A Healing Touch: The Knead For Well-being
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday October 23, 1996
Massage is one of the world's oldest natural therapies, a hands-on trip to bountiful, writes ANDREW CONWAY .
MY HEAD hurts. There's a searing pain behind my right eye, running around the back of my neck, and down into the right shoulder. I have a pounding headache. I'm sweating in the clammy heat of the afternoon. And in three hours, I'm supposed to be at a friend's buck's party. Things are not looking good.
Chris, my masseur, surveys my limp body, naked but for a towel wrapped around my waist. I'm lying face down with my head resting in a hole at one end of the bed, arms hanging listlessly to either side.
"Where does it hurt?" he says, his whisper-soft Chinese accent sounding like Master Po, the blind old priest talking to Grasshopper in the corny Kung Fu TV series.
"Everywhere," I reply.
His healing hands go to work, feeling, probing, kneading and massaging, first the back, then the spine, shoulders, neck and head.
He is gentle at first, then presses harder in certain places. "I have to get deep into the muscles," he says. "There is much work to be done here." I grunt consent and I can feel the heat from his fingers penetrating deep below the skin, wincing every so often as he touches a raw nerve of concentrated stress.
I ask what he's doing. "First I am working your erector spina muscles group, then your trapezius, your rhomboids, your levator scapulae, infraspinatus and deltoids. Later I shall do your frontals and zygoma, the pectoralis major and finally the sternocleidomastoid."
While Master Po finds muscles in places I didn't even know I had places, Marilyn is working on my feet. "I hope you're not ticklish," she says. Another wave of the hand.
I don't know if it's the heady aroma of massage oils - lavender, bergamot, clarysage, patchouli and sweet orange - or the delicious feeling of two pairs of hands massaging my body from top to toe, but I'm starting to drift away, almost to the point of falling asleep.
I can hear the gentle strains of Vivaldi's Four Seasons playing over the sound system and suddenly the winter of my body's discontent has given way to the joy of spring, every nerve and joint in my body tingling with a new-found energy.
Forty minutes later, the trip to bountiful is over but the pesky headache remains. "Put your clothes on and I'll try something else," says Master Po, with an inscrutable grin. I'm sitting on the bed when he returns and starts massaging my upper chest, just below the shoulder blades.
"These muscles are not related to anything I massaged before but we'll try," he says. Then he takes my hands and squeezes between the thumbs and forefingers. The headache literally drains from my body. I laugh in astonishment. "You are sceptical," he says, "but there is no scientific explanation for this. It just works."
Life at the Australasian College's Natural Health Care Centre, in Sydney's inner-city suburb of Glebe, is an oasis of calm and tranquility. You can escape the stresses and strains of everyday life and treat yourself to one of a range of natural therapies.
The centre, which has been open for about a year, is the clinical arm of the Sydney-based Australasian College of Natural Therapies, one of the largest colleges of its kind in the world. It is run by qualified practitioners and graduating students, and its treatments range from naturopathy to osteopathy, chiropractic, massage, nutrition, homeopathy, iridology, aromatherapy and foot reflexology.
"What we work on here is relaxation of the whole body, working towards a total wellness," says Freida Bielik, the college principal. "We're not here to bag orthodox medicine but doctors tend to treat symptomatically with prescription drugs. We're more into preventative medicine and looking at why a person is suffering from a particular problem. What we are really trying to do is educate the public that they have a choice."
The public is responding: between 1,500 and 2,000 people a week visit the centre, a large and elegant Victorian house converted into private consultation rooms, treatment rooms, a spa, sauna and sun-dappled tropical courtyard.
There are about 40 staff, a mix of qualified professionals and students from the college who must complete a certain amount of hands-on experience before graduating.
Each treatment is supervised by a qualified practitioner, to ensure health-care standards are of the highest order. And because the centre is manned by students, the cost of the treatments can be kept low, ranging from $15 to $25 a session.
The headache returned a few hours later, but I fear it had less to do with Master Po's healing hands and more to do with the buck's party. We seem intent on punishing our bodies, but every so often, in the hands of the right person, we can massage ourselves back into a temporary state of total well-being. And that's something to savour. Right, Grasshopper?
* The Australasian College's Natural Health Care Centre is at 20 Glebe Point Road, Glebe. Bookings (02) 9660 0677. The Australasian College of Natural Therapies offers a range of government-accredited courses from self-interest weekend workshops to diploma courses.
If you want to know more, telephone (02) 9660 0555.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald