Larry Witzleben, LMT
Polarity Therapist ∙ Energy Practitioner
at Lotus Blossom Clinic
Here’s what I’ve come to know in 28 years of practice: It’s our nervous systems! Long before stress becomes physical tension that we notice and feel, our nervous systems have already sounded the alarm. “Uh-oh. Danger! Muscles, prepare to tighten up in protection!”
It’s our nervous system, it’s our nervous system, it’s our nervous system!
And the way we live–the blessing and curse of technology–is our early undoing. We are “on” and in reaction to someone or something in every waking moment.
Our bodies and lives are compressed and circumscribed by our technology. We’re on our phones everywhere. Four people at a table, out to lunch, all on their phones! You see it in our walking. We don’t walk with full, graceful, vital open posture anymore. We walk caved in on ourselves. Look at kids at bus stops. Text neck: That’s what doctors are calling it. They say it is epidemic; they’re treating it more and more, especially in young people. They speak of the growing neurological, physiological harm this is doing, AND they even grant that it could become a structural norm in the human condition within a couple generations.
You see it in the computer posture that fills our workplaces, and in the resulting, growing incidence of back, neck, and shoulder tension.
We’re toast!
We need to unplug–from our technology, from our days, from our lives–on a regular basis. We know it instinctively. It’s what our nervous systems need to be healthy. Even the finest, most exquisite wire, wound too tight, will snap.
What do we do? How do we live fully engaged in this world that offers us so much, but honoring the rhythm of activity and rest that renews us, that we’re designed to enjoy for being at our best? (Anyone old enough to remember the rotary telephone? Imagine how impatient we’d become today, waiting for the dial to return from our having dialed zero?!!! It would make road rage look like a mild upset.) Really, what DO we do?
We’re not going to get rid of our devices. Besides, “One of the reasons so many people are suffering from stress is not that they are doing stressful things but that they allow so little time for silence.”1 From time to time, we need to unplug. We have to build it in to our lives. But how?
No problem! I give you this!
I give you this timeout. I unplug you from your day so your body can reset.
For this I have created my Drive-Thru Stress Relief! treatment. Sounds flip, but it will change your life. I created the Drive-Thru Stress Relief!™ treatment for those who so very much want to unplug from their day(s) but simply won’t or can’t see their way clear to do so. I say, “I can give you that! Come get on my table, before, during, or after your day. Give me thirty minutes, and I’ll bring your body to stillness, and your nervous system and whole body will reset to their natural quiet. You’ll be back in your car in under an hour. You’ll take an uncommon calm with you back into your day. And it will last.”
I will take you out of fight-or-flight mode and give you the start of a new norm.
Drive-Thru Stress Relief!™
Drive-Thru Stress Relief!™ is a treatment of Polarity Therapy; it works at the level of your body’s subtle, vital energy. For just as your nervous system underwrites the health and effectiveness of every other system in your body, so does your energy system – the energy field … the chakra system – underwrite the heath of your nervous system.
The Drive-Thru Stress Relief!™ session is hands-on and treats your whole body. This takes place on a massage table. Here’s how it works. You come into my treatment room and leave your world behind. We talk a few minutes. You take off your shoes and socks – that’s all – unless you want to keep your socks on – and lie down on the table, face up. Within minutes I bring you to stillness, a total time out. You sink into the table a little deeper, your muscles let go. You relax more deeply, right out of fight-or-flight mode, to a deeper stillness. And in that stillness and calm, your nervous system and whole body reset… To your natural, quiet, parasympathetic state. Your mind, your emotions, your body are still. When the session is complete, you lie there for a moment. It’s quiet. You’re fully alive, fully alert, fully present, enjoying a most uncommon calm. When you leave, that calm goes with you, back into your day.
Maintain Your Nervous System
The treatment is designed for you to receive regularly – once a month is the most common – and, in time, for you to enjoy a new norm where calm IS your routine and natural response to whatever happens. You’ll know what’s important and what’s not, you’ll be more easily, fully effective. And imperturbably calm. You’ll be more present and calm in real urgency, but not jerked around by daily drama and contrived urgency, your own or someone else’s.
Create a Ripple
Imagine being like this wherever you are! At home: Calm and happier. You’ll affect your whole family! At work: You’ll be happier and more productive; you’ll model calm through the whole workplace. People are going to want that productive calm themselves. THAT’S a ripple! (When they seem curious, please send them to me.) Imagine living and working with more and more people living this way!
We build healthy, vibrant community one person, one nervous system, one household, one workplace, one circle of friends at a time. The ripple goes on!
One Man’s Triumph over Stress
Let me close with Aaron’s story. Aaron was a 30-year-old, type-A Financial Planner who came for a Drive-Thru Stress Relief session the day before Thanksgiving some years ago. He was one of the friends on whom I road-tested my brand-new Drive-Thru Stress Relief session before launching it in my practice. He was driven, intense, highly organized, prided himself on being intentional and productive in every waking moment. He said very simply, “Larry, relax isn’t in my vocabulary. Good luck here!”
He left relaxed.
When he came back the following week, he told me he’d ended up taking off all four days of the Thanksgiving weekend and loved it. As Thanksgiving Day unfolded and he realized he was relaxed and not doing anything, he did an internal double take and said, “Wait a minute, this isn’t m….” but before he could even finish his sentence in his head, he said, “But it feels good! Different, but I LIKE it! Maybe this really IS me! Well it must be! I should do this more often!”
We had so calmed his nervous system that his internal terrain and dialogue had changed on their own. He experienced himself differently and liked it. To this day, he takes the weekends off, and long weekends whenever they come around. He’s still a Type-A, but now he knows he can like turning it off as much as he likes turning it on.
Schedule your first Drive-Thru Stress Relief!™ session today! Mention this article, and receive $10 off the regular price of $40, for first-time treatments. Offer good through 9/2/17.
1.aAnam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, John O’Donohue, HarperCollins Perennials, 2004.
Larry Witzleben, LMT
Neuro-Energy Balance™
Polarity Therapy ∙ Orthopedic Massage
Lotus Blossom Clinic 239-277-1399
Larry directly 407-595-4035