Joselle Gacusan, Certified Massage Therapist and Personal Trainer will be speaking about what it means to get "to the heart of the matter"

This Wednesday, Joselle Gacusan, our Certified Massage Therapist and Personal Trainer will be speaking about what it means to get “to the heart of the matter”.  What has been preventing us from experiencing fuller, healthier, longer lives?  Those who have grasped the idea of making healthy choices, how do they do it?   Joselle will share her success stories over 8 years of being involved in healthcare.  Integrating her expertise in Massage Therapy and Personal Training, Joselle has been able to truly listen to the body, get “to the heart of the matter,”  and effectively help people reach their health goals.

The way we talk and think about health determines how we approach healing and prevent disease. If we look at the human being as an integrated, coherent organism then we come up with a particular set of solutions and approaches to health (balance, harmony and sustainability). If we look instead at ourselves more as machines, then a different set of assumptions and solutions arise (replacement parts, isolated approaches, mechanistic thinking).

Addressing pain, for example is vastly different depending on which of the two approaches one uses. In mechanistic thinking, pain is reduced by taking pain-killers. In integrated thinking, the root cause for the pain is addressed. Both approaches stop pain, but do so in vastly different ways.

Boundaries

Where do you, the self, start, and where does the outside (environment) end. Perhaps you have thought of yourself as an independent being with a skin and an immune system that demarcates the boundary between you and the environment. There is another way to look at boundaries. Instead of being a place of separation it is a place where things meet and interact.

Along with this idea of an interactive layer between human and environment, Chinese medicine sees the individual in the context of: environment, society, culture, diet and nutrition, sleep/rest, exercise, mental states, and emotional influences. In other words, you are a unique self.

Addressing the health needs of this unique self requires a treatment model that can encompass a contextualized, integrated approach. This is what Chinese medicine provides. A system that addresses the uniqueness of the individual interacting in the context of the environment.

Root Cause

Back to the example of pain. There is always a root cause for the body to send out pain signals. Through careful diagnosis this cause can be discovered and addressed. In this way the totality of the human being is addressed and the symptom, the pain signal, is no longer present.

A shift in the language to describe self allows us to see new possibilities in health. The focus shifts from finding ways to “kill pain” to ways of balancing, strengthening and interacting with the whole being, from the inside out. All this with few side-effects and great results.

May you find ways to describe yourself that are genuine, contextual and empowering!

This lecture draws from both Systems Thinking and Classical Chinese Medicine. It explores the health implications of shifting the emphasis of language, and hence thought, from the parts to the whole.

To schedule a Massage Therapy  appointment with Joselle Gacusan, visit IntegralBody.com or call 415-550-8444.

You may be asking yourself what does sex have to do with a can?  Well, the answer is complex, the results are impressive, and weather you know it or not, your are engaged in it every day.  It is about food, sex hormones and their impact on health, fertility and wellness.

Find out more this Wednesday.  This week’s speaker is Juan Carlos Collins, L.Ac.