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About Body Harmony
About Body Harmony Association
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Body Harmony truly can help you transform your life — whoever you are, wherever you are, and whatever your physical, emotional, or other challenges.
Your practitioner will not be ticking boxes or working to a prescribed formula when you meet for your first session. Instead, they will listen — in the usual way, but also through gentle touch — to what you and your body are really saying and what makes you unique.
From there, they can help you build true and lasting alignment between your body and mind and so create the healthier, happier, more fulfilled version of you that you are seeking.
As an organisation, the Body Harmony Association is fully committed to inclusivity and you can be confident your practitioner will adhere to the high standards we set throughout your professional relationship with them.
Resolves symptoms for deeper physical healing
Clears away trauma for more joyful, authentic living
Releases tension for enhanced emotional well-being
Clears the way for higher vitality and purpose
Most of your session will take place with you lying on a massage table — loose, comfortable clothes are ideal — and your practitioner will start by asking you what you’d like to get from your session.
In other words, what is your intention? They will observe how you stand, and how your body responds when you walk and talk about your intention. What they’ll be looking for — along with posture, alignment, gait, and the movement through your body — is where there is congruence between what you’re saying and your actual body language.
As you discuss your intention, your Body Harmony practitioner may ask you what physical or emotional sensations you’re tuned into and where you experience those sensations.
You may be asked about the intention you set and how well it does — or doesn’t — sit in your body, and your practitioner may help you refine your wording to better capture what you want to achieve.
‘Walking your intention’ and exploring how that feels helps you become more aware of the patterns and stories you carry within your body — the issues within your tissues. You’ll become better aware of your own responses and the congruence — or lack of it — between your words and your body.
This offers you greater choice and opens possibilities that you may never have recognised before. This also helps the practitioner identify the best way to proceed with your session.
You will next lie down on the massage table and the practitioner begins the hands-on work.
The hands-on work may take a variety of forms as the practitioner tailors their touch to your unique circumstances. It does not involve any sudden or sharp movements because we are not trying to surprise or trick the body in any way. The work is designed to create an environment of safety where change is easier.
Your practitioner will use their touch on different areas of your body to facilitate achieving your goal. Bodies are unique in the way they resolve issues — the Body Harmony touch values and engages this uniqueness which gives the best results.
As well as touch, your practitioner may use a variety of other skills, including discussion, listening, and observations of movement and breath.
At the end of your session, you will be invited to stand up, walk, and experience the results.
This also gives you the opportunity to integrate the changes that have occurred.
Every session is different, however a common experience is one of relief. This can often take the form of a deep sense of relaxation, well-being, clarity, and progress towards your goal. For some clients it also includes an increased awareness which goes far beyond addressing symptoms.
– Don McFarland
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Learn more about what body harmony sessions involve and the benefits
The Body Harmony Association Inc. is a non-profit organisation registered in Australia in 2016.
We support Body Harmony practitioners, teachers and associate members, and promote the benefits of this unique bodywork modality worldwide.
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The client had developed an autoimmune arthritic condition affecting her spine as well as her small joints. Her back would sometimes go into spasm, and she was unable to walk without significant pain.
She was reluctant to continue using strong painkillers, but nothing else — including heat and ice packs, acupuncture, and massage therapy — had made much difference.
Recommended to explore Body Harmony by a friend, she decided to give it a try. She quickly discovered that it was unlike anything else she had experienced before, and reported that her practitioner seemed to understand intuitively how different areas of her body communicated. He suggested subtle changes to the patient’s posture and movements, and then used gentle manipulation to coax the problematic areas to interact as they should — in harmony.
After her first treatment, the client found her back spasms were significantly eased and she could manage any pain by focusing in a more natural and relaxed manner. After two further Body Harmony sessions, her symptoms had gone altogether and she now just enjoys occasional maintenance visits to her practitioner.
This client arrived at her Body Harmony practitioner’s door feeling distressed, fragmented, and with a bad cough. She had just spent two days at a workshop hosted by a bodywork modality unconnected with Body Harmony.
In the run-up to this workshop, the client had attended several Body Harmony sessions and had begun enjoying the impact this was having in her life. Indeed, on arrival at the workshop, an acquaintance had commented on how well she was looking.
She was already familiar with this workshop modality, but said this class was taught differently. Instead of taking a ‘transformation approach’ to bodywork, this workshop focused on ‘recipes to fix’ and the client found her body was crying out for something else — or, at the very least, something more than what was being applied.
Her tissue’s calls for help went unheeded, and by the time she saw her Body Harmony practitioner, her energy field had become overactive. It was, the practitioner said, like a group of children had rushed up and were all talking at once, communicating in sensations of bubbles, tugs, and pulsations.
Once the practitioner began listening, it was clear the client’s body knew what it had to do: it had just needed the right environment to make it happen, and the experience served as a reminder that we all have unique systems in which lie truly transformational power.
On the morning of 11 September, 2001, this client was standing near the window of her third-floor Pentagon office when she heard a huge explosion and saw a blanket of fire race through the first-floor area below her.
She later learned that one of the 9/11 attack aircraft had entered her building immediately below her office, passing within metres of where she was standing.
Afterwards, she relived the complete experience again and again — literally hearing the explosion, feeling the shock wave, and seeing the flames. These replays would overwhelm her, coming upon her without warning and sometimes in an incessant loop — even when she was driving.
Just over three years later, she experienced her first Body Harmony session in Paris and immediately felt a sense of contentment and peace. It was however during the following week that the most profound shift took place: she realised that while she could still vividly recall the detail of what had happened on 9/11, she was no longer physically experiencing it.
This recalibration of her trauma has continued to this day, and the client went on to become t Body Harmony practitioner after retiring from the US military in 2011.
For this client, life was increasingly limited as she had become so absorbed in addressing a range of aches, pains, and other health issues.
At her first Body Harmony session, her practitioner discovered she had an ambivalent relationship with her physical body, holding anger towards some areas of it and the problems being manifested through them.
The practitioner suggested this client play instead with any sensations of gratitude and appreciation she could find, giving thanks for everything her body had done for her so far. She began exploring feelings of gratitude and appreciation while her practitioner worked hands-on, and found her body experiencing substantial release and relief.
After a few more sessions, she remarked to her practitioner that a family member had said — out of the blue — that she seemed less angry than she had been. That was when she began appreciating the shift in emotions Body Harmony had helped her achieve alongside the relief of physical symptoms.