarded injury, if any, is located. At
the same time, FSR is a technique that can promote healing in such an area.
Referring to a health technique as both a diagnostic tool and a therapy is somewhat
uncommon in the western medical realm. However, when applying assessment methods that
indicate whether or not a person can pay attention to a given part of his body, the very
process of assessment can also bring the patient’s attention to that body part. As a person
brings his attention or curiosity to an area, it may also bring healing capability to the area:
so the health practitioner’s assessment is also a contribution to the therapy.1

1
Years ago, when I was studying Zero Balancing, a moderately Yin type of body stretching,
the teacher kept saying “Gently move the patient’s spine (or neck or whatever) in direction X or Y
and then assess what happens.” We were never told to treat anything – only “assess” the patient to
see where work was needed. Over the course of two days, I got increasingly antsy with the
“assessment” process. I was eager to find out what technique we would do on the areas that had been
“assessed” as needing more work. It turns out, there was no treatment technique! The “assessment”
was the whole thing.
Only at the end of the two-day workshop did it occur to me that the actual work of Zero
Balancing was the gentle moving of the patient for “assessment” purposes: the assessment process
was the technique. The verb “assess” had been used, very wisely, by the originator of Zero Balancing
to prevent students from thinking that the imposed movements should do anything to the patient.
By asking practitioners to “assess” what happened when very gently stretching or moving
the patient, the practitioners very carefully tuned in with what was going on in the patient’s body, but
didn’t try to actively do any intentional “healing” therapy. The significant benefit that was observed
by patients was “spontaneous”: it occurred on its own, while the practitioners were very gently
moving the patient around, making “assessments.”
I came to understand, several years later, that a major challenge for the many founders of
various schools of what’s called “light touch” therapy is writing up the instructional material. If the
founders use verbs that imply any sense of doing on the part of the practitioner, most of the students
will cheerfully misunderstand and use some, and therefore, too much, willfull manipulation.

57
 Diagnostically speaking, if your patient has a relaxation response to your firm
support in some particular part of his body, then that body part is probably healthy enough,
for your diagnostic purposes: you probably don’t need to work any longer in that particular
area.
Even so, hold it until it tells you to let go. It will probably tell you to let go very
quickly, in a few seconds or so.
If there had been any lurking unhealed bits of displaced bone or twisted fascia in
the area, the relaxation response and the anti-magnetic (the repulsion) “Let go” response
will indicate that your partner’s brain is 1) aware of your presence and 2) may have been
successfully reminded to start healing any unfinished business. The body might still have
some healing to do, but your job is finished: you have brought the patient’s awareness to the
area.
If your patient or practice partner did have a quick relaxation response, you can
make a mental note of the fact that this particular body location is able to respond, and you
can move on to the next body location, which might be a few inches away or somewhere
else entirely.
For diagnostic purposes, we are not necessarily looking for any specific sort of
movement. What we are looking for is the ability to respond in some manner – any manner.
If an area is mentally blocked or dissociated, it will not be able to respond to your touch. If
it cannot respond, it also cannot fully heal. If it cannot respond, you want to know about it,
so that you can plan on spending time holding that body part. You might do the FSR
holding now, or you might just make a note of the rigidity and come back later, after doing
more assessment.

Watching for movement

Practice supportive holding on your partner’s forearm and notice whether or not
any response occurs, and if so, how much. This may seem redundant at this point, but
though this action is similar to what you did in a previous chapter, notice that the focus has
now changed. We have moved away from “How much pressure?” to “Was there a
relaxation response?”
As pointed out in chapter eight and shown in the photographs labeled Fig.8.1 and
8.2, the relaxation response can be very very quick, and very subtle. You set your hands on
your patient in a specific position and almost instantly, in most cases, your hands are in a
slightly different position because the patient’s muscles have moved into a more relaxed
position.
So even though you have already practiced holding, try it again, but this time stay
focused on whether or not your patient responds. If he does respond, make a mental note
that this area is OK, and move on to another spot.
You can ask your practice partner if he has a history of broken arm or other trauma
in the arm. If so, this will be a good place to practice holding. There is a good chance that
the injured area will not respond as quickly, if at all, as other parts of the arm – a learning
experience.

If you still have gotten no relaxation response after a few minutes nor a Let go
signal (as discussed in the previous chapter), if the area just feels sort of dead, like the

58
proverbial “bump on a log,” lift your hands off the skin and move them to a new location a
few inches away. See if this new location responds.
If, at the new place, you get no response or you get another Let go signal, move to
yet another location. Very often, when working on a foot injury, the nearest place that will
actually respond is much farther up the leg, maybe even the at the thigh.
When you finally get to a place on the patient’s body that has a relaxation response
to your holding, you now have a starting place from you can slowly advance into the
unresponsive area. You hold the responsive area until it tells you to let go. You let go and
move an inch or so into the previously unresponsive area. You stay there until you get a “let
go” response.
Repeat this slow, steady progress into the next unresponsive area. Continue until
the entire area is able to respond to your supportive holding. When you are holding directly
over the most injured area you might need to hold for half an hour or even more. How long
the patient remains unresponsive depends a lot on the degree to which the patient has been
working on making himself mentally available to the area: the degree to which the patient
has turned off any dissociation or the use of pause.
By practicing FSR on a healthy person, you can learn to quickly recognize what the
normal range of responses of a healthy person feel like. Then, when you work on a person
who has an injury, you will be able to recognize the pathological response of rigidity, lack
of relaxation or an immediate Let go signal. Sometimes, you might not even be able to put
your hands on the patient in the area you are aiming for, because the patient’s skin in that
area is giving off a signal of magnetic repulsion before you even physically touch the area.

The lightening fast response

As noted previously, students often assume the response will not occur for several
seconds. They ignore that first, instantaneous “flinching” movement, and settle in to watch
for something dramatic.
The tiny “flinch” may well be the reflexive relaxation response that you are looking
for.

Working with a person with Parkinson’s

When treating a person with Parkinson’s disease, in order to discover which areas
of his legs and feet do not respond with a somewhat normal reflexive movement, FSR is
first used on his legs and feet in a fairly quick manner, looking for an area that will do any
sort of response. Very often, even if the foot and ankle are not responsive, a relaxation
response can be felt up by the knee, or in more “stuck” cases, up above the knee, on the
thigh or even the hip. After finding some spot on the hip, thigh, knee, or lower leg that is
responsive, you can then move down the leg, a few inches at a time, until you get to a spot
that doesn’t respond to your holding. You can then stay at this location until it responds,
until it “releases” the tension.
You can work your way from an area that is responsive down into an area of the
patient’s foot or leg (and later on, possibly an arm, hip, shoulder, neck, or cranial bone) that
does not respond within a few moments, or minutes. At this point, you might decide that
you are done with diagnosing, for now. Instead, you can settle in to provide “treatment” in

59
some particular location, usually an unresponsive area that is immediately adjacent to a
responsive area. You can settle in, get comfortable, and just hold the area until it responds.
The response, the release of its rigid holding pattern, might come in minutes, or in
hours, or after a few months of once-a-week, one-hour treatments. If the practitioner is a
spouse or a friend that lives nearby, treatments might be given every day. Usually, you
don’t want to do this for more than one hour per day.

Broken bones
Several times, when I’ve worked on a severely immobile area and it has finally
relaxed, the patient has later on, within minutes or days, experienced the severe pain of the
original injury. Often, within a few days, bruising and swelling suggestive of a broken
bone(s) appears. Sometimes, the patient has then recalled an event from decades earlier that
probably caused the break.
In some cases, after a week or so of extreme pain, patients have then gotten
radiology work done. Their scans have revealed broken bones.
Sometimes, because the bone break shows a week’s worth of healing, the patient is
admonished by the radiologist, “You should have come in a week ago, when you broke this.
I can see there is a week’s worth of healing at the edges of the break.”
If the patient tries to explain that the bone was broken years ago but only started
doing healing a week ago, the radiologist might assume the patient is lying. (This is what
my patients report to me.) Regardless, once the healing has started, it will proceed to fully
heal.
Having radiology work isn’t necessary, of course. But this secondary form of
diagnostics, radiology, can be helpful in proving to the patient that he did, in fact, have an
significant unhealed injury. This knowledge can help a patient be more patient with the
healing process.1

Setting standards for diagnostic tools: determining what is normal

You must practice on healthy people before undertaking treatment of people with
Parkinson’s or other syndromes that are related to dissociation or trauma. You must become
familiar with what constitutes a “healthy” response. A short vignette will demonstrate the
importance of this.

1
When I had barely started doing Yin Tui Na, my daughter broke a bone in her foot. The
after-hours doctor to which I took her was not a radiologist. He took an x-ray, glanced at it, and told
me the foot bone wasn’t broken.
I replied that I knew that it was broken based on Asian medicine diagnostics. In this case, I
was basing my diagnosis on both FSR and the sudden sensitivity in my daughter’s acupoint UB-11, a
point near the spine at the level of the first rib, a point known as “the meeting point for the bones.”
The doctor was unsettled enough by my confident attitude that, next morning, he showed
the x-ray to an actual radiologist. The radiologist quickly pointed to the break, at the exact location
that I had described. The doctor, who had a Chinese surname, was kind enough to call me and tell me
that I’d been right, and went on to say that he had always been fascinated by Asian medicine.

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“My patients don’t feel like this!”
My first weekend FSR seminar was attended by health practitioners, mostly
licensed acupuncturists, who had already started using FSR on their patients with
Parkinson’s disease (PD).
These practitioners were self-taught in FSR. They had used an earlier edition of this
text as their training manual. And for the most part, despite my admonitions, they had never
worked on healthy people – people with normal responses.
Most of them felt that they’d already treated their PD patients “long enough” (a
mere few weeks or maybe a couple of months) and wondered why they weren’t seeing
some recovery symptoms.
I repeat, most of these practitioners had never bothered to practice first on healthy
people. Ignoring the text’s repeated suggestions that these techniques should be first
practiced on healthy people, these practitioners had assured themselves that the tiny,
random, once-in-a-great while sensations of faint electrical static coming from their
Parkinson’s patients were the normal relaxation responses that they were looking for.
Based on this wrong, presumed “evidence” of relaxation responses, they all had
assumed that their patients’ injuries must have started healing.
The therapists, being acupuncturists, for the most part, had moved on from using
FSR based on these faint sensations of static coming from terribly rigid and unresponsive
feet and ankles, and were now using acupuncture needles (their comfort zone) or physical
manipulations on people who still had unhealed, dissociated injuries or were on pause and
who still had the backwards-running channel Qi that is characteristic of Parkinson’s.
I quickly learned that these acupuncturists were all using needles to try to invigorate
the currents of channel Qi, despite their patients’ currents still running backwards. They
assumed that this was the right course because the blockage must be gone: it must be gone
because they had spent hours doing FSR and they had felt faint sensations of static, which
they assumed was the same as relaxation movements: releases of holding patterns.
(This was prior to 2003, when we were still working with people that were taking
anti-parkinson’s medications. The static feeling, and/or a feeling as if snakes are moving
under the skin is characteristic in people using dopamine-enhancing medications.)
They thought that, with effort, they could detect subtle static, or maybe movement
deep inside the skin. Because there were no other responses occurring, they assumed,
wrongly, that these bits of static charge must be the “relaxation movement” that I’d written
about.
During the seminar, I had the students begin by working on each other – working
on relatively healthy people.
When the students settled their hands on healthy people, their fellow students, they
were astonished.
One student exclaimed to the room at large, “Oh my gosh! Is this what a normal
person responds like? This is a huge response! My Parkinson’s patient doesn’t feel anything
like this!”
This particular practitioner had been writing to me for about two months telling me
about her FSR progress with her PD patient. She had said that he was responding
beautifully to her FSR, but he wasn’t seeing a change in his PD symptoms. She wondered
why.

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 When this practitioner exclaimed this way, I asked her point blank if she had ever
tried these techniques on a healthy person – as repeatedly recommended in my previous
editions of this material.
She told me, “No, I assumed I didn’t need to. I’m a licensed acupuncturist, and a
massage therapist. I thought I knew what it felt like to touch a person.”
As a massage therapist, she did know what it felt like, to her, to invasively push and
shove on a person. But she’d never paid much attention to how the patient responded. She
had never noticed how a patient responds to supportive, non-invasive holding.
In fact, with all the students at the seminar, their Parkinson’s patients were not yet
making normal responses to touch, but the students assumed that they were. Their patients
still needed lots of Yin Tui Na therapy. For that matter, many were actually stuck on pause
or dissociated. They needed more than just FSR. They needed to do mental work to either
re-associate with the injury or turn off their use of pause mode.
But the main point here is that the therapists, even those with years of experience in
bodywork of the push-and-shove variety didn’t have any idea what a healthy and normal
relaxation response was.

Oppositely, when I taught a class at the local acupuncture college, a class in general
Yin Tui Na, using FSR as the most Yin example of Tui Na techniques, my students quickly,
within a few weeks of practicing FSR on each other, felt very confident that they knew how
to supportively hold a patient and observe the quick relaxation response.
After a few weeks, I brought into class, as subjects, six people with Parkinson’s, so
that my students could learn how to do the very patient, slow part of this technique: sitting
and holding and waiting for a response from a person whose body doesn’t want to respond
with relaxation, at first.
Within a few minutes of snuggling their hands onto the legs and/or feet of the
people with Parkinson’s, all the students looked baffled.
One raised her hand, “What is it we’re supposed to be doing?”
The other students quickly chimed in. “I’ve forgotten what we’re supposed to do!”
and “I’ve forgotten what we’re looking for!”
The utter non-responses, the deathlike stillness in feet of people with Parkinson’s
were so weird, so completely abnormal, that all of the students felt that they’d “forgotten”
what it was they were supposed to be doing.
I had to reassure the students that they were doing the technique correctly – the
non-response was because of the patients, not because of the poor technique of the students.
Even though the patients were not responding to being held, the job of the students
was to find some area farther up the leg that might be capable of a healthy response.
Then, they needed to provide supportive holding until such time as the patient’s
rigidity relaxed or gave a Let go signal, or until the patient starting being a little responsive
in any way, shape, or form. Then, after that response, they might move their hands a little
further into the non-responsive zone.
If a person has no training in FSR, he may not realize if a patient is having a
somewhat “normal” response or not. Therefore, I state again: the following techniques
should be practiced on several healthy people before they are used on people with injury-
induced rigidity, pain, numbness, or some sort of “holding pattern.”

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 After practicing these techniques on several or dozens of healthy people, a therapist
may have enough sense of the normal range of healthy response that, when he comes across
a strangely unresponsive area on his patient, he will be able to suspect that there is
something wrong, such as unhealed injury, or even dissociation, at that spot. He will also be
able to tell when the injured area is starting to feel healthier, closer to normal, because it
will eventually begin to relax, to move, in response to support.

“Never tonify a rebellious condition”

As an aside to any acupuncturist reading this book and a follow up to the above
section that mentioned acupuncturists using needles on patients who weren’t “ready,” you
might recall from your schooling that inserting acupuncture needles into backwards flowing
channel Qi will not correct the flow pattern. It is a first-semester rule of Chinese medicine
that one should “Never Tonify an Excess condition.”
“Stagnation,” channel Qi (electrical) blockages, and the backwards-running
(“Rebellious”) channel Qi that is characteristic of Parkinson’s are all “Excess” conditions.
Inserting acupuncture needles into an area that is Excess increases the amperage
(Tonifies) in the immediate vicinity of the needles, and can increase the amount of current
that is Stagnant, blocked, or running backwards, thus making things worse.
Don’t ever insert needles in a current that is running backwards.1

Immobility and non-responsiveness coming from the mind, with no injury

In some cases, FSR will elicit no response, whatsoever – as if the patient has an
unhealed injury from which he has dissociated – but there is no injury anywhere in the
body, none at all. The patient just has a profound inability to respond.
This kind of non-responsiveness is, in my experience, most often an indication that
the person is using pause mode. The use of pause can trigger the non-responsiveness that is
supposed to occur when a person is in profound shock or coma, teetering on the verge of
death.

Essential tremor
I have seen patients with no history of any significant injury, whose bodies do not
feel as if they are suppressing an injury, who are using self-induced pause. These patients
have often had terrible tremoring, especially in the hands and arms, but they do not have the
four categories of symptoms necessary to make a diagnosis of Parkinson’s. They have
usually been diagnosed with Essential Tremor.
Unlike most of my patients with Parkinson’s, whose diagnostic visualizations
suggest agitation in the area of the sacrum, some people with essential tremor have
diagnostic visualizations that suggest agitation in the pericardium, the connective tissue
around the heart.

1
Tracking the Dragon, a textbook on advanced channel theory, goes into this in great detail.
Available at JaniceHadlock.com. The first chapter is available for free download at
www.pdrecovery.org.

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Some weirdnesses of partial recovery
Sometimes, if the person is in partial recovery, he may perform “normal” relaxation
responses if his mindset switches over to “relaxed” (not on pause).
I can often induce such a fleeting “mental relaxation” in a person with partial
recovery from Parkinson’s by telling a goofy joke or two. I tell the joke, and within less
than a minute, the leg or foot becomes responsive. As soon as the patient has time to revert
back to his usual mindset of pause, complete with a high level of risk-assessment and
wariness, the leg may become unresponsive again – either immediately or over the next
hour or so.
A patient who is using self-induced pause to “keep himself safe” may learn to relax
during FSR sessions: the leg or foot in question will relax and be responsive during
treatments, but it can tighten back up and behave as if injured again as soon as the treatment
session is over. I had one patient whose legs stay relaxed for a day and a half, following
each FSR session, before tightening back up again from fear. This patient did not need more
FSR, though he liked getting it. He needed to turn off his self-induced pause – which he did
not want to do.
He wanted me to permanently turn off his mental use of pause by holding his feet
once a week. This is impossible. The root of the problem was in his own mind, not in his
foot.
In response to each week’s FSR session, he was able to move normally for hours or
even a day or two, until some negative thought passed through his mind, after which he had
all his symptoms of Parkinson’s again.
Again, if your patient is stuck in partial recovery or is still using self-induced pause,
your use of FSR for the legs and feet might be met with rigidity and non-responsiveness
even though there is no injury-based blockage. In some cases, there was an injury, the
injury responded to FSR, and the injury has now healed but the patient will still revert into
rigidity – exactly as if re-injured – in the healed area…because he is still using self-induced
pause. This is another example of the bizarre things that can happen in partial recovery.
The solution in this case is not more FSR. The only solution is turning off pause –
and it will be harder to turn off pause if the injury has been treated with FSR and then
healed while the mind was still using the wariness of pause: was still obeying an instruction
to pretend to be numb or as if on the verge of death.
As noted in chapter three, a person who is stuck on pause is not a good candidate
for FSR treatment until after he turns off the pause behaviors and his body behaves
physiologically and electrically as if he feels inherently safe enough to be fully alive. He
may be worse off if his injury(s) heal while he is still on pause.

Multiple injuries
You might find more than one place on the body that needs attention.
In one memorable case, a professional musician who had Parkinson’s from
dissociation, a person who was not on pause, was still manifesting many Parkinson’s
symptoms even after she re-associated with her foot injury. After her foot injury healed, her
legs resumed normal, healthy movement. However, she still had tremor and rigidity in her
face and arms.

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 Like many of my other Parkinson’s patients who were professional musicians, she
had dissociated from her injuries but had not put herself on pause.
Despite her legs resuming normal function, she still seemed to have what you might
call constant, “full-blown Parkinson’s” in her upper body. This was very unlike those
patients who are on pause who slide into partial recovery after the foot injury has healed.
A thorough inquiry revealed that, about ten years earlier, she had received a violent
blow to the side of the head from a piece of falling furniture: she’d been unconscious for
two days.
I was baffled because her Parkinson’s symptoms weren’t completely clearing up
now that her foot injury had healed. So I decided to hold the site of the old head injury. I
had been firmly holding her utterly rigid temporal bones (near the ears). These bones,
derived from ancestral gills, are supposed to perform a faint back and forth rotation with
every incoming and outgoing breath. I’d been holding these unmoving bones, simply
holding them with firm, supportive pressure, for around forty-five minutes when, suddenly,
it felt to my hands as if all the bones in her skull were shifting around.
Right there in my office, she experienced the recovery symptom of internal brain
shift that’s described in Recovery from Parkinson’s. All her symptoms utterly ceased. The
internal tremor, as well as the visible tremor, disappeared. Her neck relaxed, straightened
out, and then, though her face had been a rigid mask a few minutes earlier, she smiled!
And she announced, with utter certainty, “I’m all better!”
And she was.
That was more than ten years ago, and she’s not had any Parkinson’s symptoms
since that day.
I included this case study to make the point that sometimes, as you are looking for
an area that is unresponsive and possibly dissociated, there might be more than one place
that wants holding.

Diagnostics based on some sort of response: summary

This technique can be used diagnostically in this sense: if no response occurs in the
patient within a few seconds of making contact, there is probably subconscious tension,
physical or electrical blockage, or some sort of mental protective holding pattern such as
dissociation or self-induced dissociation in the vicinity of where you are holding, or the use
of pause mode.

Again, what is a relaxation response? Any movement. The movement may be

almost visually imperceptible, or it might be a big jerk. It may be accompanied by a small
clicking or popping sound as bones slide back into place. Movements might seem like the
follow-through to an old impact, or wiggle back and forth, or make circular movements, or
a slow glide. The response might occur almost instantly, and you might even miss it unless
you are paying attention, or it might take a few seconds, or even up to a minute.
Oppositely, an absence of movement or a subtle magnetic attraction between your
hand and the patient’s skin, an attraction that doesn’t want to let go even after ten minutes,
or longer, suggests that there’s something either out of place, broken, or for some other
reason crying for attention in the immediate area. But it’s not yet ready or able to respond
and/or release. If so, this area may benefit from a short or a long period of holding, or

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several sessions of holding – sessions that eventually lead up to one, or several, relaxation
responses.
If you use this technique regularly, you may become very accurate in your
diagnoses: quickly able to determine the exact locations of unhealed injuries – including
ones of which the patient is not aware (although he or family members might remember it
when asked.) For that matter, I’ve had patients who were unaware of ever having a foot
injury even though they had a large surgical scar, complete with the little dots where the
sutures were, on their foot. Only after they re-associated with their feet were they able to
say something like, “Hey, look! There’s a scar there. I just remembered when that
happened…”

And if you use this technique often enough, you will prove to yourself that you can
help initiate healing in a rigid or unhealed area by giving a person’s injury(s) the supportive
holding that it has been waiting for.

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Chapter eleven

Advanced FSR techniques

Holding combined with a bit of a nudge

Sometimes, if the person’s body does not respond immediately to firm, supportive
contact, it is possible that, instead of stony dissociation, only some mild tension is
stubbornly residing therein. Very often, in these cases, the area under contact will not budge
until some gentle suggestion of movement disrupts the tension pattern. The area, even if it
doesn’t move instantly, might move and respond if it is given a little bit of a nudge.
Sometimes, a slight nudge of movement from the practitioner’s hands is all that is
required for the body part in question to wake up to the fact that it is being supported. Once
it is awake, the body part may respond nicely.
As soon as you make a tiny move, the patient’s subconscious muscle tension might
loosen up enough that, a moment or two later, it will respond to your continuation of the
simple firm holding of FSR by making some relaxation movement.
Even without the presence of dissociation or an unhealed injury, a patient may have
some little bit of hesitancy or tension, some snag in a certain area that prevents relaxation of
that area. If a patient’s body does not seem to respond in any way to being supported, a
gentle, almost imperceptible nudge, even an imagined nudge of your hands may be enough
to suggest to the patient’s muscle tension that he can let go of the snag. If so, you will
perceive a slight relaxation movement in response to the nudge.
Then, after the initial hesitancy is gone, the patient may respond further or, in
future, he will respond normally to the basic holding technique.
Diagnostically, if this spot is able to respond to a small nudge of the hands, this spot
was not what you would call a “problem area.” Diagnostically, the area was able to respond.
As a diagnostician, you are mostly hunting for areas that do not respond to holding or to a
gentle nudge. As soon as an area responds, the practitioner can either move along or wait
for a Let go signal.

A bit of a nudge
What is meant by a bit of a nudge or a tiny nudge?
The tiny movement is not really a push, it is more like a tiny bounce, or pulsing
motion in which the practitioner’s hands move, momentarily, a sixteenth (1/16) or a thirty-
second (1/32) of an inch closer together and then rebound back apart again.
Let’s say that you, the practitioner, find yourself supporting your partner’s forearm
with your hands opposite each other. You may employ a little bit of quick force to bring
your hands closer together ever-so-slightly. Then, immediately let your hands rebound back
to their original position.

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 Note that I never use the words “push or shove on the patient with your hands.”
Instead, my language is that the hands of the practitioner come closer to each other and then
bounce back apart to their starting position. The practitioner is focusing on his own hands,
not on what is happening to the patient.

If this tiny bit of a nudge is small enough, the patient will not even perceive the
force of the nudge. The nudge will not be felt because both of your hands are opposite each
other, taking up the nudge pressure from each other. Since the patient is supported, he
doesn’t need to do any work to resist the change in pressure. Therefore, he won’t really
notice what you are doing.
Very often, if a slight tension in the patient is preventing the normal type of
relaxation response that most people have to supportive holding, this tiny, very quick,
invisible-to-the-naked-eye nudging movement, or maybe five or six nudging movements,
will dislodge the tension. Once the tension is dislodged, the area being held may well move
a bit in one direction or another. Then, the area may take advantage of the support being
provided to relax to a yet more comfortable position. When this occurs, when the area starts
to move, the practitioner’s hands must follow the movement, continuing to provide support,
as described in the section on holding on, until the hands get a Let go signal.

If nothing happens: imagine the nudge

Sometime, when the area is stubborn and doesn’t even flinch or move in response
to a subtle, quick nudge, you need to become more subtle. In such cases, imagining that
you are pulsing your hands together for a fleeting moment might elicit a response.
Bear in mind that you are not imagining that the patient is going to move. This
would be an imposition on the patient. As always, this technique allows the patient to do
whatever he wants. You will imagine only that your hands are moving closer together, just a
tad, and than rebounding to their original position.
This extremely subtle type of “movement” (imaginary) is very often the most
effective type of stimulation for stubborn tensions. Very often, imagining that you are
moving your hands as if giving a tiny nudge is the best way to wake up an area in your
partner that is stubbornly stuck.

If nothing happens: change hand positions

If there is no response to the little pulsing movement of your hands, or several of
them, you can either just stay where you are and, giving firm support, try another nudge in a
few minutes, or you can move the hands a little bit, to a new position. Maybe move them a
little more anteriorly/posteriorly (fore and aft), or maybe a little bit laterally/medially (side
to side).
Play around with responding to what you feel in your patient. This is not a precise
rocket science. What you are doing with FSR is merely giving support to a person in a very
natural way, in the same way a dog will automatically know to lick his owner at the owner’s
injury site.
The only reason this subject has to be addressed in a book is that we have been
taught to not touch ourselves or others in a healing way, and we’ve been taught to ignore
our intuitive awareness of how another person is best able to accept physical support.

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 You can learn to do this. Mostly, you just need to unlearn your hesitancy and listen
to your own hands.

If nothing happens: try something else

You can try a few other moves with your hands if there is no response even after
you try doing a gentle, two-handed nudge or an imaginary nudge. You can try shifting your
hands a bit: maybe they will settle into a position that is even more comfortable for you, and
which therefore conveys a more supportive feeling to your partner.
If nothing you do elicits a response, you can try again, using a slightly more
forceful nudge. Every once in a very great while, a genuine physical move of pushing your
hands together a whopping fourth of an inch (1/4”) with an actual bit of force and then
immediately letting your hands rebound to the original position might be beneficial and
might trigger a response and relaxation from the person’s rigid body part.
Usually, if this is the case, you will know it because something in your hands “tells
you” that a slight amount of physical “bouncing” or “nudging” is necessary.
In general, using more force is a technique of last resort, but once in a while, you
might feel the need to do so. If so, don’t be overtly pushy, of course. Simply bring your
hands together a tiny bit more crisply than usual, using a tiny bit more force, and let them
bounce back again to their normal holding position.
If this extra force doesn’t do any good, it’s usually best to go back to simple
holding for a few more minutes to see if any sort of response will occur. If, after a bit of
pulsing movements with your hands, either small or slightly forceful, nothing happens, then
you can conclude that you’ve found a “stuck place.” Settle in and just hold the area.
Or, very possibly, after the surrounding areas have relaxed, the stubborn area will
be able to respond.
If the stubborn bit simply does not respond no matter what, but instead sits
impassively, as if it isn’t really quite alive, it is very likely that an injury, subconscious
tension and/or tissue displacement has happened in this area, together with dissociation or
the use of pause mode. If this is the case, and you are still just doing diagnostic assessment,
you will want to make a written or mental note of the area, and then move on.
If you have already assessed the whole area and you are returning to those areas
that didn’t seem to respond, then make yourself comfortable and settle down to holding this
unresponsive area for a long, long time, while maybe walking your patient through the
exercises for turning off dissociation or self-induced dissociation.
Again, help in diagnosing which type of mental situation is present, if any, is
provided at the back of this book in the appendices.

Advanced techniques for Parkinson’s patients

When working on a Parkinson’s patient, it is very likely that you will find
unresponsive areas in the ankle and mid-foot. You might also find unresponsive areas in the
knee, hip, shoulder, neck, and other areas, depending on the injury history of your patient.

Working with a person with Parkinson’s can be a bit more challenging than
working with a non-PD patient, because the areas that are unresponsive can cover such a
large part of the body.

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 For example, if the PD patient dissociated from his foot when he was a child, the
non-responsive area may have slowly and surreptitiously expanded to include his ankle,
lower leg, knee, and even upper leg or hip. By the time you start working on the patient, his
entire leg may feel somewhat dead, wooden, and unresponsive. But you don’t really want to
be holding the upper leg for an hour a week, for a year, when the actual unhealed injury
location is in the foot.
So you will want to feel over the entire unresponsive area to find that spot that feels
the most rigid.
I usually start up by the knee – assuming that there are signs of responsiveness in
the knee area. After holding the knee for a bit, until it responds, I’ll place my hands a few
inches below the knee, and wait for a response. If there is a response, I’ll move my hands
even lower down the leg, and keep going until I get to a rigid place.

If, on the other hand, the place just below the knee shows no signs of response, I
may choose to stay there for five or ten minutes, just to see what happens, and to give the
body a chance to get used to the idea of being held in my hands. Sometimes, after ten
minutes or so, the leg area being held will respond in some manner and I will continue
working my way down the leg. Other times, it will not respond at all.
If this is the case, I will give a gentle nudge, a gentler nudge, an imaginary nudge,
and maybe a slightly stronger nudge. If there has been no response, I might still continue a
few inches down the leg again, slowly making my way towards the spot that is more
probably the source of the original problem: the ankle and/or foot.
With people with Parkinson’s, I often find that imagining a nudging movement in
my hands is just as likely, or even more likely, to elicit a response than actual movement of
my hands. Then again, every patient is different.

When I finally arrive at what is most likely the real source of the problem – the
actual location of injury, the original point of impact – the area usually feels truly different.
It just feels wrong. You can only know what feels wrong, of course, if you have spent some
time learning what feels right.
One way in which the location might feel wrong is that bones are obviously
displaced – sticking out from the usual line of the foot, or the whole foot may be jutting to
one side or the other, due to a displacement in the ankle. These visually obvious
displacements can be helpful. But after you’ve done this work for a while, the non-visible,
feel-able vibrations given off by a displaced or damaged body part are your best diagnostic
cues.
Once I get to the place where the actual injury is probably lurking, I settle in and
get comfortable. Often, my approach is to start with just holding at the injury site. This is
most often, because of the design of the foot, located at the second cuneiform bone, in the
center of the foot. I hold that area for maybe ten minutes, maybe fifty minutes.
If there has been no response after about ten minutes, I might make very small
moves with my hands. If there is no response, my hand movements get smaller still.
Always, my goal is to be firm yet fairly imperceptible to the patient.
If still no response, I might make an even tinier movement. If still no response, I
will try to keep my hands stationary and imagine that I am making a tiny movement. If this
doesn’t work, I will imagine that I am making an even tinier movement. If, after all this,

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there has been no response, I go back to just plain holding, firmly, for another ten minutes
or half hour or fifty minutes – whatever seems right at the time. I never do more than a one-
hour session. I usually work with a patient once a week, for an hour at a time.

Sometimes, a patient’s body can produce a Let go signal even though nothing
“positive” has happened. When this occurs, let go, and hold on somewhere else, nearby.
This is not a bad thing – it shows that the patient did have some awareness of your hands,
even if it was only a resentful one. That might signify progress.
Other times, it may seem as if the patient’s injured foot or ankle is pulling your
hands deeper into his skin, as if he desperately wants even more support than you are
giving. This, too, is a response, and therefore a good thing. If you get this powerful feeling
that your hands are being “sucked in” to the patient’s skin, then stay where you are and let
your hands stick like glue until the feeling shifts or the session comes to a close.
Then again, if the patient’s foot has the injury but the upper leg or knee is pulling
you in, for support, don’t necessarily spend all your time on that upper leg or knee. Be sure
to spend more of your time on the root of the problem – usually the ankle and/or foot.
When the foot finally does start to respond and the bones or tendons reposition
themselves or release static charge into your hands, the upper leg might very well
automatically get the energy and flexibility that it’s been yearning for.
With PD patients, you probably want to spend most of your time on the foot and/or
ankle, even though other areas are calling to you. In the end, it is usually, though not
always, the foot/ankle problem that is causing the upper leg and knee problems.

This is not always the case. I had one patient whose foot and ankle problems were
pretty much resolved, after about two years of once-a-week, one-hour treatments. However,
she still had rigidity in her leg and hip, so I started focusing on these areas. After a year of
holding her unresponsive leg, one hour sessions, one per week, her thigh began to move in
response to my holding. Excruciating pain erupted in her upper leg. Within a day, a
massive, blackish bruise appeared. It covered half of the side of her thigh, the type of bruise
you might expect from a broken femur (thigh bone). The pain and the bruise slowly
dissipated over several weeks. She could not bear weight on that leg during this time.
Slowly, the area healed.
She probably needed FSR therapy over such a long span because I had not yet
learned about mental medical Qi Gong exercises to accelerate getting rid of dissociation and
pause, both of which she had, as it turned out. I had been using only Yin Tui Na.
But the main point here is that, if there is an injury in the knee or leg, in addition to
the foot injury, those injuries might also need hands-on support.

But many, maybe most, people with PD have only the foot and/or ankle injury
holding the PD symptoms in place – together with dissociation and/or in most cases, pause.
You just never know exactly what might be hidden inside the body of a person who
has led an active life and who, since childhood has been dissociating from injuries or telling
himself to “play dead” or “don’t feel.”

Getting back to the amount of nudging that you might do: if there has been no
response to any of the nudgings, don’t try them again right away. It may require weeks,

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even months, of holding treatments before the injury in a person with Parkinson’s becomes
responsive. Too much nudging and messing around can actually cause increased
guardedness in the person with Parkinson’s, and increase the total amount of time needed
for therapy.

Don’t stare down your patient’s unblinking foot

Don’t forget: your attention is on your own hands and not particularly focused on
the patient. Don’t be scrutinizing the patient too severely. Don’t be impatient. It’s not up to
you when a person is going to decide that he’s safe enough to deal with his past injuries.
A watched pot never boils and a wary person, like a silverback gorilla, does not like
to be stared at. You can learn to be aware of whether or not a patient has responded without
conveying to the patient that his every move is being assessed.
Be somewhat detached, but firm in your connection, like the sailor that shifts and
sways ever so slightly in response to the movement of the ocean, even though he is not
paying conscious attention to the waves.

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Chapter twelve

Foot and ankle work

This chapter has some specific holding suggestions for ankle and foot.
The drawings of the foot bones in this chapter might help you feel more familiar
with the terrain as you start to hold your patients feet. The first drawing is a top view of the
foot, with each of the bones labeled. This drawing, a simplified diagram of the foot bones,
is provided to familiarize you with the names of the bones and their approximate locations.
The detailed, dimensional drawings of the foot bones are viewed from seven
different angles. The detailed diagrams give a better sense of how the joints actually fit
together in three dimensions.

Regarding people with Parkinson’s

Although people with Parkinson’s may have neck, shoulder, hip, arm, cranial and
spinal injuries that will benefit from treatment, and all of them might need to be treated in
order to recover, they almost always have foot injuries. Not only that, if the foot injury is
causing a blockage at the intermediate cuneiform bone or vicinity, it is contributing to, or in
some cases of dissociation, solely responsible for, those backwards-flowing electrical
currents that are seen in idiopathic Parkinson’s.
Sometimes other foot and ankle injuries also contribute. Still, based on what seems
to be the most frequent site for injured and displaced tissues, after exploring the general
area and finding the areas that are unresponsive, I usually end up starting my long-term
holding with the almost-always-present Unhealed Foot Injury at the intermediate cuneiform.
Even if the foot starts to heal on its own as soon as pause or dissociation has been
turned off, I still like to start treating a Parkinson’s patient at the 2nd cuneiform bone, one of
the foot bones with the widest range of movement, and therefore the one most likely to be
displaced in a foot injury.

Notice the intermediate cuneiform bone

As you peruse the drawings, particularly note the size and shape of the middle (the
2nd, or “intermediate”) cuneiform bone in all the drawings. This center-of-the foot bone is
supposed to move up and down freely during every footfall, enabling the foot to be
somewhat arched or flat, at any given moment. Because of its tremendous freedom of
movement, this bone is the one that is most often displaced during foot injuries.
This bone marks the end of an electrical sub-dermal current referred to, in Chinese
medicine, as the “Stomach channel.” This bone is the point from which the Stomach
channel bifurcates, one branch flowing down to the toes, another branch flowing over to the
side of the foot. Obstructions to electrical flow in the vicinity of this bone, obstructions such
as torn or displaced tissue, scar tissue, and emotional inhibitions, can cause the Stomach
channel to reverse course and run backwards – run up the leg.

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 Also, during healthy, normal use of pause mode due to severe shock, coma, or life-
threatening injury, it is from this point on the foot that the energy in the Stomach channel
flows backwards, moving towards the head.1

Observe that this intermediate cuneiform bone is quite substantial when looking
down on it from the top view of the foot (fig. 12.1 and fig. 12.4). It looks like a good-sized
“square” bone. The view of the same bone from the underside (plantar side) of the foot (fig.
12.8) will show you that this bone is so severely wedge-shaped from top to bottom that it
tapers nearly to the point of disappearance by the time it gets to the underside of the foot; all
that can be seen of it is a tiny sliver, tucked almost under the 1st cuneiform bone.
The word “cuneiform” means “wedge-shaped.

“Ankle bones”
In the drawings that follow, the so-called “ankle bones” are not pictured. To be
perfectly accurate, the so-called “ankle bones” are protrusions on the lower leg bones.
These knobby ends of the leg bones nestle into either side of the talus bone, as well as
sticking out to the sides, forming the protrusions that we refer to as “ankle bones.”

1
As a physiological aside, the backwards flow of the Stomach channel Qi during pause
mode is the reason that nausea is a common side-effect of shock or body-wide anesthetic. When the
Stomach channel flow is suddenly switched from the correct direction to the backwards direction, the
Stomach itself stops receiving electrical support for normal (downward) peristalsis (gut movement).
When a person’s stomach ceases to receive electrical instruction, the person may experience a
decrease in appetite. In a case of severe shock or anesthesia, the person may automatically eject any
food that might be in the stomach.
People with Parkinson’s disease, whose Stomach channel flow has gradually, over decades,
been altered, do not necessarily have constant, low-grade nausea, though some of my patients have
had this symptom. However, many people with Parkinson’s do have diminished appetites and often
have trouble maintaining a healthy weight.

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A. Calcaneus
B. Talus
C. Navicular
D. Cuboid
E. Medial (1st) Cuneiform
F. Intermediate (2nd) Cuneiform
G. Lateral (3rd) Cuneiform
H. 1st Metatarsal
I. 2nd Metatarsal
J. 3rd Metatarsal
K. 4th Metatarsal
L. 5th Metatarsal
M. 1st Phalange 1st toe
N. 1st Phalange 2nd toe
O. 1st Phalange 3rd toe
P. 1st Phalange 4th toe
Q. 1st Phalange 5th toe
R. 2nd Phalanges

Fig. 12.1
The bones of the foot.

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Fig. 12.2
Position 1: Medial-side view of the foot

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Fig. 12.3
Position 2: Foot rotating slightly medially

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Fig. 12.4
Position 3: Top view of the foot

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Fig. 12.5
Position 4: Continuing rotation

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Fig. 12.5
Position 5: Continuing rotation

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Fig. 12.7
Position 6: Lateral-side view of the foot

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 Fig. 12.8
Plantar view (looking at the bottom of the foot). Note the thin sliver of the intermediate
cuneiform bone, nestled in between the 1st cuneiform and the 3rd cuneiform.

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Suggestions for where to place your hands on the feet
After you’ve quickly, or slowly, worked your way down the leg from the relatively
more responsive areas at the knee or hip and noticed how the areas responded or not, or
want more work, you will end up at the ankles and feet.

It was relatively easy to describe “where to put the hands” when working on the
arms and legs – place one hand on any side of the arm or leg and then place your other hand
opposite the first one.
When it comes to the ankles and feet, it becomes much harder to explain exactly
where the hands might want to go. Even so, within a few hours of practicing, it may become
obvious – your hands will know what to do, even if your mind does not. But in the
beginning it will seem easier to you if you have a few suggestions of where to place your
hands.

Then again, I am almost hesitant to describe where, exactly, to place the hands
when you’ve moved all the way down the leg to the ankle; many students cling too rigidly
to whatever I write, particularly when I describe some ankle and foot holds, even though I
state over and over that the following are just suggestions. But some people are so
unaccustomed to holding feet and ankles that they truly do not know where to start. This
chapter provides the suggestions for places that a practitioner can hold his hands. As you
become more accustomed to holding and feeling, you will soon learn where to place your
hands to give 1) firm support and 2) be comfortable.
The following list of possible places that you might want to put your hands also
includes suggestions for directions in which you will perform your extremely gentle nudge,
if any.
Again, the only reason for resting or nudging one’s hands in these suggested
positions is to determine whether or not the touch evokes a healthy response. You are not
trying to forcefully move any bones, force looseness upon anything that feels tight, or force
a displaced bone to its correct position.
The following suggestions will help you assess which areas might need more
holding and if they need a different type of holding. If the areas do not respond to holding
or nudging, they may be needing the “just sitting there, holding” variant of FSR that we use
on people with Parkinson’s or on anyone with a stubborn injury.

If you want to place your hands in different places than the ones suggested, do so.
The following suggestions are merely to get you started.

Ankle and foot holding/nudging positions: some suggestions

Place a hand on either side of the ankle, with the medial and lateral malleoli (inner
and outer ankle bones) each held snugly in a palm of your hand. If the ankle area feels
responsive to your touch, good: you can move on. If not, make a note of it and move on,
though you may wish to return to this area later.

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 Next, to find out about the ankle articulations, you may want to try nudging – or
thinking about nudging (usually more effective) – the ankle bones in a few different planes
of movement.
Try not to dwell on how you think the ankles should move. Just notice that the
ankles move or don’t when you firmly hold or gently nudge them in.

Fig. 12.9 Holding the ankles

You may wish to push your hands that are holding the ankle bones towards each
other and note if the ankles respond by moving in the opposite (outward) direction. You
may wish to see if the ankle bones will nestle closer to each other as a rebound move when
you imagine that your hands, closely connected to the skin of the ankle bones, move slightly
apart for a moment. Moving your hands apart is the opposite of nudging them together.
You may also want to try mentally moving your hand in such a way as if one of the
ankle bones, for a fleeting moment, would be nudged upwards, towards the thigh, while the
other one moves downward, towards the heel. See if there is any sign of a response. If not,
make a note of it. If there was no response, you may want to return to this area later. If there
was a response, you still might want to keep holding the ankle so see if there is a response
when you think about moving your hands forwards and backwards relative to each other,
and then the reverse.
The main thing you will want to do is practice doing simple holding or maybe
directional nudgings on many healthy feet so that you can ascertain just how a normal set of
ankle bones moves in relation to the leg bones, the heel bone, the talus bone, and each other.
Even if you don’t know how all these bones should move in theory, if you hold enough feet
and try minutely or mentally nudging your hands over most of the areas of the feet, you will
soon come to have a sense of what a foot should feet like, and how it should respond to
being held.

When you’ve finished assessing/holding the ankles bones, you might want to move
on to the heel.

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Holding the heel bone
One way to hold the heel bone is one hand under the calcaneus (heel bone), holding
that round ball of the heel cupped in one hand, with the other hand supporting the Achilles
tendon from behind.

Fig. 12.10 Holding the heel and the Achilles tendon

Notice: are you holding a healthy, responsive ankle/tendon? If yes, then good. But
if nothing seems to be moving, or this intersection of the Achilles tendon and the heel bone
seems uncannily rigid, you may want to gently and quickly nudge or imagine a nudge as
you bring your hands together and then let your hands rebound back into position.
In this case, your hands will be bringing the calcaneus a bit closer to the Achilles
tendon. Or you might think of it as bringing the tendon closer to the calcaneus. It doesn’t
matter. The main thing is to notice if there’s any sort of response.
As before, if a gentle nudge gets no response, wait half a minute or so and try a
mere mental nudge. If still nothing happens, wait half a minute and try a slightly stronger
nudge.
Also consider moving your right hand posteriorly (towards the back) while your left
hand moves anteriorly (towards the front). And then try the reverse, right hand anteriorly
and left hand posteriorly.
And what happens if you nudge, or mentally nudge one hand to the left and the
other to the right, and then the reverse? Learn how healthy feet respond to this sort of play,
and then, when you hold your patient’s injured foot, you will have a sense as to whether or
not all is well in this area.
If all is well in the ankle, a movement or thought that compresses the joining of the
calcaneus and Achilles tendon, bringing them closer together, should evoke a rebounding

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apart in the ankle after you are done nudging. Oppositely, a nudge that suggests
microscopically pulling the tendon/calcaneous junction apart should evoke a tiny coming-
together response in the two parts. In either case, the area should respond.

Immediately or eventually, in response to your holding or nudging, the heel

bone/Achilles relationship may feel responsive. If it does, good. If not, make a note to
yourself that this area might want some deeper work at a later date and then move on.
On the other hand, you may feel that slightly nudging (or thinking about nudging)
the heel sideways to the left while thinking about moving the tendon to the right (or vice
versa) one more time would be a good thing to do. Fine. Do it. Possibly by getting the
heel/tendon relationship to loosen up by moving from side to side, the relationship will also
loosen up in other directions as well. Do what you like, do what your intuition tells you to
do, do what the patient’s ankle tells you to do. Let go of the ankle if the patient’s ankle tells
you to Let go.
Try some or all of these suggestions on healthy feet so that you can learn to
understand how this tendon/heel relationship works when everything is moving nicely.

The Talus-Calcaneus relationship

Next, if you are satisfied that the heel/tendon was moving properly, or you decided
that it wasn’t and you made a mental note to return there later on, you might wish to place
one hand on the talus bone and the other behind the back corner of the calcaneous (heel
bone). Or you may wish to choose some other area to hold. These are just suggestions.

Fig. 9.11 Holding the talus and calcaneus bones

Do the usual routine on these bones to assess whether or not they can move. The
“usual routine” means that you will notice if the foot feels responsive when you support
these bones. If not, then you will gently nudge these bones towards each other. Or possibly,

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you will gently imagine them moving apart. Or you might nudge them or imagine them
moving one to the left, the other to the right. Or you might think that one is moving towards
the head and the other is moving towards the toes. You can try to test these bones on any
directional plane that you can imagine.
When you work on a healthy foot by gently provoking a reflexive response in every
possible direction you will be able to develop an innate sense of the way that these bones
can and should move, relative to each other.

An aside: foot bones might make very small movements

Do bear in mind that even if these bones can move correctly, they may not move
very far. They may jerk around if they’ve been significantly displaced, but it’s more likely
that they may move just a tiny bit, making a barely perceptible response. Of course, there is
always the possibility that they will make a generous sweeping relaxation movement. But
you should have no expectation, one way or the other.
Your hands, only through experience, can eventually know what it feels like to
work with a responsive foot. The movements, tiny or languorous, that do occur will feel
“right” to you if they are right. If you do the nudging and the imagined nudging and nothing
happens, if you do the tiny pushes and pulsing and you get a sense that the bones involved
are putting their backs up and saying, “No!” then you will know that, possibly, this is an
area that maybe wants some simple, boring holding: support, support, support.
Don’t try to change its mind; just make a note that this area wants more work and
go on to the next place. Or stay here and hold, just supporting, with no significant moving,
for a long time.

Navicular-Calcaneus relationship
Next, you may wish to place one hand on the navicular bone and the other behind
the back corner (heel) of the calcaneous. Again, determine whether or not this area can
respond.
Or you may wish to put one hand on the navicular bone and the other on the talus.
Or you may want to drape the middle finger of one hand over the navicular bone with the
thumb of the same hand supporting the sole of the foot. (Photo on next page.)

Or possibly, you will find that placing your thumb over the talus and the rest of the
hand around the back of the ankle may feel the best for you.

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 Fig. 12.12 Holding the navicular and calcaneus bones

If this part of the foot doesn’t relax in response to supportive holding, you may try
gently pulsing your hands together in such a way that the navicular and talus bones are
pressed towards each other. Or you might try thinking about your hands pulling apart from
each other. Or move one of your hands that’s over a bone to the left, and the other hand to
the right, or move one of them towards the front of the foot and the other towards the back.

An aside: working with less than a full hand

The curves of the foot are often so small that it is impossible to place the entire
hand over some foot part. For example, when supportively holding the big toe, sometimes
you can only fit a little bit of your hand around the toe, or maybe you can only fit one finger
up against one side of the toe and another finger on the other side of the toe.
Likewise, because of the curve of the foot’s arch, it may be impossible to place the
whole palm of your hand firmly up against the bottom of the foot. In this case, instead of
using your palm, you can nestle the gently curved backside of your hand up against the sole
of the arch. In other words, the important thing here is the supportive contact, not which
part of your hand or how much of your hand you are using to provide the support. For that
matter, sometimes when I am working on a patient’s foot and I sense that the patient would
feel more supported if I had a third hand, I press my shoulder gently up against some part of
the sole of the patient’s foot while I am using both hands to support the ankle.
I am so short that, sitting on a stool at the foot of the treatment table, the table
comes up to the middle of my chest. My shoulder is only a few inches higher. If the
patient’s foot is close enough to the edge of the treatment table, I can lean forward, causing
the patient’s foot to press up against my shoulder, thus using my shoulder as a third hand.

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 I am not saying that you need to do this. What I am trying to get across is that the
patient must feel supported by human touch, and it is your job as practitioner to provide the
support. A supportive pillow is not the same as a human hand. But sometimes, that “human
hand” doesn’t need to be the full palm of the hand, or even a hand, per se. A mere finger or
a shoulder can sometimes serve the function of a hand.
If your palm doesn’t fit comfortably onto the area that you are working on, use
whatever part of your hand does fit, so that you can provide support, support, support.

Cuboid bone
Place the palms of one hand over the top (dorsum) and the palm of the other hand
over the bottom (sole) of the cuboid bone. Look for a response.

Fig. 12.13 Holding the cuboid bone

And/or place one hand on the

lateral side of the cuboid bone. With
the other hand, grip the navicular bone
between the thumb and middle finger.
If there is no response, quickly and
gently compress the bones towards
each other and release.
Or hold it any way you like.
Be comfortable.

Fig. 12.14 Another approach to holding the cuboid bone

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The cuneiforms
Place the palm of each hand on either side (sole and top of the foot) of the medial
cuneiform. If no response, compress (nudge) and release. Hold until you feel a relaxation
response.

Fig. 9.15 Holding the medial cuneiform bone

Place the palms of the hands on either side of the intermediate cuneiform bone. If
no response, compress and release. Hold until you feel a relaxation response.

Fig. 9.16 Holding the intermediate cuneiform bone

Somewhere between your first and your hundredth treatment on a given person
with Parkinson’s, this bone may shudder or jerk or possibly even whip around. Until then,
just do all the above supportive holdings and note whether or not the area is capable of

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responding. As always, if it can’t respond, make a mental note of this and plan on simply
holding in this area for a long time.
On the other hand, if the intermediate cuneiform bone falls back into place, the
cuboid or some other bone(s) might suddenly slide back into position, as well! In that case,
the next time you revisit the cuboid bone it will be setting nicely, and perfectly responsive,
even though you haven’t yet worked on it directly. The first time your work on a
Parkinson’s patient, this area probably will not be responsive.

Lateral, also known as 3rd, cuneiform bone

Place the palms of the hands on either side of the lateral cuneiform bone: one hand
on top of the foot, the other hand on the bottom (sole) of the foot. As mentioned before, if it
feels stodgy or stubborn, try gently nudging your hands towards each other to see if the foot
tissues between your hands will push back outward on your hands.

Fig. 12.17 Holding the lateral cuneiform bone

All three cuneiforms at once

Place your palm or the
middle fingers of both hands over
either side (top and sole) of the
cuneiform bones as a group.
Compress and release, (nudge)
either physically or in your
imagination.

Fig. 12.18 Holding all three

cuneiforms at once

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 Fig. 12.19 Holding all three cuneiforms at once – another approach

Or you might grip the cuneiform bones with one hand (thumb and middle finger
over the top and sole) and grip the navicular bone with the other hand (top and sole). Nudge
the cuneiform bones, as a group, towards the navicular bone and release – or towards the
metacarpals and release.

Metatarsals: the long skinny bones of the feet

Place a hand on either side (top and sole) of the proximal (closer to the torso,
farther from the tips of the toes) end of the 1st metatarsal. Compress your hands towards
each other and release. Move the hand so that the center of your palm is centered over the
2nd metatarsal and repeat. Repeat in this manner over the proximal ends of all 5 metatarsals.

Fig. 12.20 Holding the proximal end of the 1st metatarsal

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 Place the palm of either hand over either side (top and sole) of the distal (farther
from the torso, closer to the tips of the toes) end of the 1st metatarsal. If no relaxation
response, compress and release. Repeat for all 5 metatarsals.

Fig. 12.21 Holding the distal end of the 3rd metatarsal

Metatarsal- cuneiform joints

Grip the cuneiforms with the thumb and middle finger over the top and sole. With
the thumb on one side and index and middle finger on the other, grip the proximal end of
the 1st metatarsal. Compress the metatarsal towards the nearest cuneiform and release.
Repeat this with the other 4 metatarsals.

Fig. 12.22 Holding the 1st metatarsal and the 1st cuneiform

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Toes
Place thumb and index (or middle, or fourth) finger on either side (top and sole) of
the first phalange of the big toe. Compress and release.

Fig. 12.23 Holding the 1st (the big) toe

Move to the first phalange of the second toe. Compress and release. Repeat across
all five toes.
Move to the second phalange of the big toe. Compress and release. Repeat across
all toes until all the phalanges have been relaxed.

Note: The toe joints may move very quickly, and the movements, if any, are usually
very small. I usually only spend a few seconds assessing each toe unless there is something
clearly wrong in a toe joint. If there is a problem with a specific toe, then spend extra time
and attention on that one spot. In general, the toes will be responsive and will not even
require much holding.
Hammertoes and other toe contortions are very often caused by tensions a good
distance away from the toes: the problem may be coming from the cuneiforms, the ankle
joints or even the legs. Some of the worst hammertoes I’ve ever seen have been resolved by
working on the ankles or legs – not on the toes.
Sometimes hammertoes relax in response to work done on the center of the foot:
sometimes hammertoes don’t relax until the ankles relax. I’ve never seen them relax due to
working on the toes themselves.
Repeat the above toe sequence with the thumb and finger-of-choice on either side
(medial and lateral) of each toe, going over every phalange.

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 You can go over the whole foot many times. It may be that every time you go over
it, microscopic movements will take place, leading up to restoring of the correct
articulations after many seemingly “no response” treatments.
You can hold the bones in the ankle-to-toes sequential order suggested above or in
whatever order you feel like, several times. If some stubbornly held place does release in
response to your holding, it is very likely that some other previously stuck joint articulation
may also now be able to move.
The bones are assembled somewhat like those old wooden ball puzzles in which the
pieces are so curiously interconnected that you cannot really move any puzzle piece until
you figure out which one to move first. Sometimes it may seem as if no bones will move
until they are all ready to move. On each pass over the foot, each bone may make scarcely
perceptible adjustments even when you are doing nothing but quickly assessing. At some
point, all of the bones may have corrected their own positions enough so that suddenly they
will all move smoothly and easily into their correct position.
On the other hand, while working your way across the foot and ankle, it is very
likely that you will come across one or several locations that feature such supreme rigidity
that you can safely assume that this area wants something deeper.
This area probably wants the resting-in-one-place-for-a-long-time type of holding: the FSR
that we do on stubborn or complex injuries.
Finish going over the foot, making your assessments, and then, returning to the
place that seemed to want the most work, sit back, get comfortable, and apply the “no
motion, no nudging, no intention” type of FSR in the location that needs it. Or, if you
prefer, you may stop the assessment process when you find an “obvious” place that needs
holding, and settle in.
Which shall it be? Stop exploring and just hold the place where you detect a
stubborn problem, or keep going and come back to it later? You decide. Follow your
intuition.

Neither sequence nor timing for “correct” FSR is carved in stone

You truly can approach the sequence and timing of the leg-to-foot FSR in whatever
manner seems best to you, according to the silent instructions that you are receiving from
your patient’s leg and foot.
The most frequent remarks from health practitioners who came to Santa Cruz in
order to observe members of the Parkinson’s Treatment Research Team (1998 – 2013)
doing FSR can be paraphrased this way: “I think I’m starting to get it; I’ve seen five of you
doing FSR, and you’re all doing exactly the same thing, namely nothing but sitting there
holding the patient’s foot, but you’re all doing it so differently! And when I watched one of
you in particular working on the same patient that you’d worked on a week earlier, you
approached his leg and foot completely differently the second time.”

A teaching video: an aside

Although many people have asked for a video or DVD of someone practicing the
holding techniques illustrated in this chapter, it would be pointless: there is nothing to see.
A video of me holding someone’s ankle to see if there was a subtle responsiveness would
just show, to the observer, footage of me sitting motionless, with my hands motionless, on a

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person’s motionless ankle. I might sit there for several minutes or an hour, not doing
anything, waiting for the ankle to respond. This would be supremely boring.
Again, there would probably be nothing to see..

Years ago, I gave in to popular demand and made a video of myself holding a
person’s leg, ankle, and foot in various holding positions. I spoke into the microphone very
clearly, stating that I was not actually doing FSR. FSR is very slow and boring to watch.
Instead, I was merely placing my hands on the subject’s leg, ankle and foot in order to
demonstrate some of the possible holds that a person might want to try. I moved fairly
quickly through the various hand poses, stating over and over that I was just demonstrating
a sampling of hand positions in order to help people get started who might otherwise be shy
about putting their hands on someone’s foot; I was not actually doing FSR.
After I released the video, I got many complaints from patients: previous to seeing
the video, their therapists, working only from my book, had been going nice and slow,
feeling their way along the legs and feet of their patients, spending as much time at each
location as was necessary to bring about relaxation.
But after seeing the video, the therapists had copied the tempo of my videoed hand
movements. Just as I had quickly moved from one position to another, the therapists were
now moving their hands quickly from one spot to another. The visual cues from the video
were too compelling; the spoken instructions on the video were completely ignored.
If I ever release another video, it will be the most boring thing on earth. In it, I shall
demonstrate the tempo at which I go when a person’s legs do not respond at all: I shall set
my hands down in one place and hold them there for a solid minute or two, maybe half an
hour. Any nudging or movement on my part would, correctly, be so small as to be invisible.
Then I will go to the next holding position and hold my hands there for half an
hour. It will take an hour before the viewer has seen the merest fraction of all the possible
ways that a practitioner might want to set his hands down on his patient. It will be so
boring, no one will watch more than a few minutes of it before he is saying, “Enough
already! Just show me the various hand positions, I understand that I am supposed to go
slowly.”
But I will not be fooled this time into thinking that this attempt will be different: too
many people will not understand. Also, every patient is different. Each patient might need
to have his foot bones held from a slightly different position and for a different amount of
time.
People usually follow visual images more exactly than they follow words. The
whole point of FSR is that the practitioner has to learn to follow his hunches and respond to
the patient, not to a video. So I suspect that there will not be another foot-holding video in
my future.

The next group of photos are merely for review: they show more of the basic hand
positions for holding the intermediate cuneiform bone – a place where you will probably
spend most of your time if you are treating a person with Parkinson’s or a person with a
mid-foot injury.

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 Three pictures: basic foot holding positions with focus on the cuneiform bones

Fig 12.24 Holding the intermediate cuneiform

Fig. 12.25 Holding the intermediate cuneiform

The palm of the hand is flush on the sole of the foot, same as the previous photo,
but viewed from a different angle.

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 Fig. 12.26 Holding the cuneiform: the back of the hand is flush against the sole of the foot

As you can see, either the palm or the back of the hand can be used. It makes no
difference. The important thing is to be able to give a feeling of complete, full support to the
bottom and top of the foot.

This chapter has shown many examples of ways that you can hold someone’s foot.
Please do not think that you must place your hands in any or all or the positions shown
above. It is better to just place your hands where they feel like they are supporting whatever
area seems to need support, based on that area’s inability to relax and be responsive.

An example of a difficult hand placement

I once treated a patient who had impaled his foot on a pitchfork. The fork entered
his foot from the front, slicing in between the first and second toe and drove in deeply to the
center of the foot. The injury had occurred many years earlier but the white scar was still
quite visible between the toes. There was no way I could place my entire hand between his
toes. Instead, I wiggled my index finger into the space between the first and second toe. My
other three fingers looped around the bottom of the ball of the foot and came to rest on the
medial (inside) side of the big toe. My thumb pointed towards my index finger and was
somewhat wedged into the groove that runs between the toes and the sole of the foot, under
the three lateral toes. My other hand was holding his ankle. I just sat like that for the full
hour, giving very firm support to the area with the pitchfork scar. After several weeks of
holding just like this, during a holding session, the entire foot relaxed, all the toes,
especially the first and second, separated wide apart, and the patient reported feeling
warmth and life spreading throughout his foot.

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This example is provided to show that it is not always necessary to get the whole hand onto
an injured spot. I was using only my index finger on the spot indicated. But the whole rest
of my right hand was also providing support, and my left hand was bringing up the rear by
supporting the ankle against the pressure being applied from the front end of the foot.

An important aside
Before the publication of this book, a much shorter, five-chapter leaflet, FSR for
Parkinson’s, was available for free, online. These chapters had no photographs whatsoever
– only text descriptions of the basic concepts, short descriptions of some possible hand
positions, and a few pen and ink drawings of holding the forearm.
Working from these simple text descriptions, having no photos to “follow,” many
people with no bodywork experience whatsoever were able to master the FSR enough so
that their Parkinson’s patient recovered. It is simple, supportive holding, such as anyone
might intuitively do for any injured person, if they had not learned the cultural restrictions
that make us afraid of touching. Holding an injured person is not rocket science.
The following was excerpted from an email from someone I’ve never met. She was
working from the photo-less, short-version instructions in FSR for Parkinson’s. She was
treating her husband who had Parkinson’s disease. It demonstrates my point:
“Thank you. I am sitting here crying with relief. I don’t want to inundate you with
emails but I think you may be interested in what happened last night. I have lacked
confidence in my ability to hold my husband’s foot properly and in the end I just had to
trust, although I had not been doing very much. The last two nights I have spent about an
hour holding, sometimes falling asleep while I am doing it. Last night I got the usual
tingling sensation in my hands but stronger and having worked my way down his leg I was
holding his foot. (He has been telling me that he had experienced leg twitching after one
holding session so I took that as a good sign.)
“Last night when I reached his foot the sensation was very strong. I saw in my mind
an ice blue light in his foot and then he literally leaped off the bed as if he had been given
an electric shock. He did not wake up.
“I didn’t say anything to him because I did not want to influence any response and
he told me, unprompted, that he felt looser and more flexible. Then I told him what had
happened. His face looked more healthy to me this morning and he adjusted his posture to
something so close to normal. The angle of his head and neck was a miracle to see.
“…Thank you… We will continue on our own for now but I don’t feel alone or
unsupported anymore…”

This person was obviously doing a great job of holding her spouse’s foot. She was
not working from photographs, or any visual cues. She was not sure of herself. But she just
started holding his foot. Eventually, his foot, and then his body, came back to life.

So don’t follow the photos too closely. They are just suggestions. At some point,
within the first session or the second, you should put this book aside and stop thinking about
“technique” and just enjoy yourself. The most important thing to remember is support,
support, support.

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 Support, support, support.

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Chapter thirteen

Testing the feet

Apply some tests! While a foot’s increased ability to move in the directions
described in this chapter is not a 100% guarantee that displacements or electrical blockages
are completely gone, it can be a fairly good indication that things are going the right way.

A healthy reflex
The foot has a wonderful reflex that it can do only when all of the bones in the foot
are gliding across their articulations freely and easily. The reflex can be triggered with the
following stimulation:
The patient should be lying down on a treatment table with straight legs. Place one
hand over the patient’s foot, with the center of the palm placed on the top, or dorsum of the
foot, directly over the intermediate cuneiform bone. The rest of the hand can rest on the top
of the foot wherever it’s comfortable. Then, place your other hand, in a fist position, on the
sole of the foot, under the intermediate cuneiform bone.
Press the hands together slightly and then release. This use of the word “press”
refers to an actual, physical compression, one that’s visible to the naked eye. The press
should be almost instantly be followed by relaxation back to the starting position.
This pressing and relaxing is a significant movement, as opposed to the mental,
infinitesimally small nudges and pulsing movements that you’ve used up until now. You are
doing this to initiate a reflex muscle movement in the foot.

Fig.13.1 Quickly pressing a bit hard, looking for a reflexive movement

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Your hands should remain on the foot during the subsequent reflexive movement, if any.
The foot, if its bones are all in the correct position and unhampered by tensions might, in
response to being very gently punched on the sole of the foot, reflexively relax in one of
two directions. The two reflexive foot movements are these:

1. The foot may stretch out as if the toes are being pointed like a ballerina. The center
line of the top of the foot will straighten out, forming a straight line which is a
continuation of the tibial crest (the bony front ridge of the lower-leg bone). (Fig. 13.2)

Fig. 13.2 A straight line from leg to toes

A completely relaxed foot, when pushed quickly and gently in the arch area, might
easily go into a pointed-toe position. If the ankle is also aligned correctly, the ridge of the
tibial crest to the center of the foot will form a nice, almost straight line. If there is a
problem in the ankle area, the ankle joint may form a concave dip instead of making a nice
smooth line.
When the foot injury fully heals, your patient will be able to form this pointed toe
posture on his own, without needing to be pushed in the arch.

2. The foot may rotate, causing the toes to form a line that is perpendicular to the floor.
The big toe will be the toe which is farthest from the surface of the table. The line from
the big toe through the little toe forms the perpendicular line. (See Fig. 13.4.)
In the starting position, the right foot is pointing towards the ceiling, and midline of
the right foot is more or less in a straight line with the knee.

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 In the following drawing (Fig 13.3), the right foot appears to be pointing forward
more than the left foot. This is because the right foot has been held for a bit, and has
become more relaxed than the left foot.

Fig 13.3 Relaxed foot, after FSR

Fig. 13.4 Foot rotation in response to a push on the arch

After being bumped gently but firmly in the arch, the right foot may respond, if it is
completely relaxed and flexible, by rotating laterally (out to the side, Fig. 13.4, above). The
knee will not have rotated a considerable distance; the rotation will have come from mostly
from the relaxed ankle.
If the foot articulations are not yet correct, the response to the reflex test may be:
1. The foot will not straighten out as in fig. 13.2, but will instead remain at more or less of
a right angle to the tibia (main bone of the lower leg): the original position.
2. Instead of rotating laterally as in fig. 13.4, a foot that is still injured may reflexively
rotate medially, towards the side with the arch, as if protecting the arch of the foot
instead of exposing it.

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Hammer-toes
Also, if displacements or unhealed injuries are present in the foot, ankle and/or leg,
the over-taut tendons in these areas may pull back on the toes, creating hammer-toes (see
Fig.s 13.5 and 13.6).
Hammer-toes are not uncommon. Hammer-toes do not mean a person is at risk for
Parkinson’s disease. That having been said, hammer-toes are a sure sign that there is tension
or injury somewhere in the foot, ankle, lower leg, knee, or even somewhere upstream from
the knee.

Fig. 13.5 Moderate hammer-toe of the first (big) toe

Fig 13.6 Mild hammer-toe of the second toe

If a hammer-toe is present, your work might not be done. The presence of a

hammer-toe suggests that the foot is still not fully relaxed. However, patients have
recovered from problematic foot injuries and from Parkinson’s even though their hammer-
toes never went away. If your patient has recovered normal foot flexibility and no longer
has pain, or if his Parkinson’s symptoms are going away don’t worry about the hammer-toe.

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 I have had PD patients with severe hammer-toes who recovered from Parkinson’s
even with some residual amount of hammer-toe. Still, some recovered patients worry about
their hammer toes so I repeat: if your patient has recovered from PD but still has some
hammer-toe, don’t worry about it. Leave it be. Or work on it if your patient wants you to.

Don’t be pushy
Be very careful when you do test the feet to insure that you are not trying to exert
influence over the direction of the foot reflex.
Do your quick push on the arch and then be a passive observer of which way the
foot wants to go. Sometimes it is hard to be impartial; after working for hours on a foot, it is
only natural that you will be secretly rooting for the foot to relax straight and long and/or
rotate outward. But try not to impose your wishes on that foot. Do a realistic assessment of
the reflex. When the foot responds correctly to this test, and the joints all seem to glide
smoothly and easily, and there are no areas of the foot that feel somehow less than
“correct,” you may be finished with working on the feet. If so, congratulations.

Flexible feet that still want FSR

You may not yet be finished working on the feet. You are finished when the patient
can move his feet normally in all the usual directions, he can feel his foot moving, he likes
the feeling of moving his foot, and there is no pain in his foot.
Sometimes, because of residual emotional resistance in the injured area, you may
not be finished with FSR on the foot in question – even if you can move the foot around
easily.
Because slow and steady FSR can be an effective way to assist in emotional
healing, as well as structural healing, sometimes FSR will still be beneficial even after the
foot begins to resume flexibility.

A common question is “How will I know when the foot no longer needs to be
held.”
Answers:
If you can move the patient’s foot easily in all the normal directions, but the patient
can’t move his own feet easily, at will, continue with foot FSR treatments and encourage
your patient to continue doing the light and energy exercise in chapter five.
If the foot relaxes sometimes, but tightens up at other times, the patient is using
pause or intermittently dissociating from foot during those times when the foot it tight.
A physical injury does not come and go. The use of self-induced dissociation or
pause can come and go, depending on how the person has instilled his self-protection
instructions. In the case of self-induced protection, rigidity in the legs and feet might be able
to come and go, based on mood or other circumstances.
Again, if the foot is sometimes relaxed and sometimes rigid, it is the patient’s
thoughts and not an injury that is causing the change ups. FSR will not help with this. The
patient must get rid of his self-created protection behaviors, whether dissociation or pause.

In Chinese medicine, the difference between a problem that comes and goes is
differentiated from a problem that is constant, with a fixed location. The come-and-go

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problem is considered to be a mentally-instigated (though usually subconscious) channel Qi
blocking problem referred to as “Qi Stagnation.” You might think of this in English as an
energy-directing problem.
Oppositely, a constant, unchanging problem in a fixed location is referred to in
Chinese medicine as “Blood Stagnation.” Blood stagnation usually comes from some
tangible damage or injury.
If foot rigidity or blockage of energy in the foot comes and goes, the underlying
problem is coming from the mind of the patient.
If the person has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, it is most likely that the
patient is using self-induced pause. As noted quite a few times already, pause should be
terminated before using any type of Yin Tui Na.

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Chapter fourteen

Shoulders and hips

Shoulder and hip injuries are quite common. Sometimes the patient will know the
exact location of the problem, but often, you will need to find the exact location of the
injury by looking for an area that doesn’t relax in response to being held.
If the injury seems to be in a rotational (ball and socket) joint such as the hip or the
shoulder, there are a number of ways in which the joint might be held. This chapter will
offer a few starter suggestions on ways to hold these more complex areas. Of course, once
the practitioner is comfortable with working on rotational joints, he will allow his hands to
take the lead in deciding where to be placed.
You will be looking for areas with underlying unhealed injuries if the patient has
pain or unusual stiffness in some area, or if you have noticed some rigidity in an area that
just doesn’t feel right. If the patient remembers an injury, you will of course explore that
area.
Many people with Parkinson’s will have unhealed injuries in areas other than just
the foot, including the shoulder and hip areas.

Shoulder
Have the patient lie on his back. Slide one of your hands under his scapula
(shoulder blade).

Fig. 14.1 A hand placed on the patient’s scapula (shown with patient standing)

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 Rest your other hand firmly in the depression just below the shoulder edge of the
clavicle, on the front side of the body – just above the lung. (Fig. 14.2)
With one hand firmly under the scapula, quickly press down firmly with the
clavicle hand and then immediately let up on the pressure. If there is no injury and the joint
is relaxable, the scapula will respond to this press by moving medially – towards the spine.
If the shoulder area has an injury or is fearful, when you quickly compress-and-release the
clavicle towards the scapula, the scapula will move laterally – away from the spine – as if
trying to rotate around to the front of the body: curling forward as if to protect the injury.

Fig. 14.2 The lower hand on the scapula, upper hand just below the clavicle

If the scapula doesn’t move at all, that also suggests a protective, or even
dissociated situation in the shoulder and/or overall body.
If the above test, or a visually obvious displacement of anything in the shoulder
area, suggests an unhealed injury, consider the following hand positions for your FSR work.
The patient should be lying on his back. Seat yourself facing the patient, at about
the level of the patient’s shoulder
Place one hand, the hand closest to the person’s head, around the “epaulet” area –
where the arm inserts into the shoulder socket, and where the lateral end of the clavicle
terminates. Get a good, firm grip on this rounded area. (Fig. 14.3)
Place the other hand on the center of the upper-arm bone, the humerus. The best
way to position this other hand is to bring it under the arm, gripping the side of the humerus
that is resting on the table, rather than gripping the humerus from the top (facing the ceiling)
side. (Fig. 14.3)
With your hands in these two positions, one cupping the shoulder/ball of the arm-
bone and the other firmly gripping the shaft of the humerus, the patient’s shoulder joint will
feel absolutely supported. Maybe waggle your hands a tiny bit, to show yourself and the
patient just how firmly you are supporting the shoulder.

Now that you’ve got a good, supportive hold, gently nudge-and-release (so gently
that the patient cannot feel it), or imagine nudging, the ball at the top of the humerus bone a
bit deeper into the shoulder socket. Notice if there is a response. Very often, the response

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will seem like the humerus moves away from the socket, in opposition to what you have
suggested. So long as any movement response occurs, fine. Go on to the next nudge.
Very gently nudge the humerus as if you are pulling it slightly out of the socket.
Again, note if a response occurs.
You will now do a series of twelve nudges that will check the responsiveness of all
the various muscles and articulations that circle the shoulder. Imagine that a ring around the
ball of the humerus is numbered one through twelve, like the face of an old fashioned clock.

Fig. 14.3 One hand on the lateral top (epaulet area) of the shoulder, the other holding the humerus.

I usually imagine that the number one is located at the top humerus, just under the
acromion (lateral end of the clavicle). The number six is at the bottom of the ball of the
humerus, in the armpit. On the right arm, the three is located at the anterior (forward) side
of the ball of the humerus, and the nine is located at the posterior (back) side of the ball. On
the left arm, the three is posterior and the nine is anterior. This all sounds very fancy but,
really, when you sit down and imagine a clock face, it becomes pretty simple and obvious.
The other numbers are placed sequentially around the ball of the humerus, like the
numbers on a round (analog) clock face.
These numbers are mentally superimposed merely to help keep track of the small
increments you will nudge in, as you work your way around the shoulder. Once you’ve
mentally got your orienting numbers in place, briefly, imperceptibly nudge the humerus
upwards, towards the number one and then immediately relax back to your original
position. Notice if there was any tiny reaction or movement in the area in response to the
nudge.
If so, go on to the number two and give the arm bone a nudge in that direction. If
not, do increasingly subtle nudges in the direction of the number one. If, after several
nudges, including one that is purely imaginary, nothing moves, make a mental note to return
to this area, and move on to number two, where you repeat the assessment process. And so
on, around the “clock.”
After making the rounds of the “clock,” return to any area that simply refused to
respond and settle in for a good long sit, with your hands supporting the shoulder area: one

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hand cupped over the shoulder and the other hand firmly gripping the humerus. Now and
then, as inspired to do so, try again to give an imperceptible nudge in the direction that was
frozen. And now and then, place the hands in the first shoulder testing position, with one
hand under the scapula and the other hand in the depression just below the clavicle.
These hand-position suggestions will give you a start at feeling comfortable with
“where to put the hands” while working on the shoulder. As you get more familiar with the
sensation of working with the shoulder joint, you can feel free to try other holding positions,
as well. You should first try this on a person with healthy shoulders. It is very common to
find hang-ups, that is to say, areas that won’t budge, on healthy people who have had a
dislocated shoulder, broken arms, falls from a bicycle, or other arm/shoulder injuries. So do
not be discouraged if your practice partner turns out to have some areas that don’t move. Be
pleased! You can go ahead and treat the asymptomatic person, thus preventing a possible
painful shoulder situation that might have otherwise crept up in old age.

Hip and leg joint

The hip area is very similar to the shoulder area: the ball of the femur (the femur is
the long bone of the upper leg) rotates in the hip socket in very much the same manner that
the ball of the humerus rotates in the shoulder socket.
Sit or stand facing the patient, just below the level of the hip. Place one hand under
the lateral-distal (lateral means closer to the side, or your might say farther from the spine;
distal means closer to the feet, farther from the head) part of the buttock. Elevate the
patient’s near knee while keeping his near foot flat on the table. Next, using your other arm,
bend your shoulder in towards the patient and place your shoulder under the bridge formed
by the knee. Bring your hand under the patient’s leg and firmly grip the backside or side of
the femur.

Fig. 14.4 One hand holding the side of the hip, the other holding the leg

I sometimes place the patient’s knee up on my shoulder while gripping the leg
firmly. This extra support for the patient’s leg creates an even stronger illusion that the

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patient’s body is being “fully supported” even though I am only using a very small area of
my own body to “control” a fairly large area on the patient.
Now, holding all this area firmly, begin by imperceptibly nudging or imagining
nudging the ball of the hip farther into the hip socket.
Next, nudge the ball out from the socket.
Then, just as explained with the ball of the shoulder, imagine a clock face,
numbered one through twelve, around the hip joint. I usually put the one at the top (towards
the person’s head) of the socket, and the six down at the bottom (towards the feet) of the
socket. On the left side, I put three at the back of the socket, and nine at the front, and fill in
the rest of the “clock face” accordingly. On the right side, the three is to the front, etc. Not
that it matters.
Notice if there are any areas that do not respond, and give them extra time, or go
back to them later, after you’ve assessed the whole hip area

Hips and sacrum

For the novice, getting a good, supportive grip on the back part of the hip joints, the
sacro-iliac joint, can be a bit tricky. Where do you even begin? Happily, there are several
techniques for getting the hip joint firmly in control of your hands. The best requires that
you be standing up, facing the patient, with the patient lying on his back.
You will start by working on the hip that is farther from you, rather than the closer
hip. Reaching for the patient’s farther leg, bring the patient’s farther knee up while keeping
the patient’s farther foot flat on the table. And ask the patient to keep it there while you get
your hands in place.

Fig. 14.5 Place your hand under the “bridge” formed by the patient’s farther knee

Put your arm – the arm closer to the patient’s feet, not the arm closer to the
patient’s head - under the “bridge” formed by the patient’s elevated knee. Place your hand,
palm down, on the table on the far side of the bridge.
Place your other arm on the “ASIS” (anterior superior iliac spine): the bit of the hip
bone that protrudes out the front in very slender people. Get a firm grip on the ASIS, or

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maybe reaching around the lateral side of the ASIS, so that you can lift the hip on this side
slightly off the table. Gently raise the far hip a mere inch or so off the table
Tell the patient to be limp in the hips – he shouldn’t try to “help” the practitioner by
lifting the hip high in the air. (If the patient is very large, you may need to ask for his help,
but remind him to relax after he’s put the hip back down.)
While the hip is raised, slide the other hand, the one that is palm down on the table,
under the center of patient’s far hip – still palm down, on the table.
Once your hand is centered under the patient’s buttock, rotate the “palm down”
hand so that your hand is “standing” up: the little-finger side is resting on the table, and the
thumb-side is raised up, supporting the patient’s hip. This hand position will raise the hip a
bit farther in the air. Keep rotating this hand quickly and smoothly until it is fully palm
facing up, and then let your upper hand release its lifting hold on the ASIS.

Fig. 14.6 Rotate your hand until it is palm up.

As the patient’s hip drops back down

to the table, it will automatically settle down
in such a way as to minimize the lumpiness
of your lower hand. To do this, the patient’s
body will automatically center itself over
your hand, so that you find yourself with
your hand directly under the patient’s
sacrum. The sacrum is the triangular bone at
the base of the spine that joins the two hip
bones.

Fig. 14.7 Hand under the sacrum

You must practice this move several times for it to become smooth and effortless.
But once you have mastered it, it is an elegant, quick, and smooth way to position one hand
under the sacrum, with no disquieting fumbling in the vicinity of the genitals.

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 With one hand under the sacrum, you can now place the other hand on the ASIS,
which gives you a good starting place to supportively hold while checking on the reflexive
movement in the sacro-iliac joint.
Take a moment to imagine the diagonal line of the joint where the far-side of the
sacrum meets the far ilium (ilium is singular, ilia is plural. Iliac is the adjective form). I say
“far side” because this hand positioning requires that you hold the far hip, rather than the
near hip.

Fig. 14.8 One hand under the sacrum,

the other hand on the ASIS, feeling for
responsive movement in the sacro-
iliac joint

Now you’re in position to start nudging, or imagine nudging, that joint.

First, nudge or imagine nudging the joint as if you are compressing the bones more
closely together. Remember, these bones meet on a diagonal line. See if there is any
response. Imagine you are moving the bones farther apart.

Fig. 14.9 Another view of one hand

under the sacrum, the other holding
the ASIS

Next, see if the hip bone can move towards the head, relative to the sacrum, which
moves towards the feet. Remember, this movement will not be a line that runs parallel to
the spine. It is an angled line, so when I say “towards the head” I actually mean “upward,
towards the far shoulder.” See if there is any response.

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 Then try moving the ilium in the opposite direction, towards the feet, while the
sacrum moves towards the head. Again, it is an angled move, not a move that runs parallel
to the spine.
Finally, nudge or imagine a nudge that pushes the sacrum ever so slightly forward,
towards the front of the body, while nudging the ilium towards the back of the body.
And then the reverse: ilium towards the front, sacrum towards the back.

Remember: all of these moves are extremely subtle. You are not actually moving
these bones around. You are merely introducing the slightest of nudges, or even the thought
of a movement.

Then, examine/treat the hip on the opposite side of the body: stand on the opposite
side of the table and repeat all the above.
This gentle series of moves can sometimes bring about significant relaxation in the
hip joints. If some area does not respond to the gentle suggestions, try making the nudge
more gentle, or merely imagining it, or try giving the nudge a tiny bit more power – but
never enough that the patient can tell what you are doing. If the specific nudge still doesn’t
garner a response, settle in comfortably for a while and just hold the area, keeping firm
pressure from your hands as if they are holding the sacroiliac (SI) joint snugly compressed.

Excellent diagrams of the sacrum, the ilium, and the sacroiliac joint are available
online.

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Chapter fifteen

The head and spine

The many aspects of head- and spine-holding are worthy of an entire book. In fact,
such books have already been written.
If you are going to work on a person’s head and spine because you suspect rigidity
in those areas or the presence of an unhealed injury, you might do well to buy any of the
excellent books already available on the subject of craniosacral therapy.
These books will explain the correct articulations of the skull and spine bones, and
suggest the most advantageous placement for the hands.
Of course, these books are just a starting point. Once you get comfortable with your
hands on the cranial and spinal bones, you will find that you can branch out on your own,
and hold the patient in the places to which your hands are drawn.

You might be able to find a trained craniosacral therapist in your area. But a word
of warning: most craniosacral protocols use more force than most dissociated people or
people with Parkinson’s feel safe with. The books on the subject usually suggest using a
very low level of force to pull or push the various cranial and spinal bones, in order to
encourage them to relax and drift into the most ideal anatomical positions. While many
people truly enjoy this gentle pressure, we have found that many, if not most, of our
Parkinson’s patients find this “low level pressure” to be far too intrusive.
Therapists trained in this modality have been told that the amount of force they
need to use is “minimal” or even “imperceptible.” But people who are trying to stay
dissociated from the area, and people with Parkinson’s with either dissociation or pause
mode, will be able to feel these forces and will steel themselves against the intrusion. If
your local craniosacral therapist can’t use an FSR level of patience and non-directed force,
you might be better off just doing this work by yourself.

If you are working from a craniosacral instruction book that instructs you to use
light force to push or hold in a given direction, don’t. Instead, simply place your hands
firmly and supportively in the hand positions recommended in the book, and just sit there.
Sometimes a very slight directional pressure might be appropriate, but generally, at least for
the first few sessions, people with Parkinson’s disease find the “gentle” forces suggested in
the books to be oppressive, even frightening.
Possibly the best book on the subject is John Upledger’s Craniosacral Therapy. But
be warned, this is a very detailed book, a fairly expensive book, and is oriented towards
health professionals. You don’t really need all the theory that he uses to validate his ideas
about light touch therapy. All you really need to learn is where to place your hands to best
provide support. So if you don’t want to get into a professional level of craniosacral
treatment, I’ve included the following very quick course in hand positions for craniosacral
work.

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A very quick course in hand positions for craniosacral work.
The following hand positions are usually the most important ones. Of course, once
you get familiar with holding the various parts of someone’s head or spine, you will be able
to branch out on your own. You will let your hands be your guides as to where to hold and
support any places on the head or spine that aren’t described below. Well-trained
craniosacral therapists work in the same way: they learn the basic holding positions, but as
they come to get more comfortable working with cranial bones, they branch out on their
own and “do what the patient’s body tells them to do.”
If you are not familiar with the names of the cranial bones, please research the
cranial anatomy by going online for more and better pictures than I could hope to include in
this book. I am including photos of the hand positions that can be helpful for holding these
areas. Still, for an in-depth understanding of what might move, to where, and why, you
might want to read something from the literature that has sprung up around this subject.

Places to hold
1) the occiput
2) the frontal bone
3) the parietal bones
4) the sphenoid bone
5) the sacrum
6) the temporal bones
7) release of diaphragms
8) cervical vertebrae
9) spinal traction

Note: all holding positions assume that the patient is lying down on his back, facing
the ceiling.

1. Holding the occiput

Place your cupped hands
under the somewhat spherical
“ball” of the occiput. If you’re
working on a healthy person with
no head or neck injuries, you’ll
probably notice that, if you sit very
still, you might feel the occiput
rocking towards you and away
from you, as it rocks on the top
vertebrae in response to the
pumping of the sacrum’s pumping
action. This pumping action moves
cerebrospinal fluid. Please practice
this on a healthy person.

Fig. 15.1 Showing how the hands will be positioned under the back of the head

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 People with Parkinson’s very often have inhibited flow of cerebrospinal fluid plus
rigidity in the neck that can inhibit the pumping motion of the occiput.

Fig. 15.2 The “cupped” hands seen the in previous photo have been placed under the head,
and simply cradle the head. Although this photo shows the therapist standing up, one usually sits
while doing this, as you might be holding for a long time before the occiput relaxes and begins gently
rocking back and forth.

2. Frontal bone
Place your fourth finger, the “ring” finger, on either side of the frontal bone, in the
convenient indentation just superior (closer to the top of the head) to the lateral side of the
eyebrows. This bone, if relaxed, might be able to move ever so slightly towards the ceiling.
If this bone has sustained an injury, it may have become slightly compacted inwards. An
imperceptible movement on your part towards the ceiling might encourage this bone to
move to its correct position. Don’t move the bone around. Hold it. Support it. Maybe do
small nudges towards and away from the ceiling. If it wants to move, stay with it.

Fig 15.3 Side view of holding

the frontal bone with the 4th finger

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 Fig. 15.4 Frontal view of holding the frontal bone with the 4th finger

3. Parietal bones
Place your fingertips where the parietal bones articulate with the temporal bones.
The beveled edges of these bones articulate with the temporal bones by sliding under the
beveled edge of the temporal bones. A blow to these bones can jam them too far down
under the edge of the temporal bones. If this happens, the “too tight” parietal-temporal bone
articulations can prevent the temporal bones from rotating freely.

Fig. 15.5 Holding the parietal bone near the suture (joint) with the temporal bone

You may wish to gently imagine the parietal bones gently moving towards your
own chest as you sit behind the patient’s head. This movement will bring the parietals out
from under the temporal bones, just a little bit, thus freeing up the temporal bone
movements. If these bones feel stuck, maybe nudge them further under, or away from, the

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temporal bones. You are not trying to move the bones, per se, but to encourage them to
relax and thus be able to move back into their best position.

4. Sphenoid
Rest your thumbs on the sides of the face, just posterior to the eyes, in the small
indentation in the skull.
DO NOT nudge these bones in any direction. If you displace the sphenoid bone in
the slightest, the person may get a headache, poor visual focus, and other problems. So just
rest your thumbs in this spot.
If the sphenoid bone wants to move of its own accord, allow it to do so. In many
cases of sphenoid displacement, the bone has moved too far posteriorly (towards the back of
the head), and will want to move anteriorly, towards the front of the face. But sometimes it
needs to move side to side, or one side up and the other side down, or posteriorly.
When I teach craniosacral protocal, the move most likely to lead to head problems
and complaints on the following day is pushing or shoving on the sphenoid. Use no force on
the sphenoid area. Perfect balance in this area is crucial. Be careful with this one.

Fig. 15.6 Thumbs resting on the sphenoid bone. In this photo, it almost appears as if the
thumbs are pushing towards the jaw – they are not. The thumbs are just sitting, not pushing in any
direction.

As the sphenoid bone relaxes, it will usually move anteriorly (towards the ceiling,
in the above photo.

5. Sacrum
To hold the sacrum, use the same technique described in the previous chapter for
getting your hands in the right position to work on the sacroiliac joint. Once you have got
your “under” hand positioned nicely under the patient’s sacrum, place your upper hand on
the patient’s abdomen, as close to the pubic bone as you and the patient feel comfortable
with. Rest a bit with your hands in this position, and maybe nudge your hands closer

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together a few times. Support in this position can sometimes allow muscles in the pelvic
floor to relax, which then allows the sacrum to position itself more correctly.

Fig. 15.7 One hand under the sacrum, the upper hand on the abdomen, approaching the pubic
bone

6. Temporal bones
Place your fingers in a “circle” around the “ear bone” (the bone that underlies the
ear) – not on the ear itself. Your fingers will need to be “under” the ear, or you might say,
resting on the skin of the skull, so that you can get your fingers as close to the center of the
temporal bone as possible.

Fig. 15.8 Fingers on the temporal bone: the skin under the ear

With your hands in this position, you might be able to every so slightly rotate the
skin over the temporal bones around the axis of the ear hole. If you imagine the somewhat

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round temporal bone as being the face of the clock, you should be able to move the skin
over the temporal bones ever-so-slightly clockwise and counterclockwise. Never use force –
if the skin over the ears doesn’t want to rotate, then just imagine a rotation.
The temporal bones evolved from our gills. Like gills, they move in a pumping
motion, with every breath.

Fig. 15.9 Another view of holding the temporals

In a healthy person with no excessive muscle tensions in the head or spine, the
temporal bones rotate slightly backwards with every exhalation, and forward with every
inhalation. In this case, “backwards” means “the right ear moves counter-clockwise if you
are standing on the patient’s right side, looking at the right ear, and the reverse, on the left.
Another way of thinking of it is that top (“superior,” closer to the top of the head)
part of the temporal bones moves towards the back of the head with each exhalation while
the bottom of the temporal bone moves towards the chin.
This bone often gets stuck via muscle spasm if a person has a spasm in the psoas
muscle, in the back. Even a slight psoas muscle spasm will pull the spine to the side. In
order to keep one’s eyes level with the ground, a deep, subconscious instinct, a person with
spasm in the psoas muscle will very often, without realizing it, choose to use a spasm of the
opposite-side temporal bone muscles to make the eyes stay level. This can cause mild
headache and is also the number one cause of ear ringing.1

1
If you have a patient with recent-onset ear-ringing, you can usually get rid of it in one or
two sessions by first getting rid of the psoas muscle spasm, and then teaching the patient how to
manually rotate his temporal bones in time with his exhalations. Have the patient place his hands on
his own temporal bones and gently rotate them backwards while exhaling. He should do this three
times in a row, several times a day. If the ear ringing has been going on for weeks, months, or years,
it may take several weeks or months for the patient’s body to completely unlearn the habit of spasm
in the temporal bone. Also, the patient’s psoas spasm must be released. The psoas-spasm release
technique is discussed in the next chapter.

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7. Diaphragms
Two muscular “diaphragms” might be holding tension: one is under the lungs, the
other is the group of muscles at the top of the lungs, at the bottom of the throat.

Fig. 15.10 Holding the diaphragm that works the lungs

To release tension in the diaphragm below the lungs, place one hand on the front of
the torso, just below the sternum (Fig. 15.10) and the other hand under the spine, directly
beneath the upper hand. Hold for a bit, and maybe nudge the hands together for a split
second, to see if the muscles between your hands can relax. As always, if there is
movement, keep your hands in good contact and follow the movement with your hands,
maintaining the support.
The next “diaphragm,” or collection of muscles that makes a circle, is around the
top of the rib cage: the thoracic inlet. Place one hand on the top of the sternum and the other
hand underneath the first hand.

Fig. 15.11 Holding the thoracic inlet

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8. Cervical vertebrae
Place your hands gently on either side of the patient’s neck, and just hold. Do not
try to move or “adjust” anything! The alignments of these bones are very precise. You can
do real harm by interfering with these bones. This is a book for do-it-yourselfers, as well as
medical students. Unless you are medically licensed to move these bones, do not do so.
However, just placing your hands on either side of the neck can very often give enough
support so that the neck bones, if slightly out of place or the muscles, if slightly in spasm,
will move and relax back into their correct places.

Fig. 15.12 Holding the neck (cervical vertebrae)

9. Spinal traction
Placing one hand under the patient’s sacrum, as shown earlier, very, very, very
gently imagine that you are pulling the sacrum towards the feet. You can imagine that the
spine is loosening at each vertebra. You can even count the five lumbar, twelve thoracic,
and seven neck vertebrae as you imagine that each one, in turn, is gently moving towards
the feet, creating a tiny distance between each vertebrae, one at a time. Even if you only
imagine that you are pulling the sacrum towards the feet, the patient may feel a genuine
lengthening of the spine, and often feel a bit taller after this treatment.
On the other hand, if you actually pull on the patient’s spine, he may well tighten
up in his spine, to resist you.

Next, while sitting at the head of the table on which the patient is lying, so that you
are behind the patient’s head, with the top of the patient’s head facing you, place your hands
on either side of the patient’s head, and imagine, imagine, that you are pulling the head oh-
so-slighly off of the topmost vertebra by pulling the patient’s head towards your chest.
Then, continue to imagine the stretch continuing down the patient’s spine, going past the
seven cervicals, the twelve thoracics, and the five lumbar vertebrae, until your reach the
sacrum.

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 At this point, if your focus has migrated, with your imagination, all the way down
to the sacrum, you might be even able to feel the gentle back and forth movement in the
sacrum, as it pumps the cerebrospinal fluid.

In all of the above holding positions, place your hands on the patient gently, and
remove your hands gently. If the patient’s body seems to be magnetically pulling on your
hands, then sit with your hands in that position until the patient “lets go” of you, and then
gently, respectfully, remove your hands.

It’s OK to go to a professional
The above information is not meant to imply that anyone can and should feel
comfortable performing craniosacral therapy on friends and loved ones. The above
information has been provided because some Parkinson’s patients have head, spine, and
neck injuries and they do not live anywhere near a professional craniosacral therapist. For
these people, the above, introductory, modified craniosacral therapy holding positions have
been provided.

If you live in an area where craniosacral therapists are easy to find on the internet, I
highly recommend you use their services.
However, if you are working with a Parkinson’s patient, you must let the therapist
know right from the beginning that your PD patient finds the “extremely light pressure” that
is “standard” is going to be far too intrusive. Ask the practitioner to just place his hands in
the usual positions for the standard protocol and keep them there for a while, in each of the
positions, holding firmly, and noticing if the bones spontaneously do any moving on their
own.
If the bones do move, great. But if there are areas that, to the experienced hands of
the craniosacral therapist, feel “stuck,” ask him to either just sit there at those positions, not
moving, or else show you which hand positions elicited no response, or a “stuck” response.
Then, you can go home and practice holding these particular areas for an hour at a
stretch, which may be what your patient actually needs in order to release in these areas.

If your craniosacral therapist responds to your request by saying, “I don’t need to

modify my technique: I only use a little pressure to help things move around. It won’t be a
problem,” then ask for a referral to a different craniosacral therapist. Or let the cransiosacral
therapist do a few sessions on the patient while you take notes regarding the hand positions
– and then go home and practice those hand positions with no overt moving of the
craniosacral bones – and see which form of treatment your patient prefers.

I’ve had Parkinson’s patients who have seen craniosacral therapists who used
“minimal pressure” or “only five grams of pressure.” Some of these patients have felt so
threatened by that “minimal pressure” that they could feel themselves locking down more
rigidly or defensively than normal in order to deal with the impositions of the craniosacral
therapist. The people with Parkinson’s who feel this way just can’t help it: their strong
desire to not be “messed with” is stronger than their desire to relax.

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 If the craniosacral therapist cannot understand this, then find someone else.

As an aside, I very strongly recommend that all my Yin Tui Na students at the
acupuncture college take a professional craniosacral class. After taking a weekend
craniosacral class, my Yin Tui Na students who’ve already spent a few months working on
a few Parkinson’s patients invariably report back to me saying things like, “The other
students in the craniosacral class were really having a hard time feeling the subtle rhythms
and cerebrospinal fluid movements, they kept asking what it was they were looking for.
They were having a really hard time feeling anything. But it was so easy for all of us
who’ve had the FSR class. Heck, those cerebrospinal movements were overt, glaring,
compared to the tiny movements, or the utter non-responsiveness, of our Parkinson’s
patients!”

My students, by working with Parkinson’s patient via sitting for an hour at a time
feeling next-to-nothing, by patiently supporting these patients with practically rigid bodies,
had become so much more “tuned in” to subtle changes and rhythms that the so-called
“subtle” and “barely discernable” movements of basic craniosacral therapy were, to them,
obvious or even glaring. And the amounts of pressure that they were instructed to use in
these classes seemed to my students to be almost offensive.
They felt that the supportive, un-intrusive holding that they had been learning in
their FSR classes was far more likely to trigger the release of a stuck holding pattern than
the so-called “gentle” or “minimal” amounts of pressure advocated by their craniosacral
teachers.

Since I took my first craniosacral class back in the early 1990s, gentler forms of
craniosacral therapy have been “invented.” There are now several schools of craniosacral
therapy that teach the extremely non-invasive, nothin’ but holding methods that we use in
FSR. Still, it seems that the majority of craniosacral therapists study the “gentle pressure”
methods – which is far too much intrusion for many people with dissociated injuries or for
people with Parkinson’s.

Most practitioners of manual therapy, looking over the extensive scale of body
work, ranging from vigorous and manipulative all the way to subtle and gentle, consider
craniosacral work to be at the extreme far end of subtle.
But FSR, which very often ends up consisting of firmly holding while apparently
doing “nothing at all” is even more subtle. And sometimes, doing “nothing at all” is the
only way to unlock the fear and dissociation that has kept a traumatized body part shut
down for decades.

Massage therapists
On paper, FSR sounds easy: hold firmly and don’t do anything, and don’t impose
your thoughts on the patient. But it can be very, very difficult to do this.
Curiously, in my experience, some of the people who’ve had the hardest time
mastering FSR have been professional massage therapists. Within a few minutes of
supportively holding, they want to get busy “doing something.”

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 Several of them have complained to me with something along the lines of, “How
can I justify getting payment for not doing anything?”
No matter how many times I point out to them that, by firmly holding and
remaining motionless for long periods of time they are providing a very rare and skilled
service, one that many people with unhealed injury desperately need, they are still
unsatisfied.
They have been trained to push and shove. And unless they are allowed to push and
shove, some massage therapists, though certainly not all, feel that they aren’t doing
anything worthwhile.

So if you are planning to look for a health professional to learn FSR or other forms
of Yin Tui Na on your behalf, do not assume that just any massage therapist will be your
best bet.
On the other hand, some excellent FSR therapists have come from the ranks of
massage therapists who do understand the power of supportive, non-invasive contact.

And then again, ultimately, supportive holding of an injured person is one of the
most basic of human instincts. Almost all of us know to hold an injured or frightened infant
or young child closely, in a snug embrace. And most of us know how to tell when the infant
or child no longer needs to be held.

You do not need to be a health professional to learn these techniques and quickly
master them. You just need to be willing to go slowly and patiently, without getting
emotionally involved in “how fast” the patient is going to heal, or whether or not you are
“doing it” correctly. After all, if you are “doing” anything, you are very likely doing too
much. Hold the patient firmly, and let him come, in his own time, to his own conclusions
about whether or not he feels safe enough to start paying attention to, and feeling, and
recovering from his injury, pain, and fear.

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Chapter sixteen

Psoas muscle release

A spasm in the psoas (pronounced SO-as) muscle is a very, very common
occurrence. The majority of back pain problems and sacroiliac problems have their origin in
psoas muscle spasm.
The psoas is one of the longest muscles in the body. At its top end, it attaches to the
spine up by the lung’s diaphragm, and connects, at the lower end, at the top of the femur,
the large bone of the upper leg.
The ideal use of this muscle is raising the thigh. Tightening this muscle is said to
“decrease the angle of the upper leg and torso.”
For example, if you are standing up straight, the “angle” of the torso junction with
the thigh is 180°. When your thigh is raised, such as when you are sitting, the angle is
decreased to approximately 90°.

Hurting your back

The problem in humans is that they tend to use the psoas muscle to bend forward.
This motion also decreases the angle between the torso and thigh: the job of the psoas
muscle. However, this muscle was never designed to lever the whole mass of the torso and
head. In quadrupeds, this muscle is designed to lift the leg: in a quadruped, the leg is a small
percentage of the overall body.
In humans, we might bend forward by tightening the psoas, but the torso and head
is a large percentage of the overall body in a human. The psoas muscle can over-react to the
job, tighten up too much, and then go into spasm – from which it doesn’t automatically
release. If we are leaning even a bit to one side or the other, one side’s psoas muscle will
tighten more than the other side – and might go into spasm, pulling the back violently to
one side. When it does this, the nerves that emerge from between the vertebrae can get
painfully squeezed: “back pain.”
Sometimes, the sacrum even gets pulled to one side by the power of the psoas
muscle. In these cases, the nerves in the sacrum can get squeezed (overstimulated), causing
a pain sensation that might seem to originate anywhere from the hip to the toe. But even if
the pain sensation seems to be coming from the hip, knee, or toe, the actual location of the
problem is usually in the sacroiliac joint, which can be tweaked by a spastic psoas muscle.
If the psoas muscle can be made to relax, the vertebrae can go back to their correct
positions. The pain signals being created by squeezed nerves, signals that incorrectly
suggest that the problem is in the toes, the mid back, or even up by the lungs, will cease.
So many people say, “I just bent down to pick up a paper clip, and my back went
out!” The problem is not the weight that was lifted, but the quick, thoughtless, assymetrical
manner in which the person bent down in the first place.

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 It is much better to lower the torso towards the ground by bending at the knees, or
by very carefully, mindfully, bending equally with both left and right sides, tightening the
psoas to lower the torso and then, carefully, gently, symmetrically loosening it again as we
stand back up.
To treat a psoas spasm, first make sure the patient’s spine is as straight as possible.
(See “spinal traction,” in the previous chapter, p. 123.) Then, have the patient, who is lying
down, bend one knee, with his foot flat on the table.

Fig. 16.1 Knee bent, foot flat on the table

The patient or the health practitioner should gently press down with his fingers at
the psoas release point: midway between his belly-button and the superior (closer to the
head) end of the ASIS (the front part of the hip bone that sticks out in front on slender
people.

Fig. 16.2 Psoas-release point: mid-way between the belly button and the upper end of the ASIS

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 While massaging the psoas release point on his abdomen, the patient or practitioner
must simultaneously move the patient’s bent knee towards the midline of his body. The
“midline” is an imaginary line that travels from the nose, down past the belly-button, ending
between the feet. This imaginary line divides the body into left side and right side.

Fig. 16.3 Starting position: knee bent, fingers massaging the psoas-spasm point.

Again: the patient or the practitioner brings the bent knee gently towards the
midline and gently back to its original upright position, all the while massaging the psoas
release point on the abdomen.

Fig.s 16.4 and 16.5 Bringing the knee to the midline and then returning it to upright, while
massaging the psoas-release point

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 Repeat the “knee-to-midline and then back to upright” movement ten times,
massaging the psoas-release point the whole time. You should spend about one second on
each of the midline-to-upright moves.
After doing this ten times, then you may test your treatment by gently moving the
bent knee out towards the side (laterally). Do not force the knee out to the lateral side. It
should move laterally more easily than before. If a psoas spasm is very tight, it may still be
difficult for the patient to move the bent knee laterally, but it might be easier than before.
After doing the above psoas relaxation technique, the patient may suddenly find it far easier
to move the knee laterally than it has been in a long, long time. However, if the knee is still
unable to move laterally easily, without forcing it, then repeat the above.
With a few patients with very tight psoas spasms, I’ve had to repeat this release
sequence for half an hour before the muscles have started to relax.
I had a fourteen-year old patient with severe chronic back pain. When her psoas
muscle finally relaxed, after nearly an hour of my bringing her bent knees back and forth,
while massaging the abdominal “psoas release” point, she was astonished.
She told her mother and me, “I didn’t know people could move their knees and legs
outward!”

Psoas release part two: releasing the compensation mechanism

As mentioned in the previous chapter, a person with a psoas spasm will usually
have a compensating spasm somewhere else in his body – a compensation designed to
enable the eyes to be horizontal with the ground in spite of the slight spinal contortion from
the psoas spasm. Our bodies will do just about anything to keep the eyes horizontal to the
ground.
This compensating spasm is typically in the temporal bones, thought it can
sometimes be found in the shoulder, neck, or upper torso.
After the psoas muscle has been relaxed, then you can oh-so-gently rotate the
temporal bones to get them to stop being in spasm. After performing the psoas release and
temporal release on the patient, teach the patient how to do this to himself. He should do
both the psoas and temporal releases at least twice a day. Since he needs to lie down to do
these, suggest that he do them when he’s already lying down: before he gets out of bed in
the morning and when he goes to bed at night.
This little “trick” can be enormously helpful. So many people have aches and pains
in their back, side, head, neck, or while taking a deep breath, and so on, pains that are being
caused by a psoas muscle spasm.
If the spasm quickly resumes after the patient stands up from the treatment table,
then you have one of two situations going on: either the compensating spasm was not
located in the temporal bones, and you will need to track it down by holding, with FSR, the
shoulders, neck, and upper torso. Or, the vertebrae are out of alignment, forcing the psoas
back into spasm. If this seems to be the case, and it may well be, with severe spasms, you
may want to redo the psoas sequence a few times and then traction the spine a few times, as
taught in the previous chapter. After tractioning, perform the psoas release again a few
times.
This gentle but powerful exercise is one of the most important tools in my
acupuncturist’s toolbox. I find myself teaching this exercise to patients several times a

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week. If they are dutiful about practicing it twice a day, their back problems will quickly
resolve and not return, even if they have a long history of their backs “going out.”

Prevent it from happening in the future

Your patients will also benefit enormously from learning to tighten their lumbar
quadratis muscles for a minute or two, several times a day. These muscles are tightened
when a person sits on the floor with his knees out to the sides, as when doing the yoga asana
called “lotus position.”
The psoas muscles and the lumbar quadratis muscles are an oppositional pair: when
one relaxes, the other tightens, and vice versa.
When a person sits in chairs, or cars, or in other postures that keep the knees
somewhat close together while the thighs are at a ninety-degree angle to the torso, his psoas
muscle are tight and his lumbar quadratis muscles are therefore relaxed.
A healthy person should spend most of his sitting time with his knees as far apart as
possible: with his lumbar quadratis tightened and his psoas relaxed - just the opposite of
how westerners sit.
If a person can train himself to be aware of his lumbar quadratis muscles, and
tighten them for a few seconds, a few times every day, or every ten minutes while driving in
the car, he will not develop the classic westerner’s back pain. He will be able to easily get
out of a car and stand straight up even after driving for hours, even if he used to have a
history of back spasm or if he’s “elderly” (whatever that means).

I describe the tightening of the lumbar quads to patients by saying, “It’s the muscle
on your backside that attaches the top / back of your hip bones to your lowest ribs. If you
move like you are trying to bring the top / back of your hip bones up to your ribs, your back
will arch a bit, as if you are starting to do a back bend. Your stomach will stick out in front,
just a bit.
The lumbar quads are also the muscles that tighten when you arch your back while
swimming the breast stroke.
As you tighten these left and right side muscles the first few times, there will be a
gently sore sensation at the top of your hip bones. The pulling sensation is here, at the top /
back of your hips bones. You should not feel the pull at the opposite end of the muscle, on
your ribs.

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Chapter seventeen

Fun facts about YinTui Na

These next few chapters might seem a bit extraneous. Or introductory. They might
just as well have been placed near the front of the book as here, near the end.
I decided to place this non-crucial information here at the back to allow readers to
more quickly cut to the chase and get started on actually practicing Tui Na. But having
starting practicing, you might now have some questions. These chapters answer the most
frequently asked questions.

The disappearance of Yin Tui Na

You might have wondered why you can’t find anyone in your area that does Yin
Tui Na. Chinese politics of the mid-twentieth century has a lot to do with that.
More than twenty years ago, after having gotten my Master’s degree in Chinese
medicine, I was re-visiting my old school’s library when I came across a book titled Tui Na:
Chinese Massage. The book’s intro claimed that the text was a direct translation of the text
approved for use in one of the top Chinese Medical schools. (The poor quality of the
translation – a characteristic of all the recently translated texts, at that time – made a
convincing case for this claim.)
The book started by stating that Tui Na is an ancient art, preceding the development
of acupuncture: “The unearthed oracle inscriptions …of the Shang dynasty record that the
female witch doctor, Bi, could treat patients with massage [Tui Na].”1
The introduction of the book then proudly explained that both Yin and Yang forms
of Tui Na were a part of the rich cultural heritage of China. It explained further that Yang
techniques were overt, and were usually used when an injury was new and painful: “bright,
or “Yang.” Yin techniques were subtle. They were more likely to be used if an injury was
old, forgotten, and painless. “Old,” “dark,” and “hidden” are all “Yin” qualities.
The introduction went on and on for several pages with generalities about the
difference between Yin and Yang types of Tui Na, together with repeated assurances that all
known techniques, ranging from very Yin to very Yang, were presented in the book.
However, when I flipped through the book, I discovered that the introduction was
incorrect. The book contained only very Yang techniques: overt “cracking” or twisting of
the spine to relieve back pain, violent snapping motions of the neck for displaced cervical
vertebrae, and so on.

1
Chinese Massage; Publishing House of Shanghai College of Traditional Chinese
Medicine; Shanghai; 1988; p.2.
Note: the Shang dynasty dates from approximately 1766 BC to 1027 BC. The actual text
would have said that Bi could treat patients with Tui Na. Again, the use of the word “massage” when
translating into the English is not accurate.

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 There was no mention anywhere in the book about gentler techniques such as skin-
rolling, acupressure, or the deeply supportive, gentle type of holding that can bring together
and reset, perfectly, painlessly, the ends of a broken bone, or the firm support that can bring
the patient’s attention, and therefore healing, to an injury that had been long ignored.
I pored through that book, looking for any Yin techniques, based on the description
in the introduction. I inquired in the school’s library and even the main office as to whether
the Yin techniques might be in a separate volume. No, there was no missing volume. This
was a translation of the entire book, the latest official version of Chinese government-
approved medical Tui Na.

I learned, a few years later, that Yin Tui Na had been intentionally dropped from the
Officially Approved Texts. This disappearance probably occurred because, at some point in
the mid-twentieth century, the light touch therapies were deemed “not scientific enough,”
and even “too charismatic” (related more to the practitioner’s charm than any medical
science). At any rate, by government decree, Yin Tui Na was no longer taught. Officially, it
no longer existed.
Yin Tui Na had been left in the introduction to the texts, most likely by accident.
This disappearance probably occurred around the same time that channel theory, the
basis of all Chinese medicine, was made illegal, in the mid-twentieth century. The Chinese
government has long been extremely sensitive to mockery of its medicine from western
doctors. Acupuncture itself has been made illegal three times in the last hundred and fifty
years. I am not at all surprised that Yin Tui Na, which can appear to bring about
spontaneous, “inexplicable” healing responses, was dropped from the books and, according
to Chinese colleagues, made illegal.

Stumbling across Yin Tui Na

My own medical practice just happened to develop in a direction that required the
application of very Yin Tui Na – although I had no idea that the techniques I was doing had
a traditional Chinese name. I was working with patients with Parkinson’s disease, many of
whom had dissociated or were on pause from injuries or traumas.
As mentioned earlier, many of these patients had injuries that, in many cases, had
never hurt – or had “never happened” – usually because they had occurred during a
traumatic situation and the injury, being the lesser of two traumas, was never addressed.
Very often, patients did not want these injuries touched by me, or by anyone. Many
patients, terrified at the idea of therapy in the injured area, said things like, “No one has
ever touched my left foot.” Or, “I never even let my spouse look at my foot.”
Although I did not realize at the time that I myself was manifesting a few dozen
early-stage symptoms of Parkinson’s, I was strangely sympathetic to people not wanting to
be touched or “messed with.” I felt the same way. Very strongly.
And yet, in order for me to gently draw the patient’s attention to their obviously
(obvious to me) unhealed injuries, thus ending decades of dissociation and electrical
currents running the wrong way under the skin, I found myself using extremely Yin Tui Na:
nothing but very firm, utter support. I placed my hands on either side of the injured area and
simply held it for an hour at a stretch, once a week, until the displaced tissues began to

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move of their own accord under my hands, or until the patient suddenly exclaimed
something like “Ouch! My ankle feels smashed!”
Years earlier, when I was getting my Master’s degree in Chinese medicine, my
shiatsu (Japanese “massage” that focuses on acupoints) professor had demonstrated a
variation of shiatsu that consisted of simple holding. He referred to this technique as
“Support.” He didn’t provide an official Asian name for his technique.
A year or two after graduating, I discovered, in the introduction of the book Tui
Na: Chinese Massage, that Yin Tui Na was the Traditional Chinese Medicine name for
work on “old, painless, forgotten injuries,” the kind of injuries that I was seeing in my
Parkinson’s patients.
At the same time, the techniques I instinctively was using to treat the injuries of my
Parkinson’s patients had been based, in part, on the “support technique” I’d learned in the
Shiatsu class and was also based in part on the way I would want to be therapeutically
manipulated: not at all.
However, as mentioned previously, although a general description of these types of
techniques was in the introduction to the official book of Chinese Tui Na, including when to
use which types of techniques, the actual techniques themselves had disappeared from the
modern Chinese medicine cannon. I had no idea what these Yin-type techniques might look
like.
The Yin techniques were no longer being taught in Chinese schools of Tui Na. As I
later learned, they had ceased to exist. In China, they were illegal.
But my school’s Japanese teacher of hands-on therapeutic shiatsu techniques had
also taught us about non-manipulative support with the hands, as opposed to manipulating
with the hands. He had no special name for the supportive holding that he did, but his
results were legendary.
I never suspected that the illegal techniques of “Yi Tui Na” and the various types of
“supportive holding” techniques of my teacher were actually one and the same.

Choosing a name for a technique

In 1998, when I first wrote up an article about the results I was getting in treating
the “painless, often forgotten” injuries of my Parkinson’s patients, my article briefly
described the hands-on “support” technique I was using. 1
1
I have come across many doctors and health practitioners who do not believe that any
person can have an injury and not feel the pain of it. However, neurologists have long recognized
that certain injuries, inherently life-threatening, do not manifest pain, at first. Spinal cord injuries,
removal of a limb, and stroke are three types of injury that might not hurt for the first few days, and
usually, for much longer than that.
In the case of spinal cord injuries, approximately 75% of patients begin to feel the delayed
pain between 72 hours and one year. The remaining 25% might feel the pain sometime between one
year and several decades following the injury – or never.
Years after a spinal cord injury, long after all movement function has been restored, a
person may suddenly experience the classic pain of spinal cord injury: terrible pressure in the head,
ripping pains in the neck and shoulders, searing pain in the hips or legs (depending on where the
spinal cord was injured) – and may have no way of knowing that this is pain that was experienced
during the injury and put “on hold” in the brain until such time as the person had the leisure and
safety to deal with it.

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 The editor of the journal I was aiming for was brilliant, detail-obsessed, and
gloriously nit-picking. The American Journal of Acupuncture is now defunct, but at that
time, it was the most respected, longest-running (twenty-five years) English language peer-
reviewed journal of Chinese Medicine in the world. The editor told me that the hands-on
technique I was describing was a “Yin” type of Tui Na.
I’d had no idea. After all, the only book I’d ever seen that even mentioned the
words “Yin Tui Na,” in the intro, had included no information about Yin techniques in the
text.
Still, the book had said that Yin Tui Na was used when injuries were old, painless,
and even forgotten. That fit my patients to a T.
I accepted the editor’s assertion, and from that point on, in my medical practice, I
referred to this work, and any light-touch variations such as craniosacral therapy, as Yin Tui
Na. Happily, this gave me the convenience of keeping all my hands-on treatment modalities
under the Chinese medicine term “Tui Na.” This also kept all my treatments under the
umbrella of the legal “scope of practice” of an acupuncturist. In California, at any rate, an
acupuncturist’s scope of practice includes Tui Na.
I was happily surprised to see how my patients responded to this new label for the
work that I’d been performing on with them. Prior to labeling the holding technique “Yin
Tui Na,” I had been merely holding their injuries in some very slow, boring, albeit effective,
fashion.
Because I am an acupuncturist, my patients had often asked me how my holding
technique was related to traditional Chinese medicine. I had no answer.
After learning from my new editor, I could casually mention that the technique
being used was “a Yin form of Tui Na.” My patients loved it.
They could even search for “Tui Na” on their computers and find articles, so they
knew I wasn’t just making things up. I no longer underestimate the power of an “official”
name.
In 2008, ten years after my first article was published in the American Journal of
Acupuncture, after I’d published books describing Yin Tui Na techniques and had lectured
on the subject in the USA and abroad, I was thrilled to learn, from an acupuncturist
attending one of my lectures, that people in China were, once again, openly using Yin Tui
Na techniques. I cannot verify this student’s report, but he said that, for many long years,
the subtle Yin forms of hands-on healing work had been banned from the official medical
protcols…but health practitioners had continued to perform it in secret. Now, at the
beginning of the new millennium, I learned that Yin Tui Na was, once again, being
practiced openly as a medical procedure.

In the case of stroke, the pressure in the brain actually causes pain, but this pain is “put on
hold” in the brain and does not register, in many cases. However, some people do experience the pain
of pressure in the head many months or years after having a stroke. The pain at the severance site of
a removed limb may not occur for several weeks or several years after the removal of a limb. (This is
different from the phantom limb experience in which people register sensations from the missing
limb.)
In my own acupuncture practice, I find that unhealed, long-forgotten, even “painless”
injuries, together with mental stances such as dissociation and pause are very common reasons for
the body to be unable to heal itself, and are very often at the root of movement disorders and chronic
pain situations.

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 Evidently, by the early twenty-first century, as the Chinese government officials
basked in the burgeoning international support for acupuncture, Qi Gong, and other esoteric
practices that had all been banned in China at one time or another (because they invited
mockery from the more “scientific” western countries), even subtle medical techniques such
as Yin Tui Na were once again out in the open.
I do not know if Yin Tui Na techniques have regained their rightful place in the
Chinese medical schools and text books. I do hope that the written material regarding Yin
Tui Na was only locked up, and not destroyed. At any rate, we westerners can now state
with assurance and confidence that hands-on healing techniques at the more subtle, less
intrusive, less-directed (Yin) end of the spectrum are in fact techniques of Chinese
medicine, just as much as the bone-snapping, body-jerking (Yang) forms. For
acupuncturists, in many states and countries, these gentle forms of support are allowable
according to our scope-of-practice laws: laws that permit us to perform “Tui Na,” but which
never specify what types of Tui Na.

What’s in a name?
When I started working on the very first edition of this book, I asked the Chinese
doctors and teachers at my California acupuncture college for their definitions of Tui Na.
My teachers were all practicing acupuncturists. One teacher, an MD in pediatrics from
Shanghai, said, “Tui Na means Pediatric Finger Massage: skin rolling.” An MD/ Ph.D. in
Chinese medicine from Guandong (Canton) said, “It means all forms of Chinese massage.”
An MD from elsewhere in southern China said, “It cannot be translated. Tui Na means Tui
Na.” An MD from Shanghai said, “It means bone medicine.” Another MD from Shanghai
said, “It means bone massage.”
My friend Sue, who was an accountant in southern China and now owns a Chinese
restaurant in California, gave this non-medical translation: “Tui Na is a doing word, it is a
word that means you do something, and then there is a result. It means moving, doing, and
then it brings something out that wasn’t there before. So then you have something. Because
you did something, this way.” She moved her hands in a slow, open and shut, back and
forth pattern to demonstrate.

Back in the 1980s, when I started working on a Master’s degree in Chinese

medicine, the most common classroom definitions of Tui Na were “bone medicine” or “skin
rolling/pediatric massage.” The latter is a relatively new meaning of Tui Na, going back
only to the Yuan dynasty. During the Yuan period (1271-1368), the Tui Na/massage
department of medicine came under the administration of the bone-setting department. A
department of pediatrics was opened also and incorporated into the Tui Na department,
making “skin rolling techniques” an official part of the government-approved Chinese
medical protocols.1

Today, as mentioned in the opening chapter, Tui Na is the name given to almost
any form of physical-touch work in which the doctor makes intentional hand contact with

1
Chinese Massage; Publishing House of Shanghai College of Traditional Chinese
Medicine; Shanghai; 1988; p.12.

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the patient. Technically, even acupressure, a process in which acupoints are stimulated by
finger pressure, should be considered a form of Tui Na.

As for the bone-setting applications of Yin Tui Na, it is almost never used in
western countries. In western countries, the re-setting of broken bones is nearly always done
in a western medical clinic or a hospital’s emergency room.
But maybe in the future…?

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Chapter eighteen

Studying with the masters

When I was getting my master’s degree in Traditional Chinese medicine, students
were required to take two classes in Tui Na and/or Asian-style massage.
I was so fortunate as to have classes with one of the most brilliant “massage”
therapists in, I think, the world. I put the word massage in quotes because the class that
Shinzo Fujimaki Sensei was teaching was officially titled “Shiatsu Massage.” However,
what he taught us was nothing like the usual acupressure poking and prodding that is
normally associated with Shiatsu.
Master Fujimaki was so in demand for his “massage” therapy that his appointment
calendar was always booked at least three months in advance. His clients testified that his
treatments had removed problems ranging from chronic pain to cancerous tumors, asthma,
and a long list of other “incurable” ailments.
As a teacher, he worked very hard to convey to us the essence of what he was doing
and why. Many of my fellow students did not like his class. Their complaint usually ran
something like: “He is wasting our time telling us about his ideas. I don’t get it. I just want
to learn which place to push on to cure which problems. Fujimaki never tells us anything
practical.”
But many other students, myself included, considered our classes with Master
Fujimaki to be some of the most important foundation-stone hours of our entire school
career.
Shinzo Fujimaki was a supple and powerful early-middle-aged man with an always
radiant smile. He was also an aikido master. When I saw him, now and then, striding along
the cliff top walk-ways of our ocean-side city, his stride evoked images of tigers and horses,
as if he was one of his totem animals disguised in a man’s form. His feet seemed to barely
touch the ground. To best honor what he taught, I will quote to you, as closely as I
remember, the words he told us, over and over. It will be up to you, as it was left up to us, to
see if you can find anything helpful in his words.

Support, support, support

“Support, support, support.
“If a patient is lying on the table, and you push down hard on them giving
acupressure or massage, or push hard when you are feeling for the right place to put the
hand or the needle, his body will automatically push back against you. There will be a fight
going on. How can a person relax, how can he begin to heal, when he is fighting?

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 “If the patient is lying on his stomach, do not push his back down into the table.
Instead, put one of your hands under his chest and your other hand on top of his back.
Position the upper hand directly over your hand that is underneath. Now when you push on
his back with your upper hand, resist that push with the hand that is underneath. That way,
you are doing all the work; you are doing the pushing and the resisting. Your bottom hand
is supporting the patient, holding him strong against the push of your upper hand.
“Support, support, support. You give the support; then the patient doesn’t have to
work at resisting you or work at supporting the weight of your hand. The patient can be
peaceful, he doesn’t need to resist you; you are resisting yourself with your opposite hand.
“The patient cannot relax if you are pushing or poking him. If your goal is to allow
the patient to relax so that he can let go of his problem, do not hurt him. Give him support.
Support, support, support.
“If you are going to have one hand on [some body part of the patient], your other
hand should be on the other side [of the body part], catching the power of your first hand,
protecting the patient from your active hand. If you are not doing any pushing, if you are
just resting your hand on a patient, still, his body will have to worry about what to do about
your hand. His body will be pushing back on your hand, especially if you are touching a
part of his body that is scared.
“But if you support the patient by putting your other hand on the opposite side of
his body [part] to support the patient, and use that other hand to catch the energy from the
first hand, then the patient can relax.
“Sometimes both hands are active. Sometimes both hands are supporting. It doesn’t
matter. The only thing is this: the patient should not have to do extra work because you are
imposing on him. The patient should be allowed to relax. Support, support, support.”

Have fun
The master continued: “My attitude when I am giving treatment is that I am having
fun. I learned that I gave the best treatments after I had already worked about eight hours.
After working eight hours without a break, I start to feel hungry, tired. I cannot stay focused
on my work even if I try. I begin to think that I cannot survive if I don’t stop working. My
mind becomes distracted from my work. I want so much to stop working that I cannot think
about what I am doing. To keep myself going, I imagine that I am looking up at the blue
sky. I imagine that I am at the beach.
“I love to go to the beach. When I go to the beach, I imagine that I am a red horse, a
red pony, and I run in and out of the waves. When I am finished running in and out of the
waves, I lay on the sand and look up into the blue sky.
“When I am starting to get so tired from treating clients, after about eight hours, but
I can’t stop because there are still more clients with appointments for several more hours,
here is what I do: I think that I am lying on the beach, looking at the sky. I have discovered
that during this time, when I am exhausted and looking at the sky, when the sky exists and
the patient is no longer the center of my focus, this is when I begin to give good treatments.
After a few more hours of still working hard giving treatments, when I am in the sky, when
I am the sky, when the patient doesn’t even exist anymore, then I am starting to do the best
treatments. This is when patients get the best results. I learned this.

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 “So now, whenever I start working, I put my mind on the idea that I have already
been working eight hours. I think that I can no longer keep going. I must start to imagine
that I am looking into the blue sky. My idea is that I am so completely drained, I am so
tired, I cannot think anymore about the patient. I can only survive if I am, in my mind,
looking up at the sky with all my love and energy.”
Shinzo-san often worked twelve and thirteen hour days without taking a break. His
point, however, was not that he gave his best treatments at the end of a long day. His point
was that he had learned that, no matter whether he was just starting his day or was starting
on his twelfth client, his mind must always be as desperately seeking transcendent joy as a
drowning man seeks for air. When he could hold his mind in this state, the treatments – no
matter when they were scheduled – more or less took care of themselves. Meanwhile, what
were his hands actually doing? Support, support, support.
Every week in shiatsu class, when he demonstrated his techniques on volunteer
patients, I watched his hands. Where was he placing them? Very often he would start with
the hands on the part of the patient’s body that was having pain. But usually, as he gently
pushed, vigorously pushed, or just let his hand rest firmly on the patient’s skin - always
with his other hand giving oppositional support – his hands would gravitate, with almost no
conscious thought or motive, to some other part of the patient’s body that seemed to want to
be held, pushed, or prodded.
As his hands moved, patients would often blurt out something like, “I just
remembered an old injury. It was just at the exact place where your hand is right now.”
When he stopped thinking about what his hands were doing, his hands knew
automatically just what to do.
Even if one of his hands then pushed or prodded, the patient never responded as if
he was being pushed or prodded. The patient usually didn’t seem to feel much of anything,
except safety and relaxation, because the actual work of Shinzo-san’s hands was somewhat
undetectable to the patient’s reflexive tendency to push back. Why? The support, support,
support that his hands were giving each other.
Some of my fellow students resented this general talk about support, support,
support. They kept asking him highly specific questions like, “Where’s the right place to
push on the patient for asthma?” or “What point should I push on for acid indigestion?”
They completely missed the point that the patient’s own body would show you
where the important blockages were. They deeply resisted the fact that the “curing point”
for asthma or for indigestion is in different locations on different people. They wanted
simple, one-size-fits-all location-formulas to cure the various diagnoses of their patients.
This formulaic focus on “curing points” is the reason so many patients don’t get
good results from acupuncture. (Please see my book, Hacking Chinese Medicine, for more
on the subject of how acupuncture works, and why each person with a given set of
symptoms might need treatment in a different location(s) than other people with the same
symptoms. Available at www.JaniceHadlock.com)
I mention this, in part, because if you are looking for someone to do Yin Tui Na,
you cannot assume that an acupuncturist, or even someone who is certified in Asian body-
work, will necessarily be knowledgeable about or even interested in the “slow, hands-
doing-the-diagnostics” style of FSR.

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Control your thoughts
Another point that Master Fujimaki made was also very important, although I fear
many of my fellow students only thought that he was relating a funny story.
“In Japan, we have a massage tradition that the patient leaves his clothes on. When
I first came to this country, I was surprised that people remove their clothes for massage
therapy. I was not used to working on bare skin.
“After I had been working in this country for about a month, I felt very bad about
the way that my American patients behaved towards me. After every treatment that I gave,
every treatment, the patient told me that he wanted to have sex with me. I thought that this
was very bad. Young men, young women, old men, old women, they were all the same.
After the massage, they all wanted to talk about having sex with me. I thought this was an
American habit.
“One day I decided to learn why this was happening to me. I realized that I had a
cultural difference about bare skin. To me, because of my Japanese background, bare skin
suggested having sex. I must have been conveying my cultural ideas to the patients. So I
made an effort to understand that in this country, bare skin was not a statement about having
sex. I never again used this wrong idea about bare skin during massage.
Ever since that day, when I changed my attitude towards bare skin, not once after a
treatment has finished has a patient wanted to talk about having sex with me, not once.
“When my mind was on sex, every patient thought about sex. Now I think about the
red pony and the blue sky, and my patients think about whatever they want; and they
recover from their pain and the sadness that was holding on to the pain.”
I could write volumes about this shiatsu class that some, a few, students insisted
taught us nothing, about classic shiatsu. However, I think the above examples make the two
points most important to our work with patient’s injuries or work with Parkinson’s patients.
First, the patient must be supported. No matter how much or how little energy the
health practitioner is applying to the patient’s body, the patient should not feel the need to
instinctively fight back or resist any of it. The patient should not need to push back unless
he, for some reason, wants to. The support, support, support that Shinzo-san insisted on
creates a pressure-free, supportive environment for the patient’s body, as if the therapy, no
matter how vigorous or how firm, somehow seems forceless to the patient.
The other important point is that the mental sojournings of the practitioner are
important. The best results occur when the practitioner is not trying to give undue influence
to the patient. If the practitioner’s mind is focused on something, the patient can pick up on
it and even misinterpret it.
Even focusing on healing the patient is usually inappropriate: if the practitioner is
focusing on healing the patient and the patient is holding back for some reason, an
unspoken conflict ensues. In the throes of this conflict, the patient cannot let himself go, he
cannot relax. The patient cannot attend to the business of healing if he is busy fighting the
practitioner or defending himself, however silently and invisibly.1
1
This sentence sums up, very well, the problem that many patients are dealing with. A
person cannot relax and cannot let go if he is busy defending himself, however silently and invisibly.
Keep this phrase in mind as you work on your patient: do not judge him, do not try to mentally
“help” him or pray for him. Mentally, leave him alone. Of course, you can always say prayers for
him after the session is over and you are not technically working on him.

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 When the practitioner forgets about trying to heal the patient and plunges himself
headlong into his own joy or inner peacefulness, the patient is less threatened. The patient
can let his guard down. When this happens, the patient’s body may very well start doing
what it was designed to do: heal itself.
My class was the last year to have Shinzo Fujimaki as a teacher. The school
administration, after receiving several complaints that: “Shinzo doesn’t teach us anything
real,” replaced him with a dullard of a teacher who read to the students, right out of the
standard texts, just where to push on various acupoints and how hard.1
Returning to the subject of “intention,” Shinzo Fujimaki’s work was most effective
when he was focused on something other than the patient, such as being a red pony or
gazing at the sky. The point he was making was “Mind your own business. Don’t impose
your hopes for your patient on the patient.”
The following is a good example. A decade after taking his class, in one of the FSR
clinics I taught, a student confided in me during clinic, “I feel like I’m not getting anywhere
with this patient. He’s Catholic, so I’m praying for Mother Teresa of Calcutta to inspire him
and help him, but I just don’t know…he’s so rigid…”
I suggested that she forget about the patient and instead ask Mother Teresa to help
her, the student, with her own problems.
She did so, and at the end of the class she reported to me, “I get it. The patient’s
skin stopped fighting me when I stopped trying to change him.”
I have often beheld sudden, beneficial releases and tissue shifts in very “stubborn”
patients while my mind was on highly mundane matters, such as compiling a grocery list.
As for the idea of “correct intention,” it might best be understood as “don’t let your
thoughts wander into negative areas, and keep your thoughts on something that is uplifting
for you.”

Dr. Paul Lee

Fulfilling another course requirement while I was still in school, I was privileged to
take a class in Medical Qi Gong from a Qi Gong Master.
Dr. “Paul Lee” (Lee Pu Long), recently arrived from China, taught a brilliant class
in which he taught us very specific techniques that patients could perform on themselves to
stimulate their own healing energy in various body parts.
By way of introduction to Dr. Paul Lee, I will describe one of his projects. His work
in China on self-applied eye “massage” had been adopted by the national government and
was being taught to Chinese school children.

1
Of course, this material was redundant. As second- or third-year acupuncture students, we
already knew all the point locations and their applications. The replacement Shiatsu teacher simply
demonstrated that these points could be stimulated by hand as well as via needles, and spent the
whole semester doing it. I suspect that a few students liked this format because they didn’t have to
learn anything new. They could spend the class practicing acupressure on acupoint locations that
they’d already studied.
I teach at an acupuncture college. Most students are highly idealistic, and want to do what is
best for the patient. But I am including these “negative” bits to help the reader understand that, just as
all MDs are not the same, all acupuncturists are not the same.

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 The government had wanted a solution to the problem of poor vision becoming
rampant among children at the seventh and eighth grade level. As students were doing
increasing levels of book-work, they were starting to need glasses. This is considered
perfectly normal in the west, but in China, where the government is the supplier of eye
exams and eyeglasses, this trend towards “student’s myopia” was considered a health
problem.
Dr. Paul Lee had devised a quick and easy program of Qi Gong (energy control)
that included gentle finger stimulation of the bones around the eye socket and using the
energized palms of the hands, held a short distance away from the eyes and then moved
closer, further, closer again, over and over, to push and pull energy into and out of the eyes.
Starting in sixth grade, students did these quick exercises every day at school. They
subsequently did not develop myopia and did not need glasses, even as they progressed
through the later school years.
This type of Qi Gong exercise, in which the patient learns how to focus on a body
part and move energy through it in a soothing, healing manner, is the essence of Medical Qi
Gong.
This class taught me crucial lessons in the role that the patient plays in healing
himself. If I could summarize the essence of the Qi Gong class, it would be this: the best
doctor is one who sees where or what the source of the problem actually is, and then shares
helpful information, even including specific exercises, to help the patient to change himself.
The good doctor may advise on diet, exercise regimen, movement patterns, or instruct the
patient in how to recognize where energy is moving incorrectly and how to correct it.
The point of the treatment is to help the patient learn what he was doing wrong that
made him susceptible to the weakness or illness, and how to correct it. Ultimately, the
responsibility for recovering and staying recovered is on the patient.
The job of the doctor is to non-judgmentally figure out the source of the problems
in the patient and suggest to the patient a direction that will reverse the problem. The goal is
relieving patient suffering through patient education and empowerment, which may include
the patient learning some energetic (Qi Gong) exercises or learning an attitude adjustment.
A further outcome is the confidence and positive attitude the patient develops as he learns
how he can confront his own weaknesses and change them. 1

1
Regrettably, some western students of Chinese medicine have embraced a weird, ego-
boosting version of “medical Qi Gong” in which the doctor uses his own energetic power to force
healing onto a patient. While this may sound appealing to people who like the idea of having power
over others, this type of work does not improve a patient’s health in the long run. A patient who
allows his body to be manipulated in this manner actually suffers a weakening of his own will power
and his own sense of energetic control.
When the treated malady returns (and it will, sooner or later), the patient will be even less
able to activate his innate healing energy than he was before. His body will passively wait for the
next blast of healing energy from the healer rather than doing its own work. This type of healing, in
which a charismatic person refers to himself as a Healer and forces the energy in a patient’s body to
move in an unnatural (not according the patient’s will) manner, is considered very bad form by many
traditional Qi Gong practitioners. This type of work can be dangerous to the ego of the practitioner
and does no long-term good to the patient.
Great souls from time immemorial have done miraculous healing work. However, these
souls performed their healings by removing first the causal (ideational) problem that set in motion

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Putting it all together
The many classes that I took in Asian and American bodywork, including some of
the teaching in the Medical Qi Gong classes, all contributed to my understanding of Tui Na.
Some of the techniques I learned in school had names. Some did not. The result of taking
these classes, in addition to the other classes required for a Master’s degree in traditional
Asian medicine, was that I had learned, at least on a beginner’s level, how to use my hands
in a supportive manner.
When I got my license and started practicing medicine, if I did include Tui Na in
the treatment session, I never bothered to mentally define which, if any, particular technique
I was using on a given patient at any given moment of hands-on therapy. Everything I was
doing was the sum of all the things I had learned. I suspect that this becomes true for all

the unhealthy energetics: the unhealthy energetics that manifest as the illness. Therefore, these great
souls actually do remove the entire illness.
More importantly, they only perform these miraculous healings when their cosmos-attuned
intuition tells them to do so. They have no personal desire as to whether the person heals or not at a
specific time. For the most part, if they have a preference, they prefer that their patients seek the
Truth and Love that will enable them, the patients themselves, to joyfully cast out their own health
problems instead of passively waiting to be healed.
Patanjali, a contemporary of Socrates and one of the greatest Hindu writers on religious
philosophy, makes his point in his Yoga Sutras. He explains that a sign of spiritual advancement is
the ability to remove illness in another, including the underlying wrong thinking and past karma that
caused the illness. But he also makes the point that a truly advanced soul may have this ability and,
because of his wisdom, will choose the more difficult path: not using his spiritual powers to force an
alteration in a person’s chosen life direction unless commanded to do so by God. The truly wise
understand the roles that sickness and health play in this worldly drama of cause and effect. The
highest role, for a practitioner of medicine, is providing support so that the patient can heal himself.
However, some modern medical Qi Gong practitioners ignore this wisdom from the past.
These well-meaning people, finding that they have the ability to temporarily alter a sick person’s
energy by physically or mentally manipulating their patient’s energy, go ahead and do so, imagining
themselves to be “spiritual healers.” Even worse than the inevitable return of the illness in the
original patient, these would-be healers often become deeply sick themselves despite their magic
mantras, dramatic hand gestures, and bowls or gimcracks for “catching the bad energy.” If this type
of Medical Qi Gong healer does get sick, then when his “healed” patient’s problem inevitably
resumes, there are then two people sick with the same malady. From a larger standpoint, the world is
worse off than before. Even if they do not get sick, these would-be healers are perpetrating the false
idea that they, and not the patient’s own self-directed life force, are the driving component of the
healing process.
Only a Self-realized master can truly remove from the cosmos, through exercising his will
in accordance with Divine instruction, the wrong energetics in another person’s body, mind, and
heart. However, each one of us has the right and the ability (usually undeveloped) to instantly or
gradually heal ourselves from the results of our own wrong thinking, the wrong thinking that is our
own source of our emotional, mental, and physical health problems.
In the new testament of the Bible, Jesus celebrated a teaching moment when he pointed out,
insistently, that he was not responsible for the healing of the woman who clutched at his robe and
was instantly healed. He emphasized that she, and not he, had worked the miracle. The miracle came
about through her faith, through the change in her focus and thinking as she willingly tapped into the
Love that Jesus personified. Jesus was trying to make the point that all of us have within ourselves
the capacity for “miraculous” self-healing.

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bodyworkers: at some point, one ceases to perform “techniques” and just “does whatever
needs to be done.”
When I started working with Parkinson’s patients, I automatically sensed that I
needed to use support, support, support to both assess their physiology and to treat it. Very
possibly my own latent and utterly unsuspected Parkinson’s symptoms, including my
pathological aversion to being therapeutically “messed with” helped to guide me in this
direction.

Putting FSR into writing

As already mentioned in the previous chapter, I only found out I was doing Yin Tui
Na when I wrote my first article on Parkinson’s and submitted it to the American Journal of
Acupuncture. The editor told me that there was a generalized name for what I was doing:
Yin Tui Na.
She also pointed out that Yin Tui Na was only a generic term, and for the article,
she wanted to use a more specific name for the exact type of Yin Tui Na that I was using.
Then the editor paraphrased what I’d said by saying that the Tui Na I was using was
a very light-touch, spontaneous-release type of Tui Na with no intention-based directional
movement, which the patient perceived as forceless, as opposed to intention-based and
perceived as forceful. I concurred.
So she had me refer to the Tui Na I was using as a Forceless, Spontaneous-Release
style of Yin Tui Na, or FSR. She had me include in the article a few details about the FSR
techniques I was using to make it very clear that the work was forceless to the patient’s
perception. The work was not directed at creating any particular response from the patient.
If, how, and when the patient responded, it would be some sort of spontaneous
healing event on the part of the patient, not a change in response to anything actively
directed by the practitioner.
The intent of the editor was not to create a trademarked technique. Nor was there an
intention of implying that I had ever learned a specific, rarified technique of this name,
passed secretly from master to master, through the ages. The editor and I were merely
looking for a way to describe, as clearly as possible, exactly what it was I was doing. What I
was doing was a Yin type of Tui Na, one that was perceived as pretty much forceless and
intention-free, and which resulted in patients having some sort of release whenever they
were ready to do so.
Again, I did not invent this technique. I learned everything I know from my
teachers. They did not always have a name for everything they taught. My editor, rightly,
wanted something more detailed than “holding,” or “support” and came up with the
adjectives “forceless” and “spontaneous release.”
After publication, I was surprised by requests from people with Parkinson’s looking
for referrals for “FSR practitioners,” as if FSR was some sort of “official” technique. At that
time, I still considered it “simple holding,” and only used the name FSR when writing about
my Parkinson’s research, in order to emphasize that the holding had to be perceived as
forceless, non-intentioned, and that the releases, if any, would come spontaneously from the
patient and not be “induced” by the practitioner.
By the time I web-published the fifth edition of Recovery from Parkinson’s in 2000,
even I was referring to the light-touch techniques I used on people with Parkinson’s with

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the acronym “FSR.” By 2012, when I wrote the edition before this one, I was so
accustomed to the phrase “FSR,” my mind’s eye could see capital letters and an acronym
where there used to just be two plain old adjectives and a noun. Somehow, this technique
has turned into yet another named therapy!
But keep in mind, this is not a mysterious therapy from the misty past or the distant
shores of Asia, but a simple method of using hands to work with an injured person. FSR is
not a specific, exacting technique. FSR is just a way of providing support, support, support.
Do not worry about doing it “correctly.” Just do it, and enjoy doing it.

A frequently asked question:

Is there a Yin Tui Na practitioner in my area?
Again, there is no such thing as a specific technique called “Yin Tui Na,” per se.
“Yin,” in this context, simply means, “on the gentle or ‘light-touch’ end of the bodywork
spectrum.” Seeking a “Yin Tui Na practitioner” is asking for a person who does any type of
technique that is relatively gentle hands-on therapy, as compared to strong, vigorous
therapy.
It does make sense to ask a practitioner who advertises “Tui Na” whether he has
studied Yin-style or Yang-style techniques, or both. If the respondent says that he doesn’t
know, or if he says that he does “traditional Tui Na,” this means that he probably has
studied only Yang-type techniques.
Most people who study Tui Na in schools of Chinese medicine study only the Yang
type. As a generality, while practitioners of Yin Tui Na are very aware of the existence of
both the Yin and Yang kinds, many (most, in my experience) practitioners of Yang Tui Na
are not familiar with the ideas of light-touch work.
People who have studied the Yin forms of bodywork have usually done so by
studying western types of light-touch work. They would be more likely to refer to their
techniques by the specific, western names of the particular modalities that they studied. For
example, a western, hands-on, light-touch therapist might say: “I do both Gregson’s cranio-
tarsal work and Marco’s Medical Unwrapping protocol,” but he might have no idea that
these light-touch therapies would be considered, in China, to be forms of Yin Tui Na.1
Simply from lack of bilingual understanding, most practitioners of light-touch bodywork
would probably not refer to their work as Tui Na. Many western-trained light-touch
therapists have never even heard the term “Tui Na.”

So the next question arises, “Is there a FSR practitioner in my area?”

Probably not. This is a pretty simple, dull technique. Few people get training in a
technique of simple holding – a technique that any person can usually master in an hour or
two.
So why do I stick with the fancy terms “Yin Tui Na” and “FSR”? Why don’t I just
refer to these techniques, in general, as “simple holding”?
I’m licensed as an acupuncturist. That license allows me to do therapeutic
modalities that fit under the umbrella of traditional Chinese medicine – which, by California

1
Both of these named techniques are fictional, created for the sake of example.

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law, includes Tui Na. I am legally able to perform Tui Na. Officially, I am not licensed to
“simply hold.”
Also, no western terminology is as broad as the term Yin Tui Na. By using this
term, I am giving myself the widest possible latitude in terms of techniques that are within
the legal scope of my practice – even techniques that are as simple as providing firm
holding with no expectations…techniques that anyone can easily learn to do, licensed or
not.

Getting back to looking for a “trained FSR practitioner,” you probably are not
going to find anyone. These techniques, though utterly simple, have only recently been
written up and given a name. Only recently have these techniques been discussed in the
context of treating Parkinson’s disease.
You probably cannot find anyone who is familiar with the name FSR unless he is
already familiar with the research of the Parkinson’s Recovery Project.
But the FSR techniques can be easily mastered by almost anyone who is able to sit
still for several minutes at a time. You do NOT need to find someone who is “experienced”
in this technique.
Become that person, yourself. You will find many opportunities to use this
therapeutic work – and so long as you have your hands, you’ve got your tool kit with you.

Of course, if you really don’t think you can do this type of therapy, or you really
don’t want to do it, you can share this book with your nearest craniosacral practitioner or
massage therapist. If the first person you contact is not interested in doing this style of
work, maybe he can refer you to someone who is.

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Chapter nineteen

A proliferation of light touch therapies

This short chapter has been written because so many correspondents have told me
that they feel nervous or even inadequate with regard to performing Yin Tui Na or, more
specifically, FSR.
No matter how many times I write, “This is simple holding; a child can do it,” I get
frequent emails saying, “What if I’m doing it wrong?” or other phrases suggesting fear of
failure to master the subtleties of this presumably tricky business.
I want to reassure every reader that, even if a light touch technique has a name, like
“FSR,” that doesn’t mean it is necessarily technical, exacting, or needs to be studied under
the auspices of some authority. And in the case of FSR, it’s almost impossible to do it
“wrong” unless you aren’t holding firmly enough.
To help understand this, consider that many of the modern, light-touch techniques
that can be placed under the broad umbrella of Yin Tui Na have their own, special names,
even though many of them are based on very, very similar principles. In the vast panoply of
light-touch therapies, it is sometimes impossible to say where one named technique leaves
off and another begins.
In the last thirty years, it seems as if dozens, maybe hundreds, of therapists have
been busy developing new “unique” versions of light-touch therapy and slapping their own
names or a copyrighted trademark onto some variation of human touch. “Therapeutic
Touch,” “Unwinding,” “Zero Balancing,” “Bowen therapy,” and “Upledger’s craniosacral
therapy” are just a few of the many trademarked or copyrighted “light touch” therapies that
have been “created” or “invented” in the last few decades.
Some of these techniques claim to be unique because the hands are allowed to
rotate a bit, compared to techniques in which the hands move in a linear fashion. Other
techniques claim to be unique because the emphasis is on very short periods of touching or
mere brushing against the skin, as opposed to touch that lasts for longer periods. However,
for all these techniques, the underlying principles are universals, and not “inventions.”
As an interesting legal point, techniques cannot be copyrighted. Names for
techniques and the specific text used to describe them can be copyrighted, but, actually, the
act of touching a person in a therapeutic manner cannot be copyrighted or patented.
For example (becoming a bit far-fetched, but hoping to make the point), holding a
person’s hand can be considered a form of hands-on healing. There are many ways to hold
someone’s hand.
An inventive person could, if he wanted, make up a specific name for the variation
of hand holding that involves, say, interlocking the fingers. He could name this finger
interlocking after himself and copyright that name.
This would not mean that this person discovered or invented the interlocked finger
position. By law, he could not copyright the technique: he could not demand a royalty

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payment from people who interlock their fingers while holding hands. Nor could he prevent
anyone else from writing about the technique of interlocking fingers – so long as that other
person used his own words and a different name, if any, for the technique. Which is to say,
so long as the other person does not plagiarize.
The inventive person could, however, publish books on the subject and hope that
people would, from then on, choose to refer to themselves, whenever they interlocked their
fingers, as doing the popular “Wilson Hold,” or, depending on his name, of course, it might
possibly be the “MacGruder Support” or the “Spongeworth-Hugeusson” Technique (if two
people jointly wrote it up).
This self-glorifying labeling of body-work techniques might provide a person some
temporary sort of name recognition and fame, and possibly some book sales. But just the
same, a specific “technique” used while holding hands cannot be copyrighted.
Many of the “revolutionary” and “new” techniques that are flooding the field of
light-touch therapy are, despite their copyrighted names, nothing more than the normal,
intuitive touching and responding that emotionally healthy humans can do automatically –
behaviors that are becoming more acceptable as our culture moves away from the rigid,
“don’t touch yourself or others” social rules of the past.
I am certain that if we modern humans, and even doctors (!), spent more time
practicing touching our fellow humans in an intuitive, healing manner, the way that most of
us easily and automatically rub, pat, and hold our pets, we would realize there is nothing
new or particularly technical about the “miraculous” and “new” light-touch healing
techniques that are so hot right now.
Not only that, I suspect that we all know how to do most of these techniques,
already. Reaching out to one in pain is an innate function in most of the mammals. Weirdly,
we humans are usually taught to not touch ourselves or others, according to cultural
constructs.
But if we can overcome these “rules” that have been imposed on us, we find that we
already know how to hold and encourage healing in others with our hands.
Since we modern westerners tend to touch very little and feel, or I might say
perceive, even less, some, a few, members of the modern generations of would-be health
practitioners might choose to take extra classes to learn basic, core medicine: how to touch,
how to feel, and how to support with our hands. But most health practitioners, including
MDs and acupuncturists, even after several years of medical school, have never learned
how to touch and hold a patients’ injured or insulted body parts in a supportive, constructive
manner, let alone a diagnostic one.
Sadly, even after years of training, many health practitioners, both eastern and
western, do not even know how to recognize which of a patient’s maladies might best be
treated by some type of hands-on therapy.
Fortunately, many of the researchers who are experimenting in this field are doing a
brilliant job of writing about those techniques that work for them and publishing case
studies. Of course, writing about this realm of light-touch therapy can be challenging: it can
be just as difficult to describe in words just what a touch technique should feel like as it is to
describe in words the flavor of an orange.
Still, many people in the field are working at making these light touch therapies
better understood.

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 And many patients who have not responded to conventional western (allopathic)
medicine have benefited from some of the new light-touch therapies.1
In English, we do not have a widely accepted medical umbrella term that covers all
the schools of light-touch therapy. Therefore, they are each considered to stand alone –
some even consider themselves as competing with one another. By referring to all the light-
touch therapies as Yin Tui Na, by putting all of them under the same over-arching banner,
it’s easier to describe how the various light-touch techniques differ, and how they are
similar. The differences, of course, can be as infinite as the human imagination and
vocabulary allows. The similarity is that all these techniques employ the hands of the health
practitioner in a supportive manner, in a fairly unobtrusive and/or somewhat undirected
manner, in direct contact with the patient’s skin or clothing.
But most important, and the purpose of this chapter’s rant, is to assure you that you
can easily learn do this work. It’s just touching, holding, and supporting.
We’re humans. Touching, holding, and supporting is normal.

That’s it.
Whether a person is doing nothing but simple holding, or doing some of the “fancy”
hand position holds of craniosacral therapy or the relatively quick, reflex-stimulating
movements of Bowen work, the basic precept is touch, with, usually, some amount of
supportive holding and, sometimes, fairly subtle movement, suggestions of movement, or
even imagining movement.
Again, many of these simple techniques are innate. We see mothers with their
babies doing these exact same techniques, automatically, to keep their babies comfortable
and happy. When the infant is upset, the mother holds the baby snugly. When the infant is
hurt, the mother kisses the spot and holds it, and at some point, starts to gently test the
injured area. Sometimes, the mother gives just the lightest hug or jostle, at some tense spot,
and the child’s tension melts.
However, in many modern cultures, we are taught, at an early age, never to touch
others except in specific, culturally approved ways. For many of us our innate
understanding of how to hold the traumatized areas on another person’s body has been
squelched. 2

1
A study undertaken in the mid 1990s revealed, much to the astonishment of the allopathic
medical world, that one third of the people in the US had used “non-traditional” medicine. The
alarming thing was that a majority of these people had never told their doctors for fear that their
doctors would respond with anger.
Of all the “alternative” modalities, acupuncture is the one most requested from people
seeking alternative medicine coverage from their health insurance companies.
Hands-on therapies, including massage, are also very popular, but are almost never
considered to be “medical.” Unless the hands-on therapy is being done by a licensed Physical
Therapist, it is usually dismissed as “feel good” treatment, and is not covered by insurance or deemed
“significant” in resolving a biological problem.
2
When I was attending high school in a highly urban area, I met a new student with whom
everyone quickly felt very comfortable. If a classmate was stressed, the “new boy” would unself-
consciously lay a comforting arm on a shoulder, or give just the right amount of pressure in a
reassuring hand-hold. I was amazed at how he seemed to generate ease and comfort among

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 In learning the various forms of Yin Tui Na, and especially FSR, all we are really
doing is relearning something that we already knew: how to give support with our hands in
such a way that an injured or traumatized person can most quickly resume responsiveness
and self-healing.
It’s that simple. It’s also extremely powerful.

A legal aside
At this point, you might be wondering why don’t I refer to Tui Na as “bodywork”
or “physical therapy” or, considering it’s really just a type of normal holding, why don’t I
refer to it as “holding”?
Most acupuncturists are required to limit their treatments to their official “scope of
practice.” As a licensed doctor of Chinese medicine, I am allowed to perform – and bill –
for treatments that are referred to as Tui Na. I am not allowed to perform or bill for
treatments that are referred to as physical therapy or “supportive holding.”
The actual treatment I perform might be exactly the same as that of a physical
therapist, but from a legal and insurance point of view, under my licensing scope of
practice, I must refer to my work as Tui Na.
On the one hand, this is an advantage to me. As a DAOM (Doctor of Acupuncture
and Oriental Medicine, with as many years of training as an MD) in California, I am legally
allowed to diagnose, prescribe, and treat. I get to figure out what treatment my patient needs
and then apply it.
Most physical therapists must limit their therapies to those that an MD has
prescribed.
Still, if you feel uneasy using a Chinese word to describe the therapies in this book,
feel free to refer to Yin Tui Na as light-touch bodywork. The wording doesn’t matter one
bit, so long as you are not a licensed health practitioner. If you are, then it matters.

Acupuncturists in some states are required to take one or two classes in Tui Na to
complete their degree in Asian or Chinese medicine. In many, if not most, acupuncture
schools, the Tui Na classes teach only very Yang Tui Na techniques for specific bone
displacements.
However, certifying laws in the states that allow a licensed acupuncturist to perform
Tui Na never state what types of Tui Na he can perform. This means that a licensed
acupuncturist may have studied only Yang Tui Na techniques in school, but he can legally
perform craniosacral therapy, so long as he refers to it as Tui Na, which it is.
Craniosacral therapy is a light touch, Yin type of Tui Na (bodywork). Most
acupucturists never learn to do craniosacral therapy in acupuncture school. If we want to
learn it, we study it as “continuing education.”

whomever he socialized with. I asked him where he was from. He was from a small rural area in
Michigan. His family had kept dairy cows. Since his childhood, he’d spent his mornings and
evenings among the cows. After I got to know his family, I realized that all of them had the same,
slow, gentle, comforting way. He had never been trained in “light touch” therapy. He did it
instinctively: he touched people the same way that he’d touched cows.

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 However, as an acupuncturist, one can bill insurance for a craniosacral treatment
because it can be referred to as Tui Na, a form of Asian manual therapy. By definition,
since craniosacral therapy uses the hands, it is a type of Tui Na.1

Officially, what is Tui Na?

If the hands of the practitioner make contact with the patient’ skin or the patient’s
clothing, the practitioner is doing Tui Na.
When an MD in the emergency room repositions a patient’s dislocated shoulder, the
Chinese name for what the doctor is doing is Tui Na. When a chiropractor adjusts spinal
bones, he is doing Tui Na. When a craniosacral therapist gently cradles the skull while
feeling for the movement that pumps cerebrospinal fluids, he is doing Tui Na. When a
shiatsu practitioner stimulates acupoints with his fingers, sometimes referred to as
acupressure, he is doing Tui Na.
On the other hand, techniques such as Reiki, in which the hands hover over the
patient but do not make contact, are not Tui Na. Energetic distance healing is not Tui Na.
Techniques like acupuncture, moxibustion, or cupping, in which needles, moxa, or cups
make contact, but the hands do not play a major contact role, are not Tui Na. Acupressure,
however, which is usually finger stimulation of acupressure points, is a form of Tui Na.

Between Yin and Yang

The difference between Yin and Yang techniques of Tui Na was discussed at the
beginning of the book. However, some techniques are in the middle of the spectrum, not
particularly Yang nor particularly Yin.
For example, Pediatric Skin Rolling, in which the supple skin of an infant’s back is
gently lifted away from the muscle in a rolling motion that travels from the skin near the
neck down to the skin near the hips (or from the hips to the neck), is mildly active,
inasmuch as the patient’s skin is being actively moved. However, there are no particular
bones, muscles, or tissues being targeted. This technique is neither extremely Yang nor

1
The gross generality of referring, for acupuncture licensing purposes, to all hands-on
bodywork as “Tui Na” leads to much confusion. Many people looking for a health professional to
perform Yin Tui Na such as FSR for an injury or to treat Parkinson’s disease have discovered that
some health practitioners touting “Tui Na” on their websites very often have no idea that Yin type
techniques even exist. When these practitioners studied Tui Na in school, what they learned was
Yang Tui Na: powerful, body-jerking techniques.
For another example of confusion that arises by thinking that “Tui Na” refers to a specific
type of bodywork, sometime around year 2000, in Texas, a judge suggested that Tui Na be removed
from the scope of practice for acupuncturists. He was justifiably upset after seeing two cases, in one
year, in which poorly trained acupuncturists had performed neck-cracking (chiropractic type) Yang
Tui Na… and broke their patients’ necks. The judge, not understanding that “Tui Na” means,
essentially, “any hands-on therapeutic touch,” wanted to make Tui Na illegal.
Technically, this would have outlawed all forms of touch on the part of acupuncturists,
including feeling pulses (an action which, by mere contact, can slightly alter a patient’s medical
condition). I never heard the results of this attempt and have no idea what the current law is, in
Texas.

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extremely Yin, but is somewhere on the middle of the Tui Na spectrum – it might be called
“mildly Yang Tui Na.”
Acupressure is another example of a hands-on technique that is not particularly
Yang and not particularly Yin.1
Acupressure consists of gentle rubbing or pressing at the spot where some acupoint
is located, in an attempt to stimulate channel Qi to move forward through an area that has
insufficient energy flow. Like pediatric massage, it could be referred to as “somewhat-
Yang” Tui Na. Then again, if the acupressure is somewhat subtle, it might be better
described as “somewhat-Yin” Tui Na.
The psoas release technique presented in this book is mildly Yang inasmuch as it is
an overt, visible, directed movement – but even so, it is very Yin in comparison to most
other psoas release techniques.
All forms of hands-on body work, whether they were first written up in China,
Sweden, or Beverly Hills, can be placed somewhere on the spectrum between Yang Tui Na
and Yin Tui Na. In other words, “Tui Na” is not a term that refers to a specific technique for
adjusting the neck or calming a frightened child.
All of the “new” hands-on techniques that are being “invented” as ways to
therapeutically help a person address some illness or pain can be considered a type of Tui
Na, according to the Chinese medical system. And, most of them can be easily mastered by
you. FSR is probably the Yin Tui Na technique that is hardest to do incorrectly. There’s
really no way you can do harm while doing this technique. You can do it.
Why not give it a try?

1
The word “acupressure” is a misnomer. “Acu” is from the Latin, and means “needle.” The
word “acupuncture” means “puncture with a needle.” The word “acupressure” literally means
“pressure from a needle,” which it is not: it is pressure from a hand, or finger. It should be called
manupressure or digipressure, or something like that.
Presumably, someone who had no idea that the prefix “acu” means needle came up with the
word acupressure to describe pushing with fingers. The misleading word “acupressure” has come
into common use, however.
Nothing to be done about it now, I suppose.

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Chapter twenty

When and where to perform Yin Tui Na: a review

This closing chapter reviews the basics of Yin Tui Na techniques and of FSR
techniques in particular. If you have gotten this far and still don’t feel sure about the ABCs
of how to start or how often to do treatments, this chapter will hopefully make it clear that
you do know enough, and you are ready to start.
Some of this material is directed at acupuncturists. Most of it is general. The
obviously redundant bits are addressing the most frequently asked questions.

Yin Tui Na techniques can be used to treat any physical injury, whether recent or
old, in any patient. The exception is an injury in which some (non-broken) body part has
been extremely dislocated and therefore might need strong, physical movements (Yang Tui
Na) to be restored to its correct location. For example, a dislocated shoulder (when the ball
of the humerus is out of its socket) might need to be physically muscled back into position.
But less overtly displaced injuries may respond more quickly to the more Yin techniques of
Tui Na. And even the large displacements might move more easily if the area is first treated
with some type of Yin Tui Na, bringing relaxation and awareness to the area.

The three most common questions that arise at the acupuncture college where I
teach are 1) when is Yin Tui Na indicated, as opposed to treating the patient with therapies
such as acupuncture, herbs, laser, magnets, sound, and so on, 2) where is Yin Tui Na
indicated, particularly in cases where pain at a certain location might be triggered by an
unhealed injury at a different location. How can I determine the location of the root cause –
and is that the place to perform Yin Tui Na, or should I treat the painful area and ignore the
root cause? And 3) how much time, or how many treatments will be required to solve the
problem?

When to perform Yin Tui Na on a patient

If a patient has pain that seems to be related to an injury, some Yin type of Tui Na
is often a good first step in treatment/diagnosis.
The simple act of using one’s hands on the injured area, with supportive pressure,
will reveal whether or not the body part in question is able to respond in the normal manner.
If the patient’s injured area yields a normal, reflexive response to supportive touch,
Yin Tui Na is probably not needed, even though it might be pleasant and might accelerate
the healing. But so long as there is normal responsiveness in the injured area, that area has
the capability of self-healing.
In these cases, other therapies might reasonably be used to accelerate the healing,
therapies such as acupuncture, physical therapy, light, sound, herbal therapies, a simple,

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cheap, ace bandage, instruction in the light and energy technique, or even just the passage
of time might be all that is needed, depending on the injury.
However, if the patient’s body does not perform a normal, reflexive response to
supportive touch, it is very likely that acupuncture, physical therapy, and so on will not be
particularly effective in dealing with this particular injury or trauma…yet.
If the patient’s injury area has tissues that are broken or twisted and/or the micro-
muscle in the area is holding tight to prevent further injury, acupuncture or herbs will not
necessarily reset the broken bone or unwind the twisted fascia. The micromuscle tension
that is holding the injured mess in place will not necessarily loosen its grip in response to
being attacked with acupuncture needles, cups, or lasers. However, the holding pattern will
usually loosen up in response to human support that temporarily takes on the job of
stabilizing and protecting the injured area.
When the patient’s injured area is being protected and held immobile via the hands
of the Yin Tui Na practitioner, the patient’s body can relax its protective grip. The patient’s
body can then assess the injury or trauma, and begin healing it.
Only when the post-injury tension in an injured area is relaxed are any displaced or
twisted body parts able to drift back to their correct positions. But when the area has
relaxed, and the damaged bits have realigned themselves, these body parts can then
commence any healing and reconstruction that needs to occur.

In almost any clinical situation where the patient has physical pain from injury, Yin
Tui Na is appropriate. It might be FSR, or craniosacral work, or some other light touch
therapy.
By the way, “light touch” does not mean “delicate.” “Light touch” means paying
attention to the patient’s response. Light touch means not being overbearing.
Whether the pain is in a “tight neck” or sciatic nerve compression, there is nearly
always some structural problem underlying the rigidity or pain. By “structural problem,” I
mean that some tissue, muscle, or bone has become somewhat displaced and/or is being
held rigid by micromuscle. In most cases, acupuncture and/or herbs, alone, will not restore
the displaced or tensed tissues to their correct and relaxed positions. Of course, once the
structure is restored, then acupuncture, cupping, and/or herbs may be of great help. In most
cases involving structural damage or displacements, the patient will heal much faster if
some type of Yin Tui Na is used, initially.

For example, back pain usually responds to the stimulation provided by

acupuncture, eventually. However, many visits are usually required to achieve full healing
or even significant improvement. If the underlying structural displacements and
micromuscle tensions are resolved first, and then the acupuncture is added to solidify the
treatment, patients typically recover, or are significantly improved, in a mere one or two
treatments, on average (based on my own clinical experience).1

1
Studies abound regarding the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of back pain. In
many of these studies, it appears that six treatments is considered about average for the resolution of
back pain. To my mind, six is far too many treatments for an average. In my experience, the use of
Yin Tui Na (usually psoas spasm release and/or some variant of a craniosacral protocol), prior to the
acupuncture, can greatly reduce the healing time, even for severe back pain.

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 As an aside, it is unrealistic to make exacting estimates in a book, as to “how
much” Yin Tui Na might be needed for treating the infinitude of possible back pain
problems. In some cases, starting a treatment session with twenty minutes of Yin Tui Na,
and ending with acupuncture, might be appropriate. In other cases, one or two sessions of
nothing but craniosacral work, with possibly some psoas release work, might be best.
In long-term, severe cases, several sessions of nothing but simple, “boring” support
might be needed to bring the body into some degree of correct structure, after which several
sessions might be needed in which a few minutes are spent on some type of Yin Tui Na,
with the rest of the time being used for acupuncture. If there is significant tissue damage,
herbal treatment might be helpful, as well – once the basic structure has been restored.
In general, if there is any possibility of structural displacement, including bones,
soft tissue, or even mental holding of micromuscle protection, treatment should begin with
some type of Yin Tui Na and instruction in some techniques such as the light and energy Qi
Gong in chapter five.
If, after structural irregularities have been treated, the channel Qi fails to revert
back to its correct, parasympathetic flow patterns, then acupuncture might be used to restore
correct channel Qi flow.
If the structure is restored and the channel Qi is once again flowing correctly, the
body will be able to quickly heal itself. If significant amount of tissue damage occurred,
herbs may be helpful in getting rid of the debris and swelling (referred to as Breaking up
Blood Stagnation) and, later on, providing tonics for growing new tissues.1

The house building analogy

When building a house, the framing goes up first. Then the wiring. No one ever
installs the wiring before the framing.
Doing “structural” repairs in the body are like working on the framing. These
repairs often benefit from physical, hands-on therapies – Tui Na.
Doing mental Qi Gong is like getting mental “building permits.”
Electrical repairs – fixing channel Qi aberrations – can be done using acupuncture
and even herbs.
Sometimes, if there is no physical impediment such as scar tissue, the “electrical
repair,” which is to say the restoration of correct channel Qi flow, will resume
automatically, following the structural repairs. In these cases, the Tui Na alone, with
possibly some mental healing technique done by the patient, will have been sufficient to
bring about both the structural repair and the electrical work.
Fix the framing before fixing the wiring.

1
As a reminder to any acupuncture students reading this, remember that tonics should never
be used so long as the injury is still in place. Breaks or displacement of the body’s structural
components constitute an “Excess” condition. We never use tonifying herbs or perform an
acupuncture treatment that will bring more channel Qi into an area where there’s already an Excess
condition (including blocked Qi, Blood Stagnation or rebellious channel Qi). However, as soon as
the underlying displacements (“Stagnation”) have been resolved and correct channel Qi flow patterns
have been restored, then tonification with herbs or needles might be helpful, especially in cases of
extreme injury or constitutional weakness.

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Broken bone example
If someone comes to you with a “compound” fracture (compound means that the
broken bone is sticking out of the skin), you don’t start treatment by inserting acupuncture
needles in his arm. To do so would be like fixing a wiring problem without first fixing the
broken framing.
It is obvious that, when someone presents with a compound fracture, you set the
broken bones, first. Then, after the structure, or “framing” has been fixed up, or at least
restored to correct position, then you work on restoring the disrupted energetic support to
the area: you can then restore the correct flow of channel Qi by using acupuncture – if
necessary. Again, in many cases, restoration of the correct positions of the structure allows
the channel Qi to automatically resume its correct flow. If so, no acupuncture needling is
necessary.
In the compound fracture example, the order for the sequence is obvious: fix the
structural problem, then restore the energy flow to the area. The principle remains the same
even when the structural component is far more subtle: frozen shoulder, a kink in the neck,
ear ringing, foot pain. In all of these cases, the healing will occur far faster if the structural
component is treated first. After the structural problem is resolved, the energy flow in the
area can be corrected or amplified, if necessary, with acupuncture or with specific
visualizations on the part of the patient.
Then again, because many patients go to see an acupuncturist expecting to get
needles, it can be courteous to insert a few needles, whether or not the underlying structure
has been completely restored, or even if the patient is still dissociated from the injury.
In such a case, choose to needle channels that are not affected by the obstruction, so
that you will not make the error of “tonifying an Excess (injury) condition.” Points such as
Yin Tang (on the forehead), usually far removed from the point of injury, are usually
harmless. However, to use only needles in a situation that would be far better treated with a
combination of Tui Na and acupuncture is dereliction of duty.1

1
I know acupuncturists who confidentially brag that they never “put their hands on” a
patient. I know others who warn their colleagues, “Never do any hands-on work or body work of any
kind. If you do any body work at all, the patient will enjoy it so much that they’ll always want you to
do it!”
Some practitioners have a snobbish attitude against using their hands: they consider that
acupuncture is more sophisticated; Tui Na is a “lower class” type of treatment.
Others have financial reasons for disdaining hands-on therapies: you can only treat one
patient at a time if you’re doing Tui Na; you can treat six patients an hour if you never do anything
but needles and you let your interns do the moxa and take the needles out. Sad to say, I know
teachers of acupuncture and Asian medicine who propound these needle-only beliefs and attitudes.
Happily, in my own few decades in the field I have seen an increase in the number of
practitioners who appreciate that the patient’s needs come first. These practitioners, who provide the
slow, time-consuming Tui Na if necessary, also generate an extremely high degree of customer
loyalty. In my own practice, I’ve had patients who’ve temporarily used other acupuncturists when
I’ve been out of town. They come back to me as soon as possible, with remarks such as, “He never
even felt my neck to assess the painful place,” or “She didn’t pay any attention to where it hurt! She
just stuck needles in!”
Puzzled acupuncture students often wonder why their theoretical studies don’t lead to
treatments that really do the job. Very often it’s because the treatments they observe, and perform, in

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Summarizing when to use Yin Tui Na
If you are a lay reader, planning to help friends or family members by performing
Yin Tui Na techniques to help support an injury, you don’t have to worry about what other
options, such as acupuncture, might be helpful. However, if you are a health practitioner,
you must be able to decide what kind of treatment(s) will be best for each individual.
In California, an acupuncturist might be trained to carry many tools in his kit:
herbs, acupuncture, Tui Na, dietary counseling, or energetics (Tai Qi, Qi Gong,
visualization, etc.). What is not taught, enough, is deciding which of these tools to use on a
given patient or ill-health presentation.
Of course, we learn in school that the age and constitution of the patient, as well as
the nature of the problem, will help determine what type of therapy is used.
For example, young children and infants are nearly always treated with gentle, skin-
rolling Tui Na, and almost never given strong acupuncture needling. Very old people also
benefit tremendously from the human touch of Tui Na, prior to any needling. When
working with pregnant woman, you should use Yin Tui Na and needle “mild” acupoints. If
stimulation at one of the stronger, “Qi-shocking” acupoints, such as LI-4, is called for, we
might use very gentle acupressure, instead of needling.
Even so, some students graduate with the idea that, in general, acupuncture should
always be tried first, and the other options should be used only if the patient doesn’t respond
after many, many acupuncture treatments. These students have often forgotten one of the
first rules of Chinese medicine: “Never tonify an Excess condition.”

a college of Asian medicine, are designed to develop their acupuncture skills and their familiarity
with the classic “illness patterns” related to herbal medicine. By learning this material, they are most
likely to pass the licensing exam, a noble goal. But acupuncture and/or herbs might not actually be
the best treatment for the patient’s needs.
Very often, injured or traumatized patients will benefit more from Tui Na, prior to or instead
of acupuncture. Without Tui Na, the patient may not heal as quickly. As for the Shen disturbance
aspect (mental/emotional trauma, dissociation, pause, and so on) of a serious injury, this can often be
best addressed by the mental medical Qi Gong exercises in chapters five and six of this book. Failure
to do this might lead to slower healing – if any.
However, this mental aspect of therapy is utterly ignored in many training clinics, even
more than is Tui Na. The primary focus in many schools of Asian medicine is acupuncture. This is
understandable: the primary focus of the schools must be training their students to pass the
acupuncture board exams. Tui Na and medical Qi Gong are not usually included on board exams,
which vary from state to state.
Very often, at colleges of Asian medicine, most of the faculty is highly trained in
acupuncture, and not particularly comfortable with performing Tui Na. Sadly, many schools have
one academic teacher to teach the required Tui Na class, and one academic teacher for the required
massage class.
Meanwhile, the clinic (non-academic) instructors are acupuncturists who often have little or
no interest or proficiency in body-work. So even if the students take a few classes in bodywork, they
rarely have a chance to observe it in clinic, or practice it on their patients under the clinical teacher’s
protective eye. As for mental medical Qi Gong, it is rarely taught, and almost never used in training
clinics.
The above is not intended to put acupuncture schools in a bad light – it is merely to serve as
a warning that a licensed acupuncturist may not be very experienced in Tui Na or Qi Gong unless he
has gone out of his way to study it, usually in post-licensing continuing-education classes.

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 Injury, encoded in Chinese medicine as “Blood Stagnation,” is always an ”Excess”
condition. In nearly every case, inserting a needle into some acupuncture channel will
increase – tonify – the flow of Qi in that channel. If the Qi is running backwards, the needle
insertion will increase the power of the backwards flow. If your patient feels a ferocious
electrical jolt and breaks into a cold sweat, it is highly likely that you have needled into a
channel that was severely blocked or running backwards…and you have just made his
situation worse.
If you want to avoid violating one of the most basic precepts of Chinese medicine,
the rule to “Never tonify an Excess condition,” Yin Tui Na is very often the first modality
of choice any time that tissues, including muscles, bones, tendons or ligaments, or even
organs, are displaced.
Yin Tui Na can also be used for other types of problems with an injury origin, such
as headaches, vision and/or hearing problems, sinus problems, stiffness, digestive problems,
and numbness, to name a few. In all these examples, the underlying root cause might be
injury, spasm, or structural displacement – Excess conditions, all.

On the other hand, if the patient’s problems are being caused by pathogens (Evil-
Wind), toxins in the diet, stressful climatic conditions (Cold, Heat, or high humidity, also
known as Damp), emotional tension (Liver Qi Stagnation) mental disturbance (Shen
disturbance), scar tissue (Blood Stagnation) or any of the other, non-injury root causes, an
approach other than Yin Tui Na might be better. The health practitioner must diagnose the
root of the illness in order to know which treatment modality to use.
Yin Tui Na can also be helpful if a patient is trying to consciously rid himself of
emotional (Shen disturbance) problems brought about by any of the seven “Pernicious
Emotions”: fear, anger, melancholy, anxiety, excess sadness (self-pity), worry, hysteria, and
fright (panic). The hands-on support of various forms of Yin Tui Na, combined with mental
medical Qi Gong, can sometimes be extremely effective.
People with emotional traumas buried in their past very often hold tension in their
neck, lungs, diaphragm, liver or heart area, to name just a few holding spots. By applying
hands-on support to these and other soft tissue areas, a therapist using Yin-type Tui Na
methods can often initiate healing of problems such as asthma, insomnia, indigestion, or
other maladies and pains, if these problems were stemming from traumas being retained in
structural displacements or in twisted soft tissue – so long as the patient is also working on
changing the mind-set that allowed the tension to be retained.
Yin Tui Na, combined with mental medical Qi Gong is probably the most effective
clinical means of treating a disorder in which the patient has mentally dissociated from the
trauma. If the patient has dissociated, no number of needles, no number of herbs, will break
through the mental barrier formed by the patient.

Where to perform Yin Tui Na on a patient

How do you locate the place on the patient’s body where you will begin your
application of Yin Tui Na?
Of course, if a patient complains of ankle pain after recently turning his ankle, you
will put your hands on the ankle area. If he’s recently broken his radius, you’ll hold his arm
at the point of fracture. These are the easy ones.

160
 But patients often insist that there has been no injury at all, or no injury in the
problem area. Sometimes, the patient has just forgotten the injury. Other times, the patient
dissociated from the injury, and cannot remember it. Sometimes, the pertinent injury is not
mentioned because the root injury was in a different part of the body from the current pain,
and the patient doesn’t see any connection – hence no reason to mention the significant
injury.
Very often, the place that hurts is not the same place as the injury that lurks at the
root of the problem. For example, sciatic pain in the ankle or leg may arise from tension in
the hip area (putting pressure on the sciatic nerve) in order to hold the body fairly rigid…so
as to protect a forgotten or now painless neck injury. I have seen a case of sciatica in which
the left-side hip and leg pain was set in motion by a blow to the right-side back of the head.
Ear ringing usually has its origin halfway down the body…in a psoas muscle spasm
in the lower half of the spine that is triggering a compensating twist in the temporal bone
(the bone through which the ear canal is located) on the opposite side of the body.
As another example, frequent sprains in the ankle along the Gall Bladder channel
may have their origin in a head injury along the Gall Bladder channel, a head injury that’s
causing deficiency (weakness) along the length of the channel, but only showing up in the
weak ankle. Then again, frequent ankle sprains might have their origin on the Stomach
channel.
And dystonia in the arm and shoulder on one side of the body can be set in motion
by protections of an injury from the opposite-side arm and shoulder.
Yet another example is the manner in which problems in the vicinity of Ren-1 or
Ren-2 (the Ren channel flows up the middle of the front of the torso) may be the result of
injury, long ago, at Du-26 (the Du channel flows up the back). After all, the Du and Ren
channels mingle during their internal passage down the gastro-intestinal tract, and a glitch
in one of these two channels can cause a corresponding glitch in the other one, which
manifests when the channels emerge from the anus and begin, once again, their flow
towards the head.
Given that just about any injury, if unhealed, might trigger compensations nearly
anywhere in the body, how can one possibly hope to know where the keystone injury, the
basic, underlying, root cause, is located?
As an aside, I realize that some of the above may seem obscure, or off-topic, for the
person who simply wants to learn Yin Tui Na in order to treat the feet of a friend with a
twisted ankle or treat someone with Parkinson’s disease. But by including these few extra
examples this book can be a more complete text for acupuncture students, whose patients
might present with an infinite array of problems.

Where to begin treatment

Very often, the patient’s pain or problems are not in the same location as the
unhealed injury. Many people with Parkinson’s have neck stiffness or hip pain, but the root
cause might be unhealed foot or ankle injury. Until you treat the root cause, the other pains
and problems will not go away for good.

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 Some approaches to Yin Tui Na treatment address this unknown-location problem
by treating as broad an area as possible, on the assumption that, by treating everything,
you’re bound to hit the problem area, as well.1
For example, most schools of craniosacral therapy teach a multi-step protocol in
which every bone in the cranium, spine, and pelvic girdle, plus a few of the ribs and the
clavicles, are supportively held, however briefly. This approach is moderately thorough, but
also causes much time to be somewhat wasted – time that might have been better used by
directing one’s attention to the exact, specific location. Then again, by touching a large
range of locations, the main location of injury and the subsequent compensation areas are
likely to be all addressed during one session. If you aren’t able to discern the root location,
the site of the original unhealed injury, it’s reasonable to take the sweeping view and touch
on as many areas as possible during the first or second session with a patient.
Many practitioners who’ve done craniosacral therapy for many years eventually
realize that, in any given patient, they only need to focus on a few of the holding positions –
the areas that have no response or only a very weak response. But they learn this only after
some hands-on experience – or else by learning, right from the beginning, how to recognize
when responses from a specific body part feel “right” or feel “wrong.”

An important diagnostic tool

Some very simple ways to determine whether or not the patient has constructed a
mental barrier, and if so, where, are in the diagnostic protocols in the appendices of this
book.
One of them, for example, explains that you might ask the patient to imagine light
and energy in some healthy part of his body (the tip of the nose is usually a safe spot, unless
there is a history of injury to the head). Then you ask the patient to imagine the same
amount of light and energy in the rest of his body. If the patient finds an area that is dimmer
or less able to be illuminated and energized, that area might be a good place to start.

If you know where the exact location of the injury is

Even if you know where an exact “point of injury” is, that place might not be the
only location that needs treating.
Continuing to use the example of craniosacral therapy, sometimes a patient knows
exactly where the injury occurred, but it’s no good to just treat that location. For example, a

1
For students of Asian medicine, be aware that pulse diagnosis will probably not help you
know where the root of the problem, the unhealed injury, if any, is located. For that matter, as most
students of Asian medicine quickly learn, despite the assurances of their theory classes, a person with
pain from physical injury (a form of Blood Stagnation) does not necessarily have a wiry pulse, just as
a person with a wiry pulse does not necessarily have pain from Blood Stagnation. For that matter, a
person who has dissociated from his injury or is on pause is likely to have a very deep, almost un-
findable pulse – the very opposite of the “wiry pulse” that theoretically accompanies injury or pain.
As for tongue diagnosis, Blood Stagnation from injury is only rarely reflected on the tongue.
Many people with what you’d call “Blood Stagnation from unhealed injury” or Parkinson’s have
perfectly normal tongues and tongue coats, or their tongues reflect some other condition unrelated to
the unhealed injury.

162
person who falls backwards on his head may know perfectly well that his injury occurred to
his occipital bone. However, the force of the blow may have caused displacements or
twisting in his other cranial articulations, his cranial fascia, his neck, and even his lower
spine. The force of the blow to the occipital bone will probably have traveled to the front of
the face, particularly the sphenoid bone, and may have traveled into the neck, particularly
the upper cervical vertebrae. From there, the force of the blow may have also become
distributed to the frontal bone, the temporal bones, down the spine to the lumbar vertebrae,
and into the sacro-iliac joint.
In a case like this, the practitioner will want to give support, and the opportunity of
restoration, to all of the affected bones and soft tissue. In this case, even though the injury
was highly localized, performing an entire craniosacral protocal, touching on all of the areas
with repercussions from the injury, will best meet the case.
Which still leaves the question open: how do we know where to start applying Yin
Tui Na, if we don’t know exactly where the pain or problem started?

Use Tui Na to find areas that don’t respond

Using FSR diagnostically was discussed in an earlier chapter: by learning how a
healthy body part responds to supportive touch, and learning to recognize the
unresponsiveness or incorrect responses of an unhealed, injured area, an FSR practitioner
can hold the patient’s body in many locations, testing for responsiveness. By spending a
few moments in many locations, he can quickly zero in on the area or areas at the root of
the problem – even if the root is at the opposite end of the body from the patient’s pain.
Even if the area with an abnormal response is only a “branch” of the problem, and
not the root area, treatment of the branch very often leads the practitioner’s hands to move,
intuitively, quickly, to the root. Performing FSR and “listening” to the signals coming from
your intuition can be an excellent way of knowing where support and holding, or some
other type of Yin Tui Na, is needed.

Feel the flow of channel Qi, looking for aberrations

Another skill is feeling for errors in the flow of channel Qi. The location of a glitch
in the flow of channel Qi suggests an underlying problem at that location – even if there is
no obvious pain coming from that area. Knowing how to feel channel Qi, directly, by hand,
can be of enormous benefit when looking for an unknown root cause. Once a person has
mastered the easy-to-learn art of feeling the actual channel Qi flow, he can assess the
patient’s entire body in under five minutes.1

1
Learning how to feel the flow of the sub-dermal currents by hand is taught in Tracking the
Dragon, a textbook on advanced channel theory. Written originally for acupuncture students, it is
also accessible to people with no medical background. The book is available at
www.JaniceHadlock.com.
Hacking Chinese Medicine, a breezier, more introductory book on general Chinese medical
theory and terminology, is also available at this website.

163
Learn the most common compensating mechanisms
Another skill set that can help in determining the location of the root problem is
memorizing the most common compensating mechanisms. These most common
compensations account for a majority of the problems seen in clinic. A few of very common
situations in which pain is perceived in one part of the body but has origins elsewhere was
already mentioned earlier in this chapter: sciatic (hip and leg) pain from head injury; ear
ringing from psoas spasm (lower torso); and ankle weakness from neck bone displacements.
To find the actual starting point of a person’s pain, you may need to be a bit of a
Sherlock Holmes, because the possibilities are infinite. But if you trust your hands and your
intuition, you will often be quickly guided to the place that “really doesn’t feel right.”

How long before the injured body part responds to FSR treatment?
How many treatment sessions will be required?
This technique can work very quickly, within minutes, for a very recent injury (in
the last twenty-four hours).
Oppositely, with injuries that have been ignored for decades, and particularly if the
patient, at the time of injury, decided to deny the pain and injury (self-induced dissociation
or self-induced pause), the injury might not release for weeks, months, or years (assuming
one-hour treatments once a week).

I had a Parkinson’s patient whose utterly rigid feet received three years of
intermittent FSR therapy, with approximately fifteen to twenty treatments a year, with no
apparent response. Until, during one session, he was suddenly able to move his ankle,
wiggle his toes, feel his feet, and all other normal foot functions. His chronic foot pain and
immobility disappeared. After that, he was once again able to find shoes that “fit right.” His
ability to play tennis returned. The changes in his “frozen” right foot occurred in a matter of
minutes.
On the opposite side of the time-frame spectrum, a person with a recently (in the
last 24 hours) broken bone may respond to FSR within minutes – even if the bone has
already been somewhat set and is already encased in hard plaster.

Broken bones: an aside

Even if a broken bone is already encased, application of FSR, with supportive
hands resting on the outside of the plaster or plastic cast, can allow the twisted tissues inside
the cast to relax and “reset” themselves, perfectly. If the injury was very recent, the injury
can often be restored to health within minutes. It is very rewarding. It can also be perceived
as “miraculous” by the patient, who can usually feel the bones moving around
“spontaneously” inside the hard cast.
In these cases, it becomes clear that the electromagnetic support from your hands is
doing as much, or more, than the actual physical contact of your hands.
This technique can help the broken ends of the bone realign themselves perfectly.
This perfect alignment is similar to the way in which broken porcelain can be set back
together so exactly that the seam is invisible, and a faint electrostatic bond between the
porcelain pieces tentatively holds the pieces into place.

164
 When this perfect reset can be brought about in a broken bone, through the use of
FSR, the broken bone often stops hurting, the tissues around the bone stop hurting, and
healing can be extremely rapid.
I’ve known patients (patients who did not dissociate from the pain) to be able to
walk on a broken foot or ankle bone in three days, with no casting, by having received FSR
treatment within several hours of the injury.

Toes and collar-bones

Typically, a western doctor will not bother to reset a broken toe. Even with a
broken collar-bone (clavicle), the doctor often just puts the arm in a sling and doesn’t reset
the collar-bone itself, unless the bone parts are significantly displaced. These injuries are
usually left to “heal themselves.” They rarely heal correctly. The toe or collar-bone may be
torqued, and a source of pain, for the rest of the patient’s life. If you can treat such an injury
within a few days of the injury, before the break has begun to knit with an incorrect
alignment, you can use FSR to help the bone ends restore themselves to their exact correct
position, and save the patient from a lifetime of nagging pain.

When bones “refuse” to knit

Also, in cases of a bone that has been casted but has failed to knit, even after one or
two periods of the typical six-week wait, application of FSR can support the injured area so
that the area relaxes enough to eliminate the twisting in the soft tissues that was keeping the
bone ends apart, and releases the static forces in the tissue that remain as a result of the
injury. As soon as these forces are resolved, the ends of the bones revert to their original
positions, bringing the broken edges close together in a perfect fit. Once this occurs,
knitting of the broken ends commences immediately, even in bones that had been failing to
knit.
If the patient is wearing a cast, place your hands on the cast and leave them there.
Remember, you are not so much pressing on the patient with your hands as you are
mentally pressing your two hands against each other. An electrical field will quickly
develop between your two hands, passing through the cast.
Soon enough, the patient will feel “something going on” in the vicinity of the break
even though you are not touching the patient’s skin. The patient’s attention, and even his
subconscious, will be drawn to the area, and the field generated between your hands will
make the injured area feel safe, as if it is being held. The patient will probably feel his
muscles relaxing and unwinding inside the cast, and might even be able to feel the bones
moving back to their optimal position.
Of course, if the emergency room or orthopedic MD has made things trickier for
you by putting a few “pins” in the bone to hold it in place – without first having released the
tension in the surrounding soft tissue – it may be nearly impossible to help the bones reset
themselves. The tension in the soft tissue, together with the tension that the physician
introduced to the tangle, all held in place by the pins, can sometimes prevent the bone from
knitting quickly and easily, and no amount of FSR will be able to get rid of those pins. If
you can get the surgeon to remove the pins, you will have a much better chance at helping
the patient heal completely, especially in those broken bone cases that exhibit “failure to
knit.”

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In my own practice
As an acupuncturist, I use FSR for people with problems ranging from chronic
headaches to kidney stones. I very frequently use craniosacral techniques and the psoas
release taught in this book. They are simple but powerful tools that can be used by health
practitioners and people with no background in medicine.
My formal training is in Chinese medicine. The field of Chinese medicine includes
Tui Na. In my medical practice, if the patient’s problem is one of stiffness, numbness, pain,
or injury I almost always start the treatment with Yin Tui Na, not acupuncture.
Actually, I usually start by feeling the flow of the channel Qi over the entire body,
figuring out where the energy isn’t moving correctly. Then, by asking more questions, I try
to figure out the history: why the energy isn’t moving correctly. Once I have a workable and
plausible hypothesis, I will often try Yin Tui Na at the most likely initial location of the
problem. I will also usually ask whether or not the patient is able to visualize the area where
the energy is not flowing.
After all, my job is not to heal, but to find out why the patient is not healing.
If the patient is dissociated, has self-induced dissociation, pause, or self-induced
pause, I will help the patient work on those mental situations.
If the patient’s electrical currents are just “stuck,” I will usually start with Yin Tui
Na to get him “un-stuck”… unless there is scar tissue that is blocking a critical part of the
subdermal electrical system, in which case I will usually start with acupuncture on the
scar(s).
If, after all the body parts have normal responses to FSR but the channel Qi is still
not moving, which is rare, I will usually use acupuncture to stimulate the flow of channel Qi
that has become mis-routed.
I have included this short bit on my own professional approach to make the point
that acupuncture and “fancier” protocols are very often not necessary.

In your own practice

So here you are. You know everything you need to know to get started.
You hold in your own hands a collection of tools that you can use to help your
friends, your loved ones and, if you are a health care professional, your patients.
I hope, by now, you are throbbing with confidence.
Be sure and practice a bit of holding and letting go on a healthy person before you
work with someone with injuries.
Ask permission.
Settle in, get comfortable, and supportively hold another human.
Notice what you feel, but don’t try to influence what happens under your hands.
Trust your hands and your intuition.

You are ready to start.

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Appendices

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 The following two appendices were lifted, with modifications, from chapters in my
book Stuck on Pause (available for free download at www.pdrecovery.org).
The first appendix addresses dissociation and self-induced dissociation.
The second appendix addresses pause and self-induced pause.
They are included here to help people determine whether their health condition is
possibly being held in place by some sort of mental denial or is biologically stuck due to not
finding a safe time and place to address a past trauma.

Techniques for treating both types of dissociation are included in chapters five and
six of this book.
Treatment for pause and self-induced pause is included in the book Stuck on Pause,
available for free download at www.pdrecovery.org.

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Appendix I

Diagnosing dissociation and self-induced dissociation

Before receiving Yin Tui Na treatment, you will want to determine if you are
dissociated, using self-induced dissociation, stuck on pause, or using self-induced pause.
This appendix and the next can help you figure out what mental blockages you have
created, if any.
Please note, not every one with a chronic health problem has dissociated from the
area or is on pause. In my own practice, I’ve seen that most people’s chronic problems are
due to something more physical and not so much mental. Only when the usual illness
factors are ruled out and the problem would normally be expected to have healed long ago,
or the channel Qi keeps running incorrectly for no apparent reason and does not respond to
traditional treatment or only responds temporarily do I start to consider that the patient
might be using his mind to hold his health problem in place.
With my own patients, I have noticed that the more a person is capable of strong
mentally focus and analytical thinking, and is word oriented rather than somatic sensation
oriented, the more likely he is to have a mental holding pattern in place.

What do you see?

If I even suspect a patient might be dissociated from some body part or on pause, I
want to know what he sees when he visualizes – or fails to visualize – what’s going on
inside his body. Can he imagine, inside his own body, bright, cheerful light, deep darkness,
or something in-between? Which locations for light or dark areas does he find? Is it easier
to see light or easier to see darkness in various parts of his body, especially parts that might
be having health problems or a history of injury?

Start at the nose

If I think that there might be some mental factors preventing or slowing the healing
process, I usually start by asking the patient to visualize white light in the tip of his nose.
Most people, even if they have dissociated from some limb or torso area, are still
able to imagine light in their nose. Of course, if they have had a broken nose or a nose
surgery, they might not be able to do this. In these rare cases, I choose another presumably
neutral starting point such as the chin or an ear: some small area close to the head with
presumably no history of injury, scarring, or pain.
I start by asking the patient “Can you close your eyes and imagine a bright light in
the tip of your nose? If he says no, I ask if he can imagine the inside of his nose being dark?
Or I might say, “Which is easier, light or dark?”

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 If the person says, “Yes, I can imagine bright light [or darkness] in my nose” (or
whatever neutral starting point he’s using), I then ask him to imagine light in some finger.
If he can’t imagine either light or dark in his nose, I try various other body parts. If
the person is on self-induced pause or self-induced dissociation from his entire body, he
might not be able to imagine any light or dark anywhere. The imagination part of his brain
may be set to “risk” mode, a situation in which a person is usually only allowed to imagine
negative outcomes, and very often cannot do visualization with regard to his own body.
This situation is far more likely to result from pause than from dissociation. We’ll get back
to this.
After visualizing light or dark in the nose, or some other neutral place, if the
person’s suspected injury or trauma is on the left side of the body, I next ask the patient to
imagine light or dark, whichever is easier, in his right-side index finger – on the untroubled
side. If the problem is on the left, I ask him to imagine light or dark in the right finger.
If the index finger has scarring or signs of weakness, such as fungus under the
fingernail, I choose some other finger or the thumb.
In these beginning, testing enquiries, the patient is working at increasing his
confidence in being able to visualize. It doesn’t really matter what he imagines he is seeing.
Then, after he has successfully imagined light or dark – whichever is easiest – in a
few places that are not the main problem areas, I ask him to keep his eyes closed and
imagine light or dark, whichever is easiest, in the vicinity of the problem area.
If the person has dissociated from some part of his body, this body part may be very
hard to imagine as being full of light but it may be very easy to imagine as being dark,
shadowy, or cloudy. Sometimes, it is dark to the point of non-existence. That’s fine.
Very often, the person interprets the darkness as proof that the body part is badly
damaged. This is wrong.
The darkness is not coming from the body part. The darkness is a purely mental
construct. It’s the brain that not being able to imagine light, or maybe anything, in this area.
If unable to imagine light in the area, the person is NOT actually seeing trauma or
the damage in the area. His brain is refusing to imagine anything, or at least anything
positive, in the area. (See drawing, page 26.)
I repeat: when a person imagines light in some part of the body, he is merely
playing a visualization game – the person isn’t actually seeing the inside of that body part.
What he’s seeing, in his mind’s eye, is how he feels about that part of his body – whether or
not he’s even able to think about or have somatic awareness in that part of his body.
When he sees darkness, he’s not actually seeing that the area is lacking in life or
light. He’s seeing that his mind’s access to that area is fully or partially blocked off.

Doing a whole-body scan

Sometimes, a person has so many injuries and/or health problems that he has no
idea where in his body to begin imagining light and dark. In such a case, he might choose to
be methodical. He can start at one extremity (the toes or the fingers) on one side of the body
and try to mentally imagine light or dark in one area after another, spreading out from the
starting point. Or he can start at the head and work his way down to the feet.

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 Another instruction I might use is “Mentally look for the body part that you most
don’t want to look at.” Or “Mentally look at the area that tightens up or feels yucky when
you’re nervous or emotional.”
Once the person finds an area that’s dark, darker than the rest or more invisible than
the rest, I ask him to do the next step: focus on the darkness and try to notice if the area is
immobile or agitated.

Motionless
If the dark place has is an absence of movement, an absence of the feeling of life
itself, or the body part in question is missing altogether, the darkness is probably due to
dissociation. If the area is dark and heavy, motionless, or non-existent, it is very likely that
the person either automatically dissociated during some trauma and never got around to re-
associating or he consciously instructed himself to dissociate from the area.
In either case, he will probably remain dissociated until he takes steps such as the
re-association exercises in chapters five and six and/or gets therapy (including therapy such
as FSR) to turn off the dissociation. If he does both, doing mental exercises and getting
physical support, the dissociation might get turned off much more quickly.

Agitation
Oppositely, if the dark area is agitated or moving in any way, the person is probably
using pause, not dissociation, in that part of the body.
People who are stuck on pause due to a near-death trauma or a decision to feel no
pain will likely see a dark area that seems to be vibrating, trembling, or somehow agitated.
Indications of pause will be discussed more in the next chapter.

Dark and still in the center

Sometimes the imagination can put a thin veneer of light over a dark area.
If you have a chronic problem area that appears, to your imagination, to be filled
with light, but you suspect that the area is in fact dissociated, look at the very center of the
problem area. The very core center might be large, or it might be as small as a pea, or
smaller. A dark area might be haloed with light on the perimeter, but looking at the very
center of the problem area might reveal darkness at the center.
After a person finds some spot that’s easier to imagine as dark, less bright, or
cloudy, or finds himself not wanting to look at a particular area, he might find his mind
saying things like “I don’t want to do this,” “I can’t do this,” or even “I’ve never been able
to visualize.” If the patient finds an area that evokes these types of responses, I ask him to
imagine the area is even darker, maybe even invisible. This may help him focus more easily
on the area.
The area may be not merely dark, it might be a bit bizarre. I’ve had patients
describe the dissociated part of the body with words like “decayed” and “confused.” One
patient said one side of the body was a rotten, stinking wharf, even though the other side of
the body was filled with “normal” bright light.
If there is any darkness in a certain area, even splotchy or spotty darkness,
cloudiness, or simply “something bizarre,” then the person is very likely dissociated from
that area of his body, or is on pause.

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 If any area inside the body is easier to imagine as being dark instead of light, and if
that dark area is “heavy,” “not moving,” “weird” or “rotten,” if it seems oppressively
motionless, as if tied down or dead, that body part is probably dissociated away from
normal consciousness.

Focusing on the negative

Right about now, you might be saying to yourself, “Focus on the dark? Focus on
the bad stuff? That can’t be good, that can’t be right…”
Some people are surprised and then hesitant when I ask them to focus on dark or
invisible places, what you might call “negative” images of their own body.
The need for some people to focus on and pay attention to the problem was one of
the final breakthroughs in my Parkinson’s research. People who had never been able to get
lasting benefits from repeated attempts at “fill yourself with sweetness and light,” or
“positive thinking” suddenly found themselves able to get focused on and permanently
remove their mental blocks.
As for the negative, dark images that some people see, they might show cultural
influences. A patient who saw his injured leg only dimly, through “creepy stained glass”
was raised in a Protestant faith. A patient who had grown up in Vietnam saw the classic,
southeast-Asian Green Ghosts in her arm.

The images are in your mind, not your body

You can’t actually see what’s going on in your body with your mind’s eye. Trying
to visualize light or dark is merely an exercise in seeing what your mind is willing to
consider. This exercise with light and dark is a way to diagnose the mind. It doesn’t actually
help diagnose the body.
Some patients have found it helpful to think of dissociation as causing a moat or
barrier to be built around the brain cells associated with some body part or some aspect of a
trauma memory.
“Neuron” is the name for a nerve cell in the brain. “Neural” means “having to do
with neurons.” When you tell yourself that you don’t want to feel the pain or remember the
trauma to your foot, for example, it’s as if the brain builds a neural detour around the foot-
awareness part of your brain. Subsequently, when you try to imagine light in your foot, you
won’t be able to. Not because the foot is injured, but because your mind is telling you,
“There is no foot.” Just as you instructed it.
The brain is obedient. If you tell it to lie or be in denial, it will lie or be in denial.
Also, if while doing the visualization exercises, you aren’t the one doing the looking
around inside, if you are instead employing some mentally produced minion or alter-ego to
do the looking for you, you have probably dissociated from some body part, or maybe from
your entire body. If a body part is easier to imagine as “not bright and perfect” or easier to
imagine being in some location other than the location where the physical part actually is,
such as sitting in a chair across the room from you, then dissociation is very likely going on.

Case study: fourth finger on the chopping block

I was working with a patient who had lost the use of her fourth finger ever since an
accident with a kitchen knife cut the finger nearly to the bone. The finger appeared to be

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completely healed, but she couldn’t feel or bend her finger. She was a professional pianist.
She assumed this loss of feeling and flexibility meant the end of her career. Her doctor
wrote off her loss as a permanent disability, explaining that cut nerves can’t heal. (He was
wrong. They can.)
I asked her to close her eyes and imagine she was looking inside her nose, then a
healthy finger, and then her injured fourth finger. Not only was her fourth finger dark and
motionless, she said it was impossible to find. It wasn’t really there. Then I asked her to
imaging she did have a fourth finger somewhere, and it was filled with beautiful light. She
told me when she was able to do this. I asked her where the finger she was looking at was
located.
She replied with surprise, “It’s on the cutting board in my mother-in-law’s house!”
I asked her to open her eyes, then gently asked. “How can your finger possible
resume feeling and flexibility if it’s still in your mother-in-law’s house?”
She was surprised that her mind had played this trick on her. She was able to restore
her finger “back to life” by doing the light and energy exercise in her dark, motionless, and
distant finger from which she had dissociated.
She had also been using self-induced pause since she was a child, when she was
physically abused and kept locked in a very small closet most of the day by her caregiver, a
family relation. The abuse lasted from age two to age seven. It ended when her mother
came home early one day and discovered the situation.
Already being on self-induced pause probably made it easier for her to completely
dissociate from her injured finger and even “leave it behind” when it got hurt.
She had recently started working with me on turning off her self-induced pause
when the subject of her numb finger arose.
The re-association work on her finger was quick and easy. It took one session.
Recovering from pause took longer: nearly a year.
Because of being on pause, her whole body felt sort of numb. She observed herself
as if outside of her body. But as for her cut finger, even when she imaged she was observing
herself from outside herself, her finger wasn’t a part of her body. Her finger was in her
mother-in-law’s house.
The co-existence of both dissocation and pause is not unusual, and will be
discussed in greater detail, in the next appendix.

Resistance to the very idea of a mental component

Many of my patients have not wanted to think that they have dissociated from some
body part or are using self-induced dissociation or pause. Some have told me they preferred
to have an incurable illness for “no reason at all” rather than consider the possibility that
their own mind is playing a role in their sickness. One patient told me, “It’s perfectly
respectable to have Parkinson’s disease. It’s not respectable to have a mental problem.”
For historical reasons that I’m not going to go deeply into here, western culture has
long considered mentally-triggered health problems to be less “real” than physical ones, and
even somewhat shameful, as if mind-activated problems indicate a lack of high morals.
If you’re interested in when and how this attitude developed, please look up the
details on René Descartes vs. the Pope on the mid-seventeenth century legal decision on the
question of physical versus “spiritual” (including mental) illness. The conclusion of the

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legal debate was that, at risk of ex-communication, doctors agreed that they would study
and care for the physical body, but that all mental/emotional issues would be considered
spiritual problems and as such would belong to the realm of the church.
Thus, mental issues became legally separated from medical study. The results of
this decision linger, still influencing western belief in the separation of physical and mental
health. In eastern medicine, no such separation exists.
The fact is, nearly all illnesses have a mental component. Even the rate of healing
from an injury or illness can be influenced by mental behaviors. The degree to which a
person is physically sickened by physical and/or emotional damage or stress depends to a
large extent on mental behaviors, including learned attitudes, that might seem completely
unrelated.
As mentioned earlier, not every person chooses dissociation in response to trauma.
But please don’t think less of yourself if it turns out that you have dissociated from some
problem or body part. It is a perfectly human thing to do. Dissociating is not an indication
of a poor moral compass. It may be an indication of a relatively high intelligence and/or a
high degree of mental self-control. It may be a misguided intelligence, driven by fear-based
commands rather than wisdom, but a strong intelligence, nevertheless.
Then again, if you find yourself wanting to justify and continue clinging to the
darkness that you have created inside yourself, it may be helpful to note that some people –
people who are not using dissociation - can imagine bright light even in terribly injured or
smashed-up parts of their bodies, even if they are in a significant deal of pain. Some might
even automatically imagine angels getting in there and healing the injury. In fact, imagining
light or miniature loved ones in a painful area is one of the more effective ways to reduce
the pain and accelerate healing in any type of injury – slight or severe.
How one responds to pain or damage depends on one’s personal style in dealing
with difficulties. You can say that dissociation is not unusual. You cannot say that everyone
does it, or that it’s always automatic. Very often it’s a decision.1
If, when visualizing an area inside the body, there is no light in an injured or sick
area and the darkness is heavy, motionless, or invisible, it means the brain is trying to avoid
acknowledging the existence of that area. This may be from automatic dissociation or from
a mental command to yourself to “have no pain at that place” (self-induced dissociation).

1
I highly recommend Where There is Light, an extraordinary memoir by Jacques Lusseyran.
He was part of the French resistance during World War II. He was betrayed and captured. When he
was dying in a Nazi concentration camp, he decided to once again fill himself with light, a practice
he started when he permanently lost his eyesight as a young lad, a practice that he only abandoned
when he was taken prisoner.
Once again filled with light, he recovered from his almost-fatal illness and fever. He
survived the war even though most of his compatriots in the camp did not. His autobiographical book
makes a profound argument against the negative practice of dissociation and the positive practice of
literally keeping oneself filled with light regardless of circumstances.
A movie, All the Light We Cannot See, was released in 2015. The movie was based on a
novel that was based on the memoir. I have no idea if the movie or novel gets the original author’s
message across. The actual autobiography was profoundly inspirational.

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 Either way, if a person is dissociated from an injury or trauma, there is no way that
efficient, complete healing is going to occur until he mentally re-associates with the area in
question.
Over time, if not re-associated, the “missing” body part and/or the area around it
may become weak, or a source of chronic problems.

Case study: denial of dissociation from the gut

As already mentioned, many people do not want to even consider the possibility
that they have dissociated from some body part. Patients sometimes vigorously resist the
idea that they have dissociated from some part of their body.
For example, I sent an email to a long-distance patient with severe bowel disease
asking him to assess if he might be dissociated from his intestines. I wrote to him about
visualizing light inside, and also sent him some material on dissociation and pause.
He wrote back to me (I paraphrase), “I can dissociate at will, but I usually re-
experience the trauma later, when it’s safe. For example, I was attacked on the street one
night, and I didn’t cry until later. But I don’t think I store trauma.
“I might have some degree of injury-based dissociation due to the extreme pain I
have experienced in my gut, but my experience of life is not dissociated.
He continued, “It is easier for me to imagine my gut being dark, but I can send light
through it if I really concentrate. When I imagine my gut, I imagine it not in the first person
(it’s not me seeing it). It’s as if the gut has a “tiny me” that’s sitting inside of my colon, or
seeing my colon as though looking at a diagram. However, imagining that I’m looking at it
directly, as if it’s me on the inside of my body, looking out, is hard when I come to that
specific part of my body.
“But I can do it eventually, I can send light there from me. Just not easily. Also, it
looks like patchwork in there. Some light goes through, but there are some patches that are
dark. Maybe those areas are injured or scarred. My problems with my gut started a couple
of weeks after a very painful breakup with my long-time partner. But I don’t think I’m
dissociated from it. I can definitely feel pain in my gut. When I visualize the gut and see
darkness, it’s dark because it’s injured, not because I’m dissociated.”
The person quoted above, like many people, assumed that the dark areas in his gut
looked dark because he was actually looking at injured areas. He was not.
He was confident that he was not dissociated because he could see light in the area,
temporarily, if he worked really hard at it. Or if some minion worked at it on his behalf.
Also, since he could justify the darkness as being due to pain, injury or scarring, he was sure
he was not dissociated: he thought he was just the opposite: highly aware of what a mess his
gut truly is, and therefore not dissociated. He was wrong.
Again, the imagination does not see what is actually, physically going on deep
inside the body. The relative darkness or light in an imagined, given body part might have
nothing to do what is physically happening in that area.
The mind, not the health status or injured status of an area, determines whether or
not a given body part is going to be easy to imagine and filled with light, or is dark, or a
mishmash, or speckled with dark and light areas or, for that matter, illuminated by creepy
stained glass windows.

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The brain is not clever
Why doesn’t dissociation from pain stop when the pain stops?
In general, the brain is not very bright. It does not necessarily work in your best
interests. The brain is extremely obedient. It learns through habit. For better or for worse, it
does what you tell it to do. It thinks what you tell it to think. And it does so over and over,
until you actively change the status quo.
The brain forms neural (brain cell) connections in response to your instructions and
habits. The more often you tell yourself to do or think something, the stronger, deeper and
faster those particular brain connections become. The brain is not the fixed, unchangeable
switchboard, established and unchangeable since birth, that we were taught about in the
1900s.
The brain changes constantly. It changes in response to changing instructions from
you and the responses you choose to make to external events: your own thoughts, decisions,
and behaviors. As mentioned earlier, the brain’s ability to change is called neuroplasticity.
If you think the same things over and over, the brain effectively becomes more
rigid, more locked in to doing the same thing over and over. Still, no matter how locked in a
person is, he can change his thoughts. It requires self-aware observation of one’s thoughts
and the replacement of outmoded or unwanted thoughts with the new, preferred thoughts.
If one of your instructions to the brain is “pretend the problem never happened,”
you will have to live with the consequences of that suppression until such time as you
rescind your instructions.

Parkinson’s disease from basic dissociation

As mentioned in chapter three, only about five percent of my Parkinson’s patients
inadvertently set in motion the electrical currents that create the symptoms of Parkinson’s
by using dissociation, not pause. Of that five percent, most of them were using self-induced
dissociation.
However, a very few patients were using basic, automatic dissociation, after having
gotten stuck in it following some trauma many years earlier.

Case study demonstrating basic dissociation

In the free Parkinson’s clinic (1997 to 2003) at Five Branches, the acupuncture
college where I teach, we had one Parkinson’s patient who, during World War II, had
dissociated from an entire day, the day he received his foot injury. The injury occurred just
before an attack during which every man in his platoon died except him.
He did know he’d served in the war, but since the war he’d lived with no memories
of that particular day.
Fifty years later, after receiving around six FSR sessions on the displaced bones in
his foot, he announced during his session, “I just remembered an injury to that foot. I
dropped an ammunition box on my foot. It was during the war. Pacific theater of
operations.” And then he dropped off to sleep.
A week later, during his next session, while his foot was being firmly held, he
suddenly went into shock. He turned greenish, became nauseous, shook violently, and ran
out of the building. He phoned several days later to explain that, up until that moment, he’d
never remembered the day that “everyone died but me.”

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 He’d never talked about it, never mentioned it to his wife. It was as if that day, for
him, never existed.
Upon re-associating with the injury and then with that incomprehensible day, he
became terrified, frantic. Even his sleep was traumatic. Every night after his re-association
he had horrible nightmares of the scenes of carnage. He’d wake up screaming.
After his traumatic re-association, he refused to come in for further treatment. He
announced, understandably, “I wish I had never been treated. I would rather have
Parkinson’s than have to live the rest of my life with these memories.
He ended up using very high doses of antiparkinson’s medications to blunt his
negative memories. The drugs helped him feel safe and even excessively ebullient in spite
of his drug’s side effects, which included violent, painful dyskinesia (muscle spasming).
The free clinic patients were treated in a big open room with no partitions. They,
and very often their spouses, chatted amongst themselves before and during the treatments.
A week prior to his violent re-association, his wife had confided to me, “He’s not like your
other Parkinson’s patients. They’re all so, I dunno, so intense, so educated or something. ”
She went on, “He’s just a regular Joe. He loves hanging out. He’s never happier
than when he has the barbeque spatula in one hand and a beer in the other.”
She had been able to recognize, quickly, that he didn’t have the classic Parkinson’s
personality characteristics that all the other patients in the group had: intensely focused,
extremely intelligent, highly analytical, wary, and very word-based, or “left-brained.”
He was different: he wasn’t using self-induced pause, which in my experience is
what most people with Parkinson’s use. The use of self-induced pause is what creates what
is medically known as the “Parkinson’s personality.” A person who is not using self-
induced pause will probably not have this personality. In a group of people with
Parkinson’s, he may feel like he doesn’t fit in.
This patient was only stuck on basic, automatic dissociation. He’d been in an
emergency and had never gotten to a safe place to revisit it and turn off the
dissociation…until he came to our clinic and received FSR treatment for his foot injury.
That turned out to be his “safe place,” a place safe enough to remember the horrendous
events in his past. 1

1
In a weekend Yin Tui Na workshop in England, another person with Parkinson’s said
something similar about not being like the other Parkinson’s patients. The workshop started with half
an hour of introductory talk from me and a questions and answers session. Then we went around the
half-circle of chairs, introducing ourselves. The next to last person was a thirty-five year old who’d
been diagnosed with PD a few years earlier by a neurology “consultant” (what we call a “specialist”
in the US).
After telling us her name, she said, “I don’t belong here! I’m not like you people.”
As it turns out, she was correct. She had injured her arm flipping a fry basket at the fish
shop where she worked. The next day, her arm could barely move. It certainly didn’t “swing” when
she walked. Her shoulder joint, painful and seriously displaced, tremored when she tried to use it.
She had no other symptoms of Parkinson’s. Her doctor had egregiously misdiagnosed her
painful shoulder and unusable arm as Parkinson’s based on two symptoms: her shaky arm, which he
diagnosed as “tremor,” and “lack of arm swing while walking.”
During the lunch break, I did Yin Tui Na on her grossly displaced arm/shoulder joint. After
her upper arm popped back into the shoulder socket, she immediately had normal use of her arm, an
arm swing, and her tremor was completely gone, for good. The pain was gone. She had been horribly

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Case study: arm in the coffin pose
For another example of dissociation, I had a patient in her early thirties with very
early symptoms of Parkinson’s, including a bit of right-side foot shuffling, mildly reduced
right-side arm swing, a pushed-forward neck / head, and an intermittent tremor that was
very slowly increasing in frequency.
When asked to imagine light in her tremory arm, she replied, “That’s funny…my
actual arm is lying by my side, and it’s dark. But when I imagine it being full of light, that
arm is lying across my chest, like how you put someone’s arms in a coffin. Well…” she
continued, “that can’t be helping the situation! No wonder that arm tremors!” She laughed
out loud.
She thought this mental illusion was really funny, which is not typical of the
Parkinson’s personality. She quickly mentally integrated her “coffin arm” with her actual
arm and thought nothing of it.
It turns out, she had broken that arm when she was four years old.
She recovered very quickly, over the course of two months, from her Parkinson’s
symptoms and from an assortment of the recovery symptoms. She had been merely
dissociated from her arm. She was not on pause.
She also did not have the Parkinson’s personality, which is most often related to
self-induced pause: wariness; feeling apart from others; unable to understand that phrases
like “open your heart” and “speak from your heart” are literal, not metaphorical.
She was a professional musician, one of several of my professional-musician
patients with Parkinson’s who were merely dissociated and were not stuck on pause.
She was merely dissociated from her arm. She did not have any of the other
personality and comprehension behaviors that are discussed in the book Recovery from
Parkinson’s. That book is available for free download at www.pdrecovery.org, or in hard
copy at JaniceHadlock.com.

In my few patients with Parkinson’s who only had basic dissociation, such as the
man described above who’d dropped an ammunition box on his foot the day all his fellow
soldiers died, and the woman with her dissociated arm resting in the “coffin” pose, they
usually needed only a few treatment sessions of FSR until their Parkinson’s symptoms
evaporated.

misdiagnosed. The drugs she’d been taking for three years had never helped, and she had side effects
from them and was addicted to them.
But, she had never had Parkinson’s. More to the point, after a very short time in a room full
of people with PD, it had been obvious to her that she was in a room full of people who were
“different” from her.
She was a very sweet, easy-going woman, a high school dropout who worked in a fry shop.
She had immediately felt that everyone else in the room was articulate and analytical [not her words],
an independent thinker, and friendly enough but highly alert and with what you might call an “edge.”
These are all characteristics of self-induced pause.
She felt very much out of place, even “in over her head,” in the company of people who
actually had Parkinson’s, all of them due to self-induced pause. And she was right. She really did not
fit in. She had never had Parkinson’s disease.

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 They didn’t need to “cauterize” brain cells or “destroy” the brain cells of a wrong
mental habit, as described in chapter six.
Unlike these few examples, most people with Parkinson’s (in my experience) who
are not on pause but who have dissociated had the self-induced type of dissociation: during
their FSR sessions, they remembered giving themselves instructions to ignore or “not have”
an injured body part.
As noted earlier, about five percent of my hundreds of patients with Parkinson’s
have had a dissociation situation in place, not a pause situation.

Dissociation summary
People with either basic dissociation or self-induced dissociation will see their
“dark” areas as immobile, heavy, lifeless or even “non-existent.” If imagined as being filled
with light, the body part in question might appear in a different location from the actual
body part. If mentally forced to be reluctantly filled with light, the body part might even be
perceived as being viewed by someone or something other than oneself.
If a person is dissociated, he should first use the “light and energy” technique in this
book in chapter five.
If, after using this technique, the dark area returns, shape shifts, or moves evasively,
the person probably has self-induced dissociation and should next use the techniques in this
book in chapter six.
As noted earlier, people can be using both dissociation and pause. Sometimes,
terminating one of these two conditions will reveal that the other condition is present.
Treat whichever condition is presenting at the moment, whichever is dominant at
the moment.

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Appendix II

Diagnosing pause

Diagnosing pause: method #1 Dark and agitated

You will recall from the previous appendix that an area that your mind perceives as
dark and immobile is an area from which you’ve dissociated. Finding an area that your
mind perceives as dark and vibrating, or agitated in any way, suggests that you are stuck on
pause.
It’s time for a lengthier discussion of just what is meant by “agitated or vibrating.”

“Agitation”
Whether you’ve found one dark place or a few dark places, or your whole body is
dark and yet you’ve homed in a very darkest or most non-existent places in your body, the
next thing you’re going to notice is if this area is moving, or not.
Gaze at the dark area. Notice if there is an oppressive heaviness, a stillness, an
immobility in the darkest part of the dark area. You will recall from the previous chapter
that this behavior suggests dissociation.
However, if this area is agitated or moving in any way, it suggests that this part of
your body, or more likely your whole body, is using pause.
When I say “agitated,” I mean any type of movement. The area may appear as if the
atoms are moving about too quickly. Or as if the microscopic bits, the capillaries or the cell
walls, are moving. The area might appear to be rippling, or have waves of “smoke”
traveling through. There might be tiny, purely imaginary quaking, or tremoring. The area
might seem sludgy, twitching, or even “bubbling.”
It doesn’t matter exactly what kind of “movement” behavior is being exhibited, or
where. If your brain is perceiving some part of you as exhibiting this behavior, your brain is
also behaving, to some degree, as if you are in profound, near-death shock: on pause.
Most people will see this agitation in the area that was injured. However, some
people may also see some type of “dark and agitated” behavior at the sacrum (the bone at
the base of the spine), the seventh cervical vertebra (at the base of the neck, near the
shoulders), around the heart, or in a few cases, throughout the entire body.
The injury area and some other dark area might both be agitated.
Deciding whether or not the area is agitated or motionless should only take about
five to ten seconds. Thirty seconds, tops.
The body part in question will probably not be exhibiting any physical movement
or tremoring that’s visible to an outside observer. A person with essential tremor or
Parkinson’s tremor will not necessary be visibly tremoring in the same parts of the body that

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are perceived as agitated internally, in the dark place(s). For example, a person with a hand
tremor will not usually visualize an internally dark and agitated hand, but he might visualize
a dark and agitated place in the neck.
The imagined, visualized agitation shows how your brain is perceiving this area.
The brain is telling you it perceives the area as agitated and/or moving in some way, shape,
or form. This brain perception of movement or agitation, whether large or subtle, occurs
because the body part in question is trying to get your brain’s attention so that it can ask the
crucial question: “Is it OK to come back to life? Is the danger gone? Is the predator gone?”
This is very different from dissociation. In dissociation, the brain is pretending that
the body part doesn’t exist. Therefore, when you try to imagine this body part, nothing
moves. The area might be motionless or “heavy” or might not even exist.
But if you are dealing with an unresolved trauma or shock, your physical body is
actively trying to get your brain’s attention. It wants to get your brain’s attention because
only the brain can determine if the situation is now safe enough that pause can be turned off.
That’s why mentally gazing at a part of your body that is stuck on pause will
present as if this very dark, medium dark, smoky, or slightly dim area is agitated or moving
in some way.
As an aside, a normal part in coming out of shock or full-body anesthesia is the
subtle or obvious physical shaking or tremoring, usually occurs body-wide. This perfectly
natural tremoring is supposed to get the brain’s attention so that the brain can assess the
situation and come out of pause as soon as it is safe to do so.
BUT, so long as the brain says, “We might still be at risk” or “Only an idiot could
ever think he’s safe,” pause will not be turned off. Subtle, internal agitation, or not-so-subtle
agitation in the case of palpable, visible tremor, will continue, but it will also continue to be
ignored by the brain because the brain has determined that “it’s not safe yet.”
The reason the body part that’s perceived as being agitated needs to get agreement
from the brain is this: the body part does not have enough information to decide if things are
now safe. The brain has connections to the eyes, ears, skin, and a sense of smell. The brain
has the ability to assess. Therefore, the brain, not the body part, has the authority to decide
whether or not a life-threatening risk is still present.
The vibrating, tremoring, or even “bubbling” or “burning” that is perceived in some
traumatized body part that is imagined as dark or even somewhat dim can be thought of as
the traumatized area “waving its hands” at the brain, trying to get the brain’s attention so
that the process of coming out of pause can be initiated. The area is perceived as somewhat
dark or dim because the brain, in these cases, is trying to ignore that area’s constant call for
recognition and the question as to whether or not it’s safe yet.
The agitation signal will continue to be given off by the body part(s) that are stuck
on pause until the brain decides that the situation is now safe enough and calls the all clear.

More than one process at work

If you going to self-diagnose which type of mental-diversion process, if any, you’re
using, please be aware that you might be using more than one. Not everyone limits himself
to just one type or another. People don’t necessary have only dissociation, self-induced
dissociation, pause, or self-induced pause.

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 Many people use more than one of the above techniques for avoiding physical or
emotional pain. For example, in the previous appendix, the person with a “missing” fourth
finger was using both dissociation and pause.
I’m being painfully redundant about this because people who are using self-induced
pause tend to get very anxious about making sure they are making the “correct” diagnosis.
Please, don’t be so exacting, because what you are looking for might be a moving target. If,
like most people with Parkinson’s, you are using self-induced pause, you may well be using
several pain avoidance techniques. If this is the case, in the big picture, whether or not you
recover from your health problems won’t depend on getting your diagnosis “exactly right.”
If you are using self-induced pause, recovering from your health problems might mostly
depend on learning how to be a bit more easy going, feeling safe no matter what, and
trusting your heart to guide you to what you need. The opposite of being “exactly right.”
As for what “exactly” is going on in your mind in terms of dissociation versus
pause, you might actually be using both.
We can all create our own rules in our own brain as to how we are going to stay
away from things we don’t like. Each person can combine and layer his reality-hiding
mental behaviors in any way he likes. The main thing to keep in mind is that, prior to
receiving any FSR treatment, any pause-related behaviors should be treated first, if they
exist. After pause is permanently turned off (meaning it doesn’t show up again an hour or a
few days later), then dissociation behaviors can be addressed. If pause and dissociation both
exist and are layered, treat whatever is presenting at the moment.
The following non-Parkinson’s case study might help make this point.

Case study: broken bones and head injury on the golf course
A patient, female, age 72, a healthy, very busy professional and a lifetime golfer
had burning pain in her legs. The pain was much worse in the evenings, or whenever she
was pressed for time or under stress.
A year earlier, a golf cart had rolled over and landed on her right foot, ankle, and
lower leg, breaking several bones in her foot. The event had also thrown her onto her head.
She had worn a heavy stabilizing boot for a few weeks, but decided it was an
inconvenience and stopped wearing it. Instead, she told herself, “I don’t need this. I’m not
going to let this slow me down!” (She didn’t remember having given herself these
instructions until after she did the techniques for turning off self-induced dissociation.)
From that moment, she had no pain in her foot and was able to move normally. She
had the usual follow-up visit with her doctor after six weeks. The doctor was concerned
about how the foot moved. She x-rayed the foot and found that the bones were still broken.
Even so, my patient refused to resume wearing the therapeutic “boot.” She assumed
that the bones would heal, given time, considering that she no longer had any pain.
About six months later, the burning pain in the legs showed up. At the time, she
associated it with an allergic rash that she got while using a soy-based probiotic (gut
bacteria supplement). When she stopped using the probiotic, the rash on her chest cleared
up, but the heat in her legs remained. By the time she came to see me, the heat in her legs
was becoming extreme, and in the evenings or during stress, it was nearly unbearable.
When I started working with her, it was clear that the bones were still slightly
displaced and very possibly still broken.

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 I did Yin Tui Na on the lower leg, ankle, and foot, but first, I had her visually
imagine a quick scan of various areas in her body, including all the areas that she knew had
been injured.
The back of her skull was dark and heavy, not moving, as were her right shoulder,
the medial (inner) side of her right knee, and her lateral (outer) right ankle.
When she imagined looking at her third cervical vertebra (neck bone), about an inch
down from the base of the skull, she saw an area that was dark and vibrating. She saw
another area that was dark and “burning” (which qualifies as vibrating or agitated) just
below her right knee on the lateral side, and another on her right ankle on the medial side.
She had a collection of locations with either self-induced dissociation and/or pause.
The areas that were dark and agitated were locations where her injuries had been dangerous
enough that, on some level of consciousness she had evidentially felt she was at genuine
risk of death – and had subsequently failed to deal with the trauma.
The areas that were dark and not moving had obvious been injured, but she had
been able to successfully command herself to dissociate from them (“I don’t need this!”)
In my office, she re-connected with the dissociated areas using the technique in
chapter five for basic dissociation. She turned off pause in the body parts that were dark and
vibrating by using the five steps that turn off basic pause.
I treated her foot with Yin Tui Na. Bones slid back into place, the muscles in her
leg relaxed.
She had no heat symptoms for the next twenty-four hours. But the symptoms
returned the next evening, in response to thinking about an upcoming golf event.
At our next session, when she told me her symptoms returned after being gone for a
while, I said I suspected she was dealing with a self-induced situation. She did not agree.
She had not yet remembered her own instructions: “I don’t need this! I refuse to feel this
pain.”
So once again, in the dark areas I had her do the light and energy exercise in chapter
five. In the agitated areas, I had her go through the steps that turn off pause.
Even though the invisible friend she invoked to help her feel safe enough to turn off
pause assured her she was not at risk of imminent death (death in the next few minutes)
from the golf cart injury, she had a hard time agreeing with him (steps two and three,
described in chapter one of Stuck on Pause).
As in our previous session, she had a bit of a struggle with the pause exercise, going
back and forth between what her friend was cheerful confirming: “You’re not at risk of
imminent death!” and what she wanted to say: “But I am at risk of imminent death!” She
battled this out for about two minutes – which seems like a long time if you’re in the middle
of it.
She finally said to me, out loud, that she was not at risk of imminent death from the
golf cart injury. It was hard for her to get those words out.
She immediately took a deep breath and was able to do the neck bobble and shiver
that occurs when pause is turned off.
Her legs had no heat for nearly a week.
However, after six days with no burning heat in her legs, she set up a golf date for
the next day. The burning pain in her legs returned that night, full bore. It was gone in the
morning, but resumed for the whole time she was on the golf course.

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 Since her symptoms had been gone for six days, her problem was obviously no
longer the broken bones or being stuck on basic dissociation or pause. She was obviously in
a self-induced condition. When I saw her next, she was once again using a combination of
pause behaviors (visualizing body parts as dark and agitated) and dissociation behaviors
(dark and immobilized) in areas that had previously been “cleaned up.”
At this point, she laughingly admitted that her subconscious was playing tricks on
her.
This time, I led her through the treatment for self-induced dissociation in her
injured areas, the exercises in chapter six of this book.
Following this, the new darkest area was at the base of the spine: in the sacrum, an
area that is often dark and agitated or vibrating when a person is in a near-death condition.
In her case, it was dark and immobile, not dark and vibrating. Therefore, she and I could
conclude that she had dissociated from this area.
She did the technique in chapter five for re-associating. After this, she could see
that the sacrum was now dark and vibrating – which is typical for a severe, shock-inducing
injury.
After clearing up the pause behavior in the sacrum, which had previously been
masked by the dissociation behavior in the sacrum, she had no more episodes of burning
pain in her legs.
As mentioned earlier, brain behaviors can build layers of self-protection
mechanisms around a given area. Treat whatever is presenting at the time. If, after
treatment, another type of situation appears, then treat that type of situation.
She told me later, she hadn’t even realized it consciously, but for six months she
had been subconsciously avoiding the golf course and even finding ways to get out of golf
dates. After getting rid of her self-induced dissociation and pause, in various locations, she
once again found herself keenly looking forward to getting out on the links.
This above case study shows how the patient was diagnosed, at first, with both
pause and dissociation. At first, she vehemently did not agree that she might also have
created some self-induced behaviors. She was highly intelligent and felt that she would
never do anything psychologically “wrong” in her own mind.
However, after her symptoms and her imagined dark areas resolved in the short
term but kept returning over time, she was reluctantly able to admit that her mind seemed to
be contributing to her problem. After she started doing techniques in chapter six for getting
rid of her own, self-created brain instructions, she healed quickly and normally. This case
study beautifully demonstrates how both dissociation and pause can co-exist, even in
response to a single event.

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Diagnosing pause: method #2 Moving the energy, or not
You can start by comparing what it feels like to be on pause and to not be on pause.
If you are not already stuck on pause, you can temporarily experience and compare these
two states by doing the following exercises. If you suspect you are stuck on pause these
exercises might help you confirm or deny your diagnosis.

1) Not on pause:
Close your eyes. Imagine a
current moving up your back, from the
lowest part of the back, either your
coccyx or sacrum, up into the neck and
head. The current is about an eighth of
an inch under the skin and about a
quarter of an inch wide. In Chinese
medicine, this is called the “Du”
channel.
Your imaginary current can be
made out of anything moveable: light,
electricity, wind, water, warmth, or a
tingly feeling – anything at all that you
can imagine as moving.
Pretend you can feel this energy
as it flows just under the skin that lies
over the spine, from the base of the
spine, up the neck and into the head,
then through the midbrain over to the
forehead, where it emerges from the
head and flows down to the upper lip
and into the mouth.

Fig. Appx II. 1 The Du channel when awake

If your immediate response to these instructions was “I can’t do visualization,” or if

this exercise is difficult, you may well be on pause.
If you can easily imagine a current moving up into the neck and head and if it feels
good, normal, and even automatic, requiring no mental labor, then you are probably not
stuck on pause.

2) On pause:
After doing the previous exercise with the Du channel flowing up into the neck and
head, now stop the flow of the Du channel at the base of the neck. Do not allow any current
to flow up into the head. Feel that you have created a holding pattern, a standing wave, in
the current of energy that runs just under your skin, directly over your spine. There might be

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energy there, but it’s not moving into the neck or head. Don’t let any energy flow into your
neck and head from your Du channel.
In the ancient Chinese description, when this stoppage occurs, the Du channel has
ceased to be a river, and has become like a “reservoir.”
Note: the drawing of the Du channel on pause has no arrows showing directional
movement.

Maintain this holding pattern for up to five

minutes, if you can stand to do it for that long.
After about five minutes or maybe even
sooner, start noticing the changes in your muscles,
your facial expression, your thoughts, and your ability
to feel joy in your heart.
Your muscles may feel as if they are tensing
up a bit. Your arms might even be bending at the
elbow, pulling in, tightening up. Your facial muscles
might feel heavy.
Your facial expression might be getting stony.
Your thoughts may be wary, and might include
notions such as “I really don’t like this” or even “This
is horrible; I feel like I’m dying.” Your sense of
having a resonant area in your heart that expands or
contracts with joy or fear, respectively, will feel
deeply deadened.

Fig Appx II.2 The Du channel on pause

After a bit longer, still maintaining this holding pattern, you might perceive
yourself as being slightly “outside” of your own body. A common “outside” location is a
quarter inch or so behind the back of the neck. These are all symptoms of being on pause.
Done? Be sure to let the current resume moving through your head again.

Don’t worry about getting stuck in this mode. As soon as you resume the flow of
energy through your head, all those weird pause symptoms will go away…assuming you
were not already stuck on pause before you started this exercise. If you were already on
pause, you won’t feel much difference, if any, while doing the healthy and the pause parts
of the exercise.

Assessment
If doing the second exercise made you feel really weird, or at least somehow
different from how you usually feel, then you are not normally using pause mode. By the

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way, the way you felt while doing the exercise is what it feels like to have early-stage
pause-based idiopathic Parkinson’s disease.
If you feel more “normal” or more “natural” or it’s “easier” when you are
preventing current from going into your head or you feel more familiar with allowing the
current to stop at the base of the skull, then you are probably stuck on pause.
If current moving through up your neck and into your head in the first part of this
exercise made you feel a little giddy at first (an unaccustomed surge of dopamine release
that won’t last), or even more wary than usual or more vulnerable, or maybe experiencing
the thought, “I shouldn’t be doing this” or, if you feel a tightening or discomfort, or even
the fear of potential discomfort, in your heart, stomach, throat or other area, if you simply
felt “not normal,” “not safe,” or if you simply could not do it, couldn’t feel anything, or
didn’t understand the assignment, you are very likely stuck on pause.
For that matter, if you do not know what is meant by the words “the resonant area
in your heart that expands or contracts with joy or fear, respectively,” you are probably
stuck on pause and may have been for a long, long time. Ditto if the references to “heart
feeling” and/or “heart resonance” (actual, somatic sensations) in this book don’t mean
anything to you in terms of experiencing actual sensation in the chest.
If you are accustomed to thinking that phrases such as “open your heart” or “feel in
your heart” mean “think good thoughts” or “be nice” as opposed to what they actually
mean, you may be stuck on pause. These phrases are actually exhortations to redirect more
of your awareness towards the actual sensations of resonance-driven changes in the
electrical patterns in the pericardium (the highly conductive connective tissue around the
heart) and thus feel more connected to things outside of yourself.

Lack of Du channel flow is not always pause

If you have a very hard time imagining a specific part of the Du channel, or if the
energy in the Du channel seems to move in fits and starts or is difficult to even imagine, you
might have electrical currents stuck on pause or there may be an unhealed back, neck, skull,
or brain injury, with basic dissociation or pause from the injury.
If you are aware of a history of spine, neck, or head injury, I highly recommend a
light touch cranio-sacral treatment or two to either turn off basic dissociation or pause or
maybe rule them out. Many times a person with a history or concussion or spinal injury has
come to me with symptoms that are similar to pause, but the only treatment needed was one
or two cransio-sacral sessions.1
Often, a person who has displacements in the skull, neck, or spine due to injury will
still be able to imagine light in those areas. In these cases, the person might not have
dissociated from the problem, but might just need a little bit of steady, hands-on support so
that his body can re-align itself back into its correct layout.
But if the person cannot even imagine his head, neck or spine being filled with
light, he might be dealing with dissociation from these areas and/or a pause situation.
How to tell which?

1
Many massage therapists are trained in light touch cranio-sacral therapy. (Not chiropractic
cranio-sacral therapy, which can be, in some cases, a completely different type of treatment.) If there
is no one in your area who has trained in this modality, visit chapter fifteen in this book.

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Motionless or agitated, again
How can you tell if dark, unmoving energy blocking the spine or the Du channel is
caused by pause or is caused by a dissociated injury? The same way you assess a dark area
anywhere in the body.
Look into the center of the dark area, or the darkest part of the area that seems
blocked.
If it is easier to imagine this area is dark instead of light and if it’s easier to imagine
it’s dark and heavy, like an inanimate, unmoving lump, you’ve probably dissociated from an
injury in that area, thus preventing healing of the injury.
If it’s easier to imagine that the area is dark instead of light but subtle agitation or
quivering is occurring, you are probably stuck on pause from an injury in this area.
If the dark area is microscopically trembling or vibrating, the area might be the site
of a near-death shock/injury that has put you on pause. In addition to “faintly trembling” or
“as if the atoms are vibrating,” people on pause variously have described their imagined
movement at their dark areas as bubbling, burning, tremulous, and even sludgy or sticky.
It doesn’t matter how it’s moving. Just decide if the darkest part of the dark area
seems to be motionless or non-existent (dissociation) or if it is somehow agitated or moving
strangely (pause).
Then again, if the area seems to moving in a pleasant, back and forth manner,
maybe even in time with your breathing, that’s just normal. But if the area is easier to
imagine as dark than light, it’s unlikely that there will be “pleasant” movement going on.
If dissociated, and the dissociation was not self-induced, if it is just basic
dissociation that has gotten stuck, then use the techniques in chapter five to turn it off.
If on pause, and pause mode was not self-induced, if it just basic pause that has
gotten stuck, then going through the five steps for turning off basic pause (in chapter one of
the book Stuck on Pause) while focused on this specific area might well turn off pause.

Diagnosing pause #3: Inside the body or outside the body

Another test for whether or not you are on pause is determining if you are going
through your moments of self-awareness by feeling your body from the inside or by
imagining you are looking at yourself from some location outside of your actual body.
If you tend to observe or think of your body as if you are outside of it, looking at
yourself instead of feeling your existence by using the resonance of your heart (pericardium,
actually) as your primary point of reference, you are very likely stuck on pause.
If, when you speak, you imagine the words appearing in front of you on the “video
screen” of your imagination, you may be stuck on pause.
If you mentally use words to self-assess how you are feeling instead of checking in
with your wordless heart-area sensations of expansion and contraction you may be stuck on
pause.
If you have no idea what I mean by “feeling your body from the inside” or “heart
sensations” you are probably stuck on pause. The term “heart sensations” does not refer to
heart palpitations, which are the worrisome, tangible sensations of your heart’s beating. My
usage of the phrase “heart sensations” refers to the subtle sense of expansion and
contraction in the chest, in the area around the heart, that can be felt (by most people) when
experiencing something poignant or beautiful, or something dreadful, respectively.

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The Inside or outside the body exercise
Close your eyes. Imagine you are walking down a lovely tree-lined street. It’s a
beautiful day. Birds are chirping. A gentle breeze is rustling the leaves. The sky is blue.
Take five to ten seconds to imagine this.
Are you looking at your body, or are you experiencing the stroll from inside your
body, feeling your sensations of walking and feeling the expansion in your heart area as you
hear the birds?
If you are outside of your body, can you imagine yourself inside your body,
experiencing the sensations of stride from within?
If you are unable to imagine yourself inside your body, or it takes a bit of work, or
it’s hard to make your sensory awareness stay inside once it’s put there, there is a very good
chance you are on pause. If this is the case, the next step is to imagine looking around inside
your body. Find the very darkest place. See if it is motionless of agitated.

Diagnosing pause #4: Yoga and Qi Gong responses

If years of yoga, meditation, Qi Gong, Tai Ji (aka Tai Chi) have not brought you the
promised heart feelings of peaceful, expansive joy, you may be on pause. If you have done
years of the above practices and have done it without feeling increasing joy and energy
flooding various the body parts as they are moved or are focused on, you may be on pause.
If you do the above types of movement while trying to make your movements
symmetrical, or uniform, or “correct,” you may well be on pause.
If you like doing the yogic “corpse pose” because it lets you “turn off” and/or
pretend you are dead, you may be on pause.

On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these types of self-improvement exercises
because they help you turn off your internal monologue and savor, wordlessly, the
heightened awareness of somatic energy in your various body parts, you are probably not on
pause.
If you like doing the yogic “corpse pose” because you love the heightened
awareness of energy being released from your muscles and flowing up your spine and into
your head and heart, and your increased awareness of somatic resonance in the deep
stillness of your body, you are probably not on pause.
I have worked with hundreds of people who have Parkinson’s disease. Most of
them, around ninety-five percent, were stuck on self-induced pause. Nearly all of the ones
who have steadily practiced the meditative arts (a significant percent) have told me that
their decades of silent meditation, yoga asanas, or other “spiritual” movement exercises
have not led to increased awareness of inner joy or heart resonance. Just the opposite: they
have felt less and less joy and/or less heart awareness over the years, despite decades of
doing these supposedly “uplifting” exercises.
Also, many of them have said that “corpse” is their favorite yoga pose. 1

1
Vocabulary note: for those who do certain types of Buddhist meditation, remember that
going into the so-called “emptiness” refers to turning off ego-driven thoughts and constant mental
chatter. It does not mean becoming numb to the joy that vibrates silently behind every atom. The use

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Diagnosing pause #5: How do you move?
If you move by mentally commanding your body to move rather than by enjoying
the vibrant or languorous sensations of motor actions that occur automatically and
immediately in response to thinking about or imagining moving your body, and especially if
you don’t know what this sentence means, you may well be stuck on pause.

Other easy things to look for

Unhealed injury, lipomas, moles that are slowly increasing in size, or even fungus
intruding under the toenails or fingernails are a few examples of “not healing properly”
situations in which the somewhat bizarre electrical patterns of pause, or maybe dissociation,
might be preventing some location in the body from doing its normal job of healing from
physical injuries, illnesses, or everyday wear and tear. Imagine looking around inside, in the
locations of these types of problem areas.
Is it easier to imagine as dark? Is it dark and motionless? Dark and agitated?
Finally, a diagnostic reminder: a person who is stuck on pause doesn’t necessarily
look as if he is in shock. He needn’t appear stunned or blank-faced. For years, maybe
decades, he might have been able to stay highly mobile via commanding himself to use
“emergency” thoughts, thus releasing neural norepinephrine ( a relative of adrenaline). He
might be able to instruct himself to be “socially correct,” smiling and sincerely conforming
to the rules of polite conduct. However, unlike people for whom these behaviors flow
somewhat naturally, from the heart, the person who is running pause in the background will
always be performing these behaviors somewhat self-consciously, using an adrenaline-like
neural override and using, for the most part, brain-based logic and self-awareness even
though he may be talking about spontaneity, heart and love.
This subject is discussed in great detail in Stuck on Pause.

of the word “emptiness” is a poor translation. “Love-filled absence of ego” might have been a better
choice. I have had Buddhist patients, including Buddhist monks and even teachers, who were stuck
on pause, who had Parkinson’s disease. In every case, they had assumed that the word “emptiness”
means numbness, even joylessness!
To illustrate the translation challenges, let me share a story about signage in India, the
homeland of the Buddha. I noticed, in ashrams in India, dual language signs in Hindi and English at
the entrance to some of the meditation halls. The Hindi message had two words. The first word is a
verb that can mean “keep” or stay.” (This same verb is used in signs that mean, “Keep off the grass,”
or you might say, “Stay off the grass.”) The second word in the phrase is “shanti,” which is usually
translated into English as “peace.” These two words together might be translated into English as
“keep peaceful: full of quiet, radiant, joy.”
But the sign’s translation into English said, “Maintain silence.”
The words shanti (peace) and silence have utterly different underlying meanings. Joy is
implied in the first. Self-control and rigidity is implied in the second.
This is just to point out how hard it can be to put into English the words and phrases from
other languages that have to do with heart-joy and peace.
Many English speakers who are stuck on pause even think that the word “peace” means
“motionless,” and point for an example to the phrase, “a peaceful evening.” I doubt the word
“motionless” could be applied to the greatly dynamic Jesus, who is sometimes described as a “Prince
of Peace.” Peace is a dynamic heart-feeling. Many people stuck on pause are not able to access this
feeling, or even understand that the word peace can refer to an actual feeling.

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“Everything’s dark” or “There’s nothing to see!”
I mentioned earlier that we would be getting around to the question about the whole
body being imagined as dark. If you cannot imagine light anywhere in your body, not even
in your nose or earlobes, don’t be alarmed. You are not alone.
Try this: image that you do have a body somewhere that’s filled with beautiful
light, but it doesn’t have to be inside of you.
Some patients have seen their beautiful light-filled body back at the lake, at a
childhood summer camp. Others have seen it across the room, or hovering a few inches
above their physical body.
Next, see how you feel about putting that beautiful body, full of light, back into
your own physical body.
If it’s easy to do and the body of light stays inside you and you can now visualize
yourself easily as being full of light – and the light doesn’t leave – then that’s great. You
might have gotten dissociated or stuck on pause during an injury and never turned it off. If
your body is once again full of light and you notice increased awareness of sensation in
your body, you may have successfully turned off the problem.
If most of your physical body can be filled with light but some limb, digits, or some
other body part are outside of your physical body, you may be only dissociated from the
body part that isn’t where it should be. You might not be on pause. Check by looking to see
if your brain perceives the area is dark and heavy or unmoving, or if it’s dark and agitated
or moving in any way.
If, as is common in Parkinson’s, you can’t put your “beautiful light body” into your
actual physical body, or if it would feel “disgusting” to do so, or “wrong,” or if any other
negative emotion would result if your imagined body was inserted back into your physical
body, you are probably using pause mode, and the odds are good that it is self-induced.
Differentiating between basic pause and self-induced pause is discussed in the book Stuck
on Pause.
If you imagine that your “body made of light” is not inside your actual body, it’s no
wonder that your actual body must be imagined as full of darkness. Fine. Don’t worry.
These are just behaviors of the imagination. You actually are alive and full of energy, even
if your mind is resisting the idea.

Other places where agitation might occur

Even if you have found a dark area at the site of an old injury, you might want to
mentally imagine looking at a few other places, as well.
If the original trauma was body-wide, such as near-drowning, a concussion, or
anaphylactic shock, a dark vibrating area may well be located in the sacrum. If the trauma
was concussion, a dark and vibrating place might be in the head but also at the base of the
neck.
If the trauma was located at a specific body part, for example, the right knee or the
left elbow, the area that is darkest and vibrating might be at the injury site. Or, at the
sacrum. Or both the injury site and the sacrum. Or for that matter, it might be over the
whole right side, or left side, of the body.
The more life-threatening the injury, or the more forcefully that pause was self-
induced, the more likely it is, in my patients’ experiences, that there will be some darkness

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and agitation in the sacrum, or the base of the neck, and/or the heart area, even there is also
has agitation in some injury area(s).

Summary
Basic pause
If you do the pause-diagnosing exercises in this chapter and you find that some dark
area(s) in your body are agitated or moving, you most likely are stuck on pause.
If you have basic pause, and you go through the steps involved in convincingly
affirming that the situation is now safe enough, pause should automatically turn off: you’ll
take a deep, audible breath. Your head will wobble high on the neck, turning the vagus
nerve back on. A frisson will run down your spine, turning the spinal nerves and the adrenal
glands back on.
This is how basic pause gets turned off.
If you determine that you are stuck on pause, please read Stuck on Pause, available
online for free download at www.pdrecovery.org or in hard copy (book form) at
JaniceHadlock.com.
This book has very detailed, specific instructions that will enable you to turn off
this biological behavior.

Self-induced pause
Self-induced pause will manifest in the same way as basic pause: the dark areas or
the entire dark body will seem to have some kind of agitation or movement going on.
Energy won’t travel easily from the spine into the head, and so on.
However, the underlying cause of self-induced pause is completely different from
that of basic pause.
Self-induced pause occurs when a person has commanded himself to feel no pain,
to rise above pain, to play dead, or some other body-wide instruction: commanded himself
to play a role.
With self-induced pause, the brain has activated a personality that uses pause in
order to comply with the instruction. The brain is not going to turn off pause until the person
rescinds the command or during those moments when the brain decides that the command
doesn’t apply.
In a person who is stuck on self-induced pause, the problem is that the person never
got around to turning off that instruction. The mental instruction, still working away as
instructed, is what prevents pause from turning off. The instruction is what keeps the
darkness and agitation in place.
A person with self-induced pause might do the techniques for turning off pause, and
might even succeed in turning off pause several times an hour, but pause will keep re-
establishing itself because the command to “feel no pain,” “rise above fear,” or “be in
control of what you feel” is still working away.
If you are able to get rid of your on-pause behaviors, including turning off the
visualized agitation or movement in some part of your body BUT the behavior returns
within a few minutes, hours, or days, then you most likely have self-induced pause. If you
can’t permanently turn off pause because it keeps coming back, or if you don’t want to turn
off pause, then you are most likely using self-induced pause.

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 Not wanting to turn off pause is more common than you might think. Very
emphatic remarks from many of my patients, remarks such as “Only an idiot would want to
stop being afraid!” and “It’s just smart to be anxious all the time!” show how deeply a
person can come to associate being on pause with being intellectually and/or morally
superior.
People making these types of remarks also tend to give little credibility to the idea
that their inability to feel joyful expansion of their own hearts is diminishing their
experience of life.
Oppositely, a common sentiment expressed by people who’ve recovered from
Parkinson’s is “Gee. I was such a fool. I wanted to recover from Parkinson’s so I could go
back to being the in-control person I’d been before. Now, I never want to go back to being
that person again. That person was miserable. I couldn’t feel joy and I didn’t even know it.”
I’ve written more on this subject in Recovery from Parkinson’s.
If you determine that you are using self-induced pause, please read Stuck on Pause
available online for free download at www.pdrecovery.com, or in hardcopy (book form) at
JaniceHadlock.com.
This book has very detailed, specific instructions that will enable you to turn off
this psychological behavior.

Can both pause or dissociation co-exist? A review

As mentioned at the beginning of this appendix, both pause and dissociation might
be present at an injury site.
In this case, the person who’s visualizing light or dark in his body, whichever is
easier, might first see a motionless, heavy, or invisible situation when he gazes at a dark
area: dissociation. However, after turning off the dissociation by mentally re-connecting
with that area, he may discover that the area is now dark and agitated: pause. The
underlying pause situation has been exposed, and can be addressed.
Or oppositely, his inner gaze might first reveal that some body part is dark and
agitated. After turning off pause, the area is dark and heavy: dissociated, and able to
respond to techniques that re-associate, reconnect.
Both self-induced dissociation and self-induced pause can be caused by the person
choosing to avoid or not deal with the original trauma. They can both be thought of as
mind-based, rather than biological, creations.
This means that there is not a one-size-fits-all “typical, biology-based” scenario to
describe what the person might mentally have done while putting together his trauma-denial
response.
If a person chooses to put his trauma on hold, all bets are off when trying to figure
out whether pause or dissociation came first. He might have one, the other, or both.
Don’t worry about whether dissociation or pause came first. Just treat whatever
presents as dominant.
You can start your healing work by assuming that you are using basic dissociation
and/or basic pause (as opposed to self-induced).
If the visualized area is dark and immobile, re-associate using the light and energy
technique in this book.

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 If the visualized area is dark and agitated, vibrating, or swirling, use the techniques
in the book Stuck on Pause.
Then, if the other pattern shows up. then treat the newly exposed pattern.
BUT THEN, if the dissociation and/or pause are treated and the body becomes full
of light but five minutes later or the next day or week those body parts are dark again, then
self-induced pause and/or self-induced dissociation is most likely the culprit.
The different types of trauma denial require different treatments. But whatever has
been done can be undone.
As demonstrated in the golf cart case towards the beginning this appendix, a person
can have an assortment of issues, including having both self-induced dissociation and
pause, or any other combination. A person can even be mildly dissociated from his whole
body and extremely dissociated from specific limbs. Anything is possible.
This next case study demonstrates this point. The point is that logical and neat
labels of “one or the other” do not necessary exist when a person has decided to suppress
his pain, his emotions and/or his past.

The final case study: self-induced pause and dissociation except while flying like an
airplane
I had a patient who was using self-induced pause. He had severe, highly advanced
Parkinson’s disease. He could barely move. He could not feed himself or care for himself.
He perceived himself as being outside of his body. Inside his body, everything was
dark. But, his neck and arms were darker and more dissociated than the rest of his body.
When, with eyes closed, he imagined he was looking at his body from the outside,
most of it was approximately in the same place as his physical body. However, his arms
were perceived as dead and withered, like blackened sticks, and sticking straight up in the
air at a strange angle to his shoulders, unable to be lowered. His own mental image of his
neck was that it was snapped, as if he’d died from a hanging. He had never noticed his
weird arms and neck until I first asked him to imagine that he was looking around inside his
body.
This person had both self-induced pause regarding his entire body and dissociation
from his arms and neck. Most of his body was alive and on pause but his arms and neck had
died.
From his out-of-body perspective, looking at himself, his actual physical body was
a mere inanimate object with no significant amount of sensory function, an object that he
could observe, unemotionally, from his paused vantage point of floating in space.
From this out-of-body perspective, he could temporarily imagine that most of his
physical body was filled with light. However, when he did this, his imagined arms were still
dark and withered. They still stuck upwards, out of his shoulders. And his neck was still
broken.

And yet, for one time, and one time only, he was able to temporarily slide into a
personality that didn’t have pause by recalling how he’d felt inside when being a member
of a famous dance troupe in his young adult years.
During this one-time event, he turned off his Parkinson’s symptoms. He could
move his whole body perfectly normally.

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 This not-unusual ability to slide out of pause when conditions are “exactly right” is
described in detail in Stuck on Pause.
His one hour of normal movement occurred after I’d worked with him for about
half an hour in his back yard. I was holding him up, encouraging him to pretend he was still
a dancer (I held his shoulders and he shuffled in tiny steps while singing with me). While he
alternated between singing and protesting he couldn’t remember how to move, he suddenly
began to trot in big circles, flapping his wings like a bird.
Gleeful at his sudden mobility, he held his arms out sideways and played at being
an airplane, dipping and banking. He was radiant and laughing. Convinced that he had
recovered from Parkinson’s, he threw his arm over my shoulder and we danced the hora,
kicking and swaying.
However, after about fifteen minutes of this, he turned to me and said, “I can’t have
actually recovered from Parkinson’s so quickly, can I?” His body snapped back into utter
rigidity. He had to be helped into the house, and his arms were once again pressed hard,
rigid, against his torso. In his mind’s eye, they were once again withered and black, sticking
up in the air.
Curiously, he was pretty sure his feeling that he’d broken his neck had occurred
when he was twenty, when he saw a movie in which a person was hanged by the neck.
He had no recall of any neck incident that had happened to him – but he
remembered that the movie had profoundly affected him. At the time, he had been deeply
disturbed, as if he’d awakened a memory of having been hung by the neck in a past lifetime.

The above example might seem over the top, but I can assure you, I’ve had patients,
especially patients with Parkinson’s, who’ve presented with even stranger ideas about
where their “real” bodies actually are (miles away, in many cases) and what their various
body parts are doing, and can nevertheless switch into absolute normalcy for a short time if
doing something that they’ve decided is safe. And no two people have the same definition
of “safe.”
For example, I had one patient with highly advanced Parkinson’s who could always
move normally while doing the laundry, because “It’s always a good thing to be making
things clean.” She would snap back into Parkinson’s as soon as she turned away from the
washing machine.
Case studies like this are not examples of a rare and freakish psychological type of
Parkinson’s, what some doctors refer to dismissively as “psychogenic parkinsonism.”
Psychogenic parkinsonism is the diagnosis when a person, usually in response to a
severe emotional shock, such as an elderly person’s loss of a spouse, manifests tremoring,
faint voice, rigidity, and other symptoms similar to those of shock – or those of Parkinson’s.
These cases usually clear up within a few days or a few months, which is why they are
dismissed as “merely” psychogenic Parkinson’s.
The truth is that most cases of Parkinson’s have a psychogenic root.
Getting back to my point, unmedicated people with Parkinson’s who can
experience short-term spurts of normalcy in response to temporarily feeling truly safe are,
in my experience, in the vast majority of the people with Parkinson’s disease.

Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease is, in most cases, a psychological syndrome.

Whether it is held in place by dissociation, self-induced dissociation, pause, or self-induced

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pause, the sub-dermal electrical schematics that cause the symptoms of Parkinson’s are an
exact match for the sub-dermal electrical schematics of pause.
In the case of dissociation, the long-term electrical behaviors of an unhealed foot
injury in just the right place (the second cuneiform bone) can snowball over decades and
eventually lead to electrical behaviors that mimic those of pause.
In the case of pause, the electrical behaviors are to be expected, inasmuch as that’s
how the electrical currents do flow when a person is on pause or self-induced pause.
The problem, in Parkinson’s, is that dissociation or pause hasn’t been turned off.
And in most cases, it hasn’t been turned off for psychological reasons, not physical ones.
Getting back to the subject of cases where more than one type of problem is
presenting and deciding which situation to treat first, treat whatever you think is the main
thing presenting at the moment.
What you treat first doesn’t really matter, in the big picture.
The nature of the more dominant problem (pause, dissociation, or even self-induced
mindsets) can change in response to treatment: a different problem may come to the surface
when the first dominant problem is cleared up.
Again, an area that is dissociated may turn out to be hiding an old injury that has
triggered pause. And vice versa.
Don’t worry about what, exactly, you might be doing mentally in terms of labeling.
A person on pause or dissociated or using self-induced behaviors might be
dissociated from his whole body, some parts of his body, or even somewhat dissociated
from the whole body but extra-dissociated from certain body parts or events related to those
body parts. And he might have local areas on pause or be on body-wide pause. And don’t
worry about which location to deal with first. Deal with all of them, one at a time or in
groups, whichever works best for you. You created the situation without formal instruction.
You can un-create it in whatever way works best for you.
In general, if both pause and dissociation are presenting, as was demonstrated in the
golf cart case, turn off pause before turning off dissociation. If, after turning these off, they
return, they were most likely self-induced. Turn off the instructions that created the self-
induced patterns.

First, do no harm
The main reason that these appendices have been included in this book on Yin Tui
Na is because a person who is stuck on pause or who is using self-induced pause should not
receive FSR treatment or any other kind of Yin Tui Na treatment until pause has been
turned off.
Treating a person with FSR or other types of Yin Tui Na if pause is present can
cause profound subconscious distress and confusion. It can lead to the formation or
strengthening of a blocker personality. This is discussed in detail in the book Stuck on
Pause.
That book has much more information on pause and diagnosing pause. This short
appendix was included here to help point a person in the direction of Stuck on Pause if there
is any indication that pause or self-induced pause is present.
If you are stuck on pause, then treating pause – permanently turning it off – is
where you should start.

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198
 drawings and photos

Arms p. 33
Ankles p. 84
Calcaneus p. 86, 88
Cervical vertebrae p. 123
Cuboid p. 90
Cuneiforms p. 91 – 94, 98 - 99
Diaphragm p. 122
Foot bones p. 75 - 82
Frontal bone p. 117, 118
Hammer-toe p. 104
Heel and Achilles tendon p. 85
Hip p. 110 - 113
Metatarsals p. 93 - 94
Navicular p. 88
Occiput p. 116 - 117
Parietal bone p. 118
Psoas release p. 128 - 129
Reflexive movement p. 101
Sacrum p. 111 – 113, 120
Scapula p. 107 - 108
Shoulder p. 109
Sphenoid p. 119
Talus p. 86
Temporal bone p. 120-121
Toes p. 95

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 About the author

Dr. Janice Walton-Hadlock, DAOM (Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental

Medicine), LAc (Licensed Acupuncturist) has been a professor at Five Branches, an
acupuncture college in Santa Cruz, California, since 1998.
She is the founder and director of research at the non-profit Parkinson’s Recovery
Project since 1997. See: www.pdrecovery.org.
Dr. Walton-Hadlock obtained her Doctoral degree in Acupuncture and Oriental
Medicine at Five Branches in Santa Jose, CA, and her Master’s degree in Chinese Medicine
at Five Branches in Santa Cruz, CA. She earned a BA in Biology and also studied History
of Science at University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1974.
Her research articles have been published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of
Acupuncture, The Journal of Chinese Medicine, and other journals in the field. Her
“commentary” on a piece of published research was published in the New England Journal
of Medicine. She was the first non-MD acupuncturist to be accepted for publication in this
journal.
She has lectured extensively, at home and abroad. Continuing education credits
from her videotaped lectures are available at the Eastern Currents Continuing Education
program, EasternCurrents.ca.
She brings to her study of Chinese medicine a lifetime passion for ancient
languages, modern physics, and world scriptures ancient and modern.

Other books by Janice Hadlock

Hacking Chinese Medicine
Tracking the Dragon: Advanced Channel Theory
Stuck on Pause*
Recovery from Parkinson’s *
Medications of Parkinson’s Disease or Once Upon a Pill: patient experiences
with dopamine-enhancing drugs and supplements. #

______

Books are available at JaniceHadlock.com.

In Canada, ordering through EasternCurrents.ca will get you a better price on
shipping. That address says .ca, not .com. The .ca = Canada

* also available for free download at www.pdrecovery.org, the website for the non-
profit Parkinson’s Recovery Project
# not available in hard-copy because, at over 700 8” x 11” pages, it is too massive
for paperback edition. Only available for free download at www.pdrecovery.org.

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