To do the ‘What is Body Harmony?’ question justice we decided to write a description as plainly as possible and then give you some examples of sessions written by experienced practitioners and clients. There are some pretty amazing outcomes. We hope you connect with it as we have.
Body Harmony is a tool for developing your full potential in any facet of life. It is bodywork which people use to:
That’s quite a range of uses isn’t it?
This is partly because Body Harmony is an open and evolving system including many aspects of the bodywork modalities currently available. It is also the result of the Body Harmony approach to working with a client.
The work could be described as a ‘hands on therapy’. However we have repeatedly discovered that when we touch someone we touch the entire person, not just their tissue.
For many clients it is a surprise to discover that conscious touch can be a powerful catalyst for change in physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of life.
There are many great systems of bodywork available which sometimes get great results. What Body Harmony offers is an approach where the unique character of the client is more important than any one system’s recipe for addressing a particular ‘type’ of problem.
As a result, our experience is that Body Harmony sessions sometimes help where other approaches have not.
Sessions vary, but an experience common to most session is one of relief. For people using Body harmony for healing they experience a deep sense of relaxation and well-being, clarity, peace, a sense of being in control, and increased awareness.
The work increases the clients awareness of how they embody their goal or issue. It then provides options to resolve and release any issue.
For example, if a client seeks assistance with a sore neck, the practitioner might use their finger tips, gently exploring the area to create greater awareness and clarity of which bits are sore. They may then explore how the areas prefer to move and release tension. They do have a preference and every neck is different!
The process can sometimes feel like a subtle dance where the client’s tissue leads and the practitioner follows.
A few years ago I developed an autoimmune arthritis condition which affects my spine as well as my small joints. Sometimes my back would go into spasm and I couldn’t walk without great pain. I was reluctant to continue using strong pain medication but nothing else I tried seemed to help very much (including heat/ice packs, acupuncture and massage therapy). Friends suggested I have some Body Harmony treatment and highly recommended Brendan. I had never heard of it before but thought it was worth a try.
The sessions I had were unlike any other treatment I’d experienced. I still don’t quite understand how he does it, but Brendan seems to have an incredible intuition about how the different parts of the body speak to each other and interact as a whole. Firstly, he used keen observation to suggest subtle changes to my posture and movements. Then Brendan used gentle manipulation to coax the problematic parts of my body into interact with each other the way they should: in harmony.
Immediately after the first treatment my spasms were much less severe and I could manage the pain by focusing on moving in a more natural and relaxed way. After one or two more sessions I was fine. I still go to Brendan whenever my back misbehaves.
I highly recommend seeing Brendan for Body Harmony treatment, particularly for chronic pain conditions like mine.
— Nyree Mason.
My client was distressed, fragmented and had an awful cough. She had just spent two days at a bodywork training workshop. The name of the modality is not important.
In the weeks before the workshop, she had received some very fruitful Body Harmony sessions and was enjoying the unfolding discoveries of that in her life. Arriving at the workshop, one that knew her commented on how well she was looking.
So what happened?
I could project a whole lot of theories onto the situation, but prefer to stick to what my client expressed, and what I experienced while working with her. My client mentioned that the class was taught differently to previous classes she had attended in that modality. Previous classes had taken a ‘transformation approach’ to the bodywork. However, the latest class had a ‘recipes to fix people’ approach. While receiving the work in the class, her tissue was sometimes crying out for something different, or in addition to, the ‘recipe’ that was being applied. Those tissue calls for help were not addressed.
When I raised my hands and gently felt her energy field, off her body, there was a lot going on. It felt like a group of children rushed up to me and all started talking at once, as if they had all been desperately seeking someone to listen to them. They talked in sensations of bubbles, tugs, and pulsations. So I did my best to listen… and my client started to transform.
It was exciting. Here was a body doing what it knew how to do, and it was good at it! A great reminder that my client is a unique system, with transformational power within.
There has been one event in my life that affected my body in a way like none other: the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Standing near the window of my third-floor office that morning, I felt and heard a mega explosion and I saw a huge blanket of fire race through the entire first-floor area below me, coming completely through the roof and crossing about 250 feet in less than a second. The shock wave from the explosion hit me from left to right, and I thought a huge truck bomb had exploded within a couple hundred meters of me. I learned later that the plane had passed immediately underneath my office, passing perhaps within 10 feet of me.
During the days, weeks, and months that followed, I would relive that moment again and again, literally hearing the explosion, feeling the shock wave, and seeing the blanket of flames. This experience would come upon me suddenly, with no warning, and would repeat itself over and over in a cycle. Sometimes it was only three revolutions of the cycle; at other times I was reliving the moment in a constant loop of 30 or more “explosions.” It was most concerning when I was driving my car because I would literally be seeing my office and the blanket of flames rather than the road on which I was driving, and I was barely aware of the steering wheel in my hands.
In October 2004, I had the good fortune to do a Body Harmony session with Alexandra Rose in Paris, France. During the session, I was wearing loose clothing and lying comfortably on a massage table while Alexandra gently touched different parts of my body — my leg, my back, my shoulder — and the session was so relaxing that I fell asleep. Immediately afterward, I felt a sense of contentment and peace. However, it was during the following week that I realized it was physically impossible for me to relive 9-11 in my body. I could remember 9-11, but I could no longer experience it.
I am grateful for that Body Harmony session, the results of which have been profound and lasting. To this day, even though I remember 9-11 with exceptional clarity, I no longer literally hear the explosion, feel the shock wave pass through my body, or see only the blanket of flames before my eyes, blocking out all else. As a matter of fact, I was so impressed that I trained to become a Body Harmony practitioner myself, after retiring from the military in 2011.
— Sylvia Moran
A client came to me complaining of a number of aches and other health issues. Her life was becoming limited, absorbed in addressing the various health problems.
She lay on the massage table and I explored ways to bring more ease and freedom to her body. I asked her about her relationship to her body and discovered she held anger towards some areas and their current problems. As I explored how her tissue wanted to release, I suggested she play with contacting any sensations of gratitude and appreciation she could find in relation to her body, for all that it had done for her in life so far.
She discovered that her body’s response to my ‘hands on’ work improved and accelerated as she explored and cultivated these feelings of gratitude and appreciation.
Her body experienced substantial release and relief so she booked in for more. After a couple of sessions she said “Something odd happened the other day. My aunt, out of the blue said that I seemed to be less angry than I used to be. Do people’s emotions change as a result of Body Harmony sessions?”
I said “Yes, in my experience people’s emotions and behaviours can change for the better as the result of sessions.”
