Cammy invited me to try a new massage technique that the spa she works for, have recently brought in.
“It’s called No Hands massage,” she told me.
No hands? i thought, immediately envisioning someone placing their hands really close to my body without touching it and calling it a new form of massage.
I was intrigued, and trusted the technique immediately even tho i had no clue what it was, wholly due to the fact that i trust Cammy and the treatments Energy Spa have been known to bring in that I’m equally an enthusiast of, like movement (pilates) and alternative treatments (reiki and holographic healing).
“Someone thought it was a dodgy massage -_- ” she said.
“No i didn’t think that at all!” i reassured her, while my mind ran off with what the other person must have been thinking.
Summarized in one sentence; No Hands® Massage is a deep, relaxing, rejuvenating and nourishing form of massage that is one of the world’s latest and most powerful therapeutic treatments available, that works on many levels – physical, energetic, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Conceived and developed by UK therapist Gerry Pyves after 20 years of clinical testing, his first book The Principles and Practice of No Hands Massage which was written for qualified massage therapists became the UK’s best-selling specialist book on Massage.
His journey discovering No Hands came about in 1987 when he was practicing out of his successful West Hampstead clinic. Gerry experienced excruciating pain in his wrists while massaging a client and just as he was about to apologize for not being able to massage him any further, the client started making noises that implied he was enjoying his massage. Gerry opened his eyes “… to discover in my despair I had inadvertently slumped onto his back! With some embarrassment I looked down at my arms and was surprised to find that (luckily) I had landed on his back with the soft fleshy part of my forearms.”
After accepting that he was dealing with Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), Gerry forged on in the following eight years to develop a massage technique that utilized seven different surfaces on the forearm and 23 different surfaces of the body that could be ethically and professionally used for powerful massage. In that way, he also created a new technique that would prevent him (and other therapists) from suffering from injuries due to massage movements, ever again.
To create something completely new, Gerry had to rely solely on his clients’ feedback every day as he sought to deliver the most powerful touch he could, and they all unanimously chimed, “Please don’t go back to that other stuff you used to do!”
It was only after 15 years of working without hands and 250,000 treatments using this approach, did Gerry release his best-selling book in 2000 to officially announce it in text.
Today, therapists from the world over travel to the UK to undergo courses on No Hands (with over 2,000 trained therapists in the UK) and Gerry travels to countries like Taiwan to train hundreds more.
The transformational touch massage, also known as the Gentle Giant massage, is performed by therapists by moving their bodies in completely different ways – a form which is almost like a dance flow.
I was eager to see how this massage felt as it is nothing like i’ve ever experienced before, and made my way to Energy Spa in GE Mall.
I headed up the stairs in the spa, where their alternative treatments are carried out, to meet with Alaine, my therapist. A qualified Beauty Therapist and Aesthetician with credentials (CIDESCO, Zurich; CIBTAC, UK; MLVK) and a history in Holistic Therapy (Reiki master since 2003), Alaine has worked as a trainer for Five Star international hotels in Asia whilst undertaking numerous courses to further her skills (Transforming Touch course in 2011). She is currently an Advanced Practitioner in No Hands Massage.
In her opinion, the average person feels pain and accepts it as a normal occurrence, which shouldn’t be the way because “… if you look at babies – they enter this world with no pain in their bodies.”
Fresh as a baby! Oh wait, it’s fresh as a daisy.
“As we grow older, the aches and pains come and we take it as part of our lives. But it’s not normal. It’s your body being compressed unconsciously. When No Hands puts our weight on, what happens is gravity takes over. When that happens, the compression that takes place consciously makes you realise (that you) actually have tightness on your hips, lower back, shoulders, etc.”
“When we release the pressure and the body decompresses, there is a ripple going out cos your body is 70% water. Every time there is a release, it ripples out further. That’s how No Hands works – compression and decompression – but in a safe and conscious way. Because it’s slow, clients will fall into a stage called hypnagogia…” > ‘experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. Mental phenomena that occur during this “threshold consciousness” phase include lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucinations…’ [source]
Also the best time for one’s body to heal itself.
According to Alaine, the healing doesn’t come from them, but our bodies. The therapists are just instigators. If the body is not ready to release, nobody can help it except oneself.
