Excerpts from an article published in Massage & Bodywork Magazine
(a publication of the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals)

Fluid Consciousness and The Fluid Body Model®:
A New Way to Live

by Patricia Cramer

Further, the more fluid we become in our own ability to change, the more our energy flows. We become sensitized to our own vibrations and of those around us. Like a tuning fork, or dolphins' use of sonar, sensing subtle vibration can help us resonate easily with clients and assist meaningful change. The more we begin to fine-tune our listening to our bodies, the more we can quickly facilitate change in others. Growth and development is readily available with fluid consciousness.


Fluidity: Our Natural State

Bodies contain veins, capillaries, arteries and organs with various liquids that must continually circulate and move for life to occur. The volume of every tubule keeps circulation available for the proper function of each and every cell. The body is also a network of nerves and neuro-pathways that electrically and electro-magnetically communicate by moving and squirting liquids to each other. The Chinese Medical Model has thought of bodies like this for thousands of years by recognizing the connectedness of meridian and organ systems.

It is important to remember your own tiny fluid tubules as often as possible in your daily life. Remember to live fluidly if you want your blood and lymph to circulate and if you want to digest and eliminate smoothly. This is so simple that we have overlooked it in the past. Take the first steps by learning about your body and its fluid intelligence systems. The Fluid Body Model® is not magic. It is simple, down-to-earth physics and mechanics at the level of the body that anyone can become aware of.

The Fluidity of Emotional Clearing

The Fluid Body Model® is a new paradigm shifting everyday behaviors and bringing liquid consciousness to movement and breathing so that tensions and emotions free up naturally. It is the deliberate use of words and sounds to connect us to our bodies. It is new ways to think and to feel our feelings more readily and responsibly. Consider that sounds have been stored in your body like tape recorders store sound for later listening. Consider that held breath may become stale and later need to evacuate. Consider that undigested foods and liquids have been held or trapped in the body and may have become rancid or putrefied gases.

What about your incomplete communications and feelings in relationship to people? Have you been storing them in your body until it is safe to speak up? And, where? And, what about your thoughts and good ideas? Have they become hostages trapped by your ego until your "right" circumstances are there for them to manifest?

The Fluid Body Model® is important inside of Vibrational Healing Massage Therapy® because fluid conduits assist in the movement of energy. Wherever we have held emotions from our past, our bodies have become frozen, holding these feelings as stuck vibration. These imprisoned frequencies build up pressures, become denser, more stagnant and cause real blockages to the physiology of the body. They also tend to "catch' present issues (sympathetic frequencies) that aren't able to flow in us, that aren't complete. With fluid consciousness, areas that were "solid" in the past become free. Vibrations from our past emotional lives resolve the more liquid we become.


Practitioners Sensing Fluid Consciousness

Leonard P. and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, authors of the book, Sensing, Feeling and Action, say, "The fluids are the transporting system of the body. They help counter-balance tension, relaxation and rest, action. Our fluid propensities also reflect in the activities that we choose, the people we spend time with, our touch, our voice and our state of mind. By becoming more aware of the influence of our fluids on how we perceive ourselves, we open up our options, communicate more fully with others and expand our potential."

At the World School of Massage and Holistic Healing Arts in San Francisco we also have found this to be true. Over the last 20 years, hundreds of our students having studied Vibrational Healing Massage Therapy® and the Fluid Body Model® have come to see and feel their bodies as literally liquid to the touch and have created new lives in relationship to themselves, their friends, their family and their community.

This new way of thinking gives an experience of bodies as fluid, active processes that are alive, flowing and changing from moment to moment. Just as a plant flows and adjusts to any movement against it, so our bodies are connected and flexible. The joints are spaces, more like liquid junctions, where ankles, knees, hips, vertebrae, shoulders, ribs, and cranial bones all float rather than remain solid.

Coming back to our natural fluid state gives us access to restore the nervous systems of people who have had pinched nerves, epileptic seizures, strokes, migraines and herniated discs. Nerves affected by neuralgia and paralysis are often rejuvenated. Consider for instance, that a herniated disc is an area of the body that needs space. The area needs blood and lymph fluids and fluidity of movement returned so that the nerves can communicate again to the areas that have been restricted. It is much like a plant when it needs watering! You can almost hear, if not see the wilting, the plant pleading for hydration. When unlocked, the nerves in the vertebral area restore flow and circulation like watering the plant. Rather than some position where one bone is sitting on the one below it bones can return to a more floating way of being. In fact they have to in order to do their job and make room for vessels, veins and circulation to occur. When a vertebra becomes seated one on another it pinches the nerves closed or narrower, cutting off or limiting circulation.

How Does the Fluid Body Model® Make A Difference?

The Fluid Body Model® really works for the practitioner as much as it does for the client. Remembering to be fluid allows you as the practitioner to be more liquid while you work. The more fluid you are, the more fluid the session can be and the more the client feels you and can model you. Your session will seem more effective just by putting attention on your fluidity. You will feel your client more.

Every minute of every session is new for the client and the practitioner from the standpoint of the Fluid Body Model®. It is dance, finding space, talking and feeling. Pause, allow the client to feel their connection where you are working. Ask them to find their connection there and to feel through their body to the floor and the earth. In the Fluid Body Model®, the floor we stand on supports us and not our feet. Just beginning to imagine and feel that we are truly a fully flowing liquid being clear down inside every toe helps to free the old solid thinking!

Remember also, that in receiving sensory input many people seeking massage are kinesthetically (touch) dominant. Your clients will feel you and this is a large part of the communication. (Ask any well-trained massage therapist to get a massage and to pay attention, and they can tell you when the practitioner has their attention on them or not. It is even easy to feel where the attention is, like if it is on someone else, or lunch, or a loved one.)

In Vibrational Healing Massage Therapy® we work primarily with the joints, where the intelligence of the muscles "hold" onto the bones. We do not use physical force, but rather lean, twist into, and apply torque to meet the hidden stress, so that it can be discovered. With our empathy and feeling of what is there and where the blockages have been, people feel the stopped areas for themselves. With the Fluid Body Model® Liquid Standing, we find collapsed postures (areas that have become rigid or solid) and stress vectors (the line of strain from a compression) and bring these areas back into play with full rotations and movements in many new directions. The body is thrilled and responds by unlocking and acquiring new ranges of motion. The more we allow our body’s fluid systems to connect at the inner levels the more restoration we have of our overall health. As bodies get freer people seem to get happier!


Conclusion

With fluid consciousness we can now discover and disperse vibrations that have been stuck with us from our past. With this larger picture of vibrational energy and flow principles we have a context in which to understand body breakdowns, illness and the need for awareness and change. With this new awareness people become empowered to heal themselves.


Patricia Cramer is the founder of the World School of Massage and Holistic Healing Arts in San Francisco and the developer of Vibrational Healing Massage Therapy®. She has been training Certified Massage Therapists, professional bodyworkers, Holistic Health Counselors, instructors and leaders for over 22 years. In addition to Vibrational Healing Massage Therapy® and the Fluid Body Model®, Ms. Cramer is credited with several distinguished contributions in the field of holistic healing arts including the Language of Healing®, Babies in Motion®, and Feet First Foot Rehabilitation®. She can be reached at the World School in San Francisco at 415-221-2533.




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With this new awareness people become empowered to heal themselves.

A healthy body is a living liquid body more than a solid structural thing.





































What becomes possible through the Fluid Body Model® is continual renewal through greater involvement with one's own healing.














































The more we begin to fine-tune our listening to our bodies, the more we can quickly facilitate change in others.

























































With fluid consciousness we can now discover and disperse vibrations that have been stuck with us from our past.