Article Title: Looking for a January Thaw? Unlock Your Body This Winter

Edition: January 2001
Category: General Interest
Author: Ellen Gittelsohn
Article:

My response to another cold snowy dark Vermont morning in January is to make my morning shower hotter and steamier, put on more layers, drink hot tea and daydream about ways to escape to a warmer climate.

My four-year-old responds quite differently. He happily plays in the snow. He likes to stay outside because his feet are warm. He has a healthy internal warming system unlike the alligators that he and I learned about on a Florida swamp boat tour. Their survival is completely dependent on the climate outside of their body.

I don't want to stiffen up like an alligator so I try to keep things loosened up with exercise and a good diet.

I've been influenced in the way I take care of myself by Elaine Russell of Keep in Touch Bodyworks.

"Life happens," says Russell. We get injured on our journey through life. A car accident, a bad fall, invasive surgery, the consequences of taking medicine, emotional trauma -- all these things affect the body, Russell explains. And these events may cause us to "shut down our ability to feel."

Here's how it works anatomically. Our muscles, bones and organs are meant to be able to slide and glide over each other in a healthy way. My son is in constant motion. He's graceful, flexible and warm. He's an acrobat who takes delight in winter and snowmen and snow angels. The question is how we restore the body to its natural limberness, warmth and flexibility?

Elaine Russell has trained at the renowned Upledger Institute and has learned to listen to the body with her hands. She says her hands act like sun on a frozen pond, thawing and breaking up the ice' of stored experience in the cells.

Here's one example. I still have tension in my neck and jaw (a frozen spot) from a minor accident six years ago. In a session with Elaine, she pressed certain spots and I could feel my neck and jaw and my entire body relaxing.

Elaine tells me that most of the time this release of tension is a permanent solution. This means that she has to keep hustling work.

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