allison keli ~ books & blogs

Continuing Ed Topics: Emotions

This next blog post in regards to continuing education topics is broader than the first topic. Not only does it relate to massage therapists as practitioners, it also relates to the human condition at large.

The big question is: are emotions contagious?

In short, the answer is yes. While, yes, we are spirits inhabiting a body as experience, it’s safe to say that our brain is also always creating an emotion during the experience. ANY experience. ALL experiences.

A point made during the course was that even being rational is considered an emotion. Upon researching the lovely web, I found that ‘rational’ is actually considered a category for emotions. Some emotions are rational, some are irrational. I’m not sure how that can even be because things become rational or irrational due to judgment, and judgment is usually formed because of an emotion…

I digress.

The class teaches that we are never not without emotion, and that emotion is what drives us for thought or movement. Emotions are what keep us alive; they’re used as signals for other animals. Threat oftentimes drives emotions.

Braintively speaking (see what I did there?), emotions are tied to the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) as well as the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight).

Apparently there was this terrible study where the sympathetic nervous systems were severed in cats to see how they responded to stimuli. The study was trying to prove that organs and/or the sympathetic nervous system generated emotion… However, these poor kitties still had emotion even with it being severed.

There was another study of when epinephrine was given to human subjects to see if the epinephrine caused an emotional response. Nope. Picking up on emotions of others in the room is what caused an emotion in the subjects, not the hormone.

According to a Psychology Today article in 2010, emotions were considered cognitive appraisal and body perception. It stated that not only were emotions contagious, but so were behaviors. I think we all have personal experiences with both.

Why does this matter to massage therapists? So much is communicated through touch. I think people come to see us not just because of how much we can retrain muscle tissue or neural impulses to help them relax, but also because, as calming practitioners, our clients literally catch the emotion we are emitting, like a signal.

You can read my first post about continuing education topics here.

Continuing Ed Topics: Longevity for LMTs

I have to have a bunch of continuing education hours for massage therapy finished by the end of February, so I figured I’d pick a topic or two to dissect in the Swellness blog.

This week’s topic is licensed massage therapists themselves — “principles of longevity”. In other words, how to make your career last longer than the typical 5 years or less for therapists. (Now, having said that, I do know plenty of people who have practiced much longer, including myself!)

Let’s talk alarming statistics, and please note — these stats are at least 10 years old! 77% of massage therapists experience musculoskeletal issues due to the nature of their work. About 40% get diagnosed with an official issue, and 20% have to take time off because of said injury. I think this explains why therapists tend to turn to other types of work after the 5-year mark.

I have certainly injured myself due to the nature of the work. I’ve tweaked my back, my shoulders, my hips, my arm, and my thumb. And that’s just off of the top of my head! I’ve never turned down a massage because of the injuries, but I’ve also sighed some relief while injured when realizing some of my appointments are Reiki and not massage! 🤪

Tips for Massage Therapists to Lengthen Their Careers

Use less oil. Think about it: if you use too much oil, there’s easier glide on the body you’re working on. Less oil means more resistance, which means it’s easier to use your bodyweight as a tool in your practice. Otherwise you’re flopping around, finding zero stability.
Create a friction point while doing cross-fiber techniques. Drape an arm across another arm to create the fulcrum! Think smarter, not harder!
Saw the jaw with the palms of your hands rather than jabbing it with your thumbs. Aye! This is definitely something I plan on doing. I do jaw work on a client I see monthly. I bet the sawing method feels good, too. Anyone want to try it on me???
Rock your client’s hips into the fist of a hand you are using. Great idea!
Use a forearm to press a foot bottom into the fist of your other hand. I just tried this last night on my kid. He’s obsessed with foot massages.
“Save your wrist, use a fist!” Yes, yes, I think LMTs already know this one.
Use your patellar tendon as a massage tool, or knees in general to glide along quads, hamstrings, lower backs and hips. Apparently this isn’t as hard as it sounds, but I have yet to try it.
TOOLS. Get them. Use them. I definitely need a thumb saver tool, I honestly don’t know why I haven’t tried one yet.

Happy massaging!

Book Thoughts, Part II: Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

I know, I know. I let the ball drop with my book review.

Here’s the rest of it now–so long after I actually read the book. However, I think the most important thing to note is that I’ve used the insight gleaned from the book! There have been many times where I think in terms of my brain characters — oh, that’s 2 at it again, or, ahhhh, this bliss from 3 & 4!

To read my first post about the book (re-posted post, that is, since I lost the original copy!) click here.

And now, the rest of the review.

I ended the first blog with the acronym Bolte Taylor mentioned to help in any given situation you’re trying to handle. Of course, it is BRAIN.

BREATH Follow your breath; all it takes is 90 seconds to reset chemicals flowing through your body. This is an oldie but a goodie–slowing down your breathing for three conscious breaths can change everything. I now have a calm strip sticker on my phone which helps me remember the inhale-hold-exhale-hold method. They’re pretty cool–check them out here.

RECOGNIZE Once you’ve read about the characters and practice identifying them outside of a crisis moment, it becomes pretty easy to figure out which one is online during a conflict in yourself and others.

APPRECIATE what each character is bringing to the table in the moment. Don’t judge their skillset — just look at what it is objectively.

INQUIRE Now that you know what characters are around and can appreciate what they’re offering, it’s time to figure out which ones you need to use.

NAVIGATE the best possible outcome with the knowledge you have at your disposal.

Bolte Taylor suggests exploring your individual characters on a regular basis to become more familiar with your responses. She offers four steps to do so, which I won’t get into here. But one very interesting thing to try is to assess who is online is when you first wake up! I’ve realized my Character 1 is with me in the morning when my consciousness first arouses–it is telling me what needs to be accomplished. I would prefer to wake up with Character 4!

She delves into more esoteric concepts regarding consciousness, and truly believes that if we get our Four Characters into a “huddle” as she calls it, we can use these skills to live well, and die well. We only get to live and die once, and this is one way how to do it.

She also touches on generational brain activity and my inner brain nerd went into overdrive. What an intriguing concept! She spoke of the characters and how it’s affected Generation X, Millenials, Z and now Gen Alpha. She mentioned how the Boomers were brought up in Character 4 families, and then somehow shifted to live in a world of Character 1, helping create a sense of entitlement rather than gratitude. Yowza! She says they’ve created the Character 1 dominant world in which we currently live in. She believes self-value became measured in what we have rather than who we are.

There are plenty of other ideas in this transcript for how to live better, but the last piece I will leave with you relates to my personal experiences. In the previous post on the topic, I mentioned how my panic attacks were amplified after what I referred to as “the event”.

A better way to live with anxiety attacks is to remember that the other characters are there with you, even when 2 is fully loaded and running. Peace is literally just a thought away in most cases, so long as you take a breath to remember such.

It may take you awhile to read and digest this book (like it did for me!), but you should totally check it out. And then chat about it with me! Happy reading!

Anecdotes & Book Thoughts, Part I: Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. (TAKE TWO!)

|Please note, this was originally posted on September 4, 2022, but got deleted. Here it is again, in its entirety. Thank you for your patience.|

***Part II will happen after I finish reading the book!***

I couldn’t tell you how I initially found out about Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight. What I do remember, though, is that when I read it, I had this bubble expand around me that I was able to infiltrate with mySelf, resounding in an audible ahhhhhh.

That’s the colorful way to say I was hooked on all things brain.

In short, Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist, had a stroke and was able to experience it from a trained doctor’s perspective. The part of her brain that had the stroke was on the left side, and she had to fight to stay connected to her persona, her “me”, her division from the rest of the world surrounding her. Due to this experience of losing the divisive side of her brain and completely connecting to the one-ness of everything, she felt compelled to share her thoughts back in 2008. And now, she has a new book called Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. (Well, from 2021 that is.)

Now let’s talk about me. Moving to 2018, the year I almost didn’t die. It’s a long story, one that still has holes as far as I’m concerned, but very near the time (the summer before) my son was about to start preschool, I almost fainted. For no reason.

However, during the experience, I thought I was dying. A part of my head was black, even though I could see with my eyes. I felt weird — not dizzy. It was as if my blood had reversed course, as a cat having its hair stroked opposite its natural growth. My blood almost felt cooling, or at least the opposite of what it normally feels. Once I calmed down, I could sense surges of energy dissipating as whatever was happening was also ending.

I thought I had had a stroke.

In my late 30s at the time, and generally healthy-ish, there was really no reason for me to be having a stroke. I did take a joy-ride on an ambulance after “The Event” as I call it, and an EKG was done on me. This found a heart issue I didn’t know I had, or rather, I knew I had, but hadn’t named. Blood tests revealed no stroke (but we all know there’s really more than one way to tell if you’ve had a stroke), and at any rate, I was told to drink water and follow-up with my doctor.

An EMS guy told me it sounded like a panic attack. I was confused, because I thought it was purely physical-medical, and the EMS guy was telling me it was psychological. I later developed awful anxiety, and DID have panic attacks after The Event. However, they were very different than what happened to me that night I almost didn’t die.

(Side notes: I’m not going to delve into this topic here, but I’m assuming being a young-ish female came into play with that assessment from the medic, even as he, himself, had had panic attacks in his life. And of course, I understand that psychological is also brain-science, but again — not going to delve into that topic here.)

So back to The Event. I remember a blackness, but not with my eyes.. it’s the only way to describe it. I felt disconnected from everything. All of my training in yoga, meditation, reiki, etc. seemed useless, because here I was, dying, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop myself from disconnecting. I don’t remember what I told my poor, young, impressionable son, but to say it didn’t affect him would be naive.

It was the upper right side of my head that was black.

So, it is with GREAT interest that I found out Bolte Taylor had written a new book, dividing the brain into four characters. Needless to say, I did a lot of googling about brains and strokes and fainting and all of that after The Event. But reading about these four different characters is so telling, I think, because the part of my head that was black is what Bolte Taylor calls Character 4.

The upper echelon of my right head (brain) had been dark. According to the author, this right upper echelon is connected to the flow. Assuming my other characters were still “online”, the ME in me, it makes sense that I felt so severely disconnected and thought I was dying. There was a definite disruption to the flow, to the sense of awe and connectedness. I was left alone with ME.

My “vision” came back as I sat against my stove while sitting on the floor. I was fully immersed back into my reality, and this is when I felt the final energy surges. I was afraid it was going to happen again, and this is when I had my now-husband call 911.

I fainted once in high school. I stood up too quickly, and woke up on the floor. I’ve had a heart condition since I was born (nothing to worry about, unless something else happens) but the other diagnosis in 2018 was new.

Bolte Taylor refers to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell in her text. In a way, everyone is saying the same thing, and it makes sense that a neuroscientist would liken these human experiences to the brain.

She calls humans “feeling creatures who think rather than thinking creatures who feel”. She claims that the brain cells in our Character 4s are a “neuroanatomical junction between experiential physical life” and Character 3s “boundless consciousness of the universe”. Our 4s are where our spiritual beings — our souls, I suppose — create this physical experience.

It really makes sense then, how disconnected I felt from “the feeling of the cosmos, the sensation of an all-pervading experience of deep inner peace and love” because my Character 4 went offline for some reason. My now-husband and I joke about how dark my “death” had been, but that’s because I wasn’t dying at all.

So whether or not I shut down my own brain, or I did have a mini-stroke, doesn’t really matter so much to the experience itself. For these philosophical purposes, it doesn’t change the fact that what Bolte Taylor describes as Character 4 is what in my horrifying experience was missing.

She claims that Character 1 and 2 are responsible for creating the separateness of ourselves from everything that exists. These left brain parts are unaware of the electromagnetic fields around and within us because it is their job to keep us separate. Considering we live in a left-dominated sphere of existence, it only makes sense that anything right-brain is considered woo-woo.

For those who want to make “woo-woo” topics pseudo-science (meaning completely fake, invalid and not real), this Ph.D., this brain doctor, is quick to say she doesn’t understand that mindset, as science is literally the tool used to understand the things we do not know. The scientific method, however, is linear, and unfortunately, it would be naive to think that all things in existence can be measured that way.

She claims that joy is the main experience of Character 3, and that it helps dissolve fear that exists in the left brain. She claims the left brain is the “master of practice”, and right brain “makes the magic”.

This seems like a good stopping point in my word vomit on the topic. Her book is broken into sections, and we are almost at the end of Part II where she discusses how to use the acronym BRAIN to get all characters online at one time to make informed decisions in your life.

Such a unique way to conquer how we create the worlds we live in!

A Novel for Bodyworkers/Yogis/Magic Lovers

A little bit of self-promotion here.

I wrote a book about a bodyworker. Scenes take place in yoga studios, dojos and meditation rooms. There are crystals, runes, reiki, and elixirs.

While the story itself was therapeutic to write, the fun came in describing the world we holistic health people know and love. I call BS when BS needs to be called, I call confusion when Destiny vs Free Will is on the mind of our characters, and sneak in some recipes at the back of the book.