Audrey Mairi - Trager for Self-Healing: A Practical guide for Living in the Present Moment

An H J Kramer Book

published in a joint venture with

New World Library

Copyright 2006 by Audrey Mairi

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The terms Trager and Mentastics are trademarked, registered service marks of Trager International.

Page 93: I said to the wanting-creature by Kabir, translated by Robert Bly, from Kabir: Ecstatic Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), no. 14. Copyright 2004 by Robert Bly. Reprinted with his permission.

Page 167: The Old Wild Place by David Whyte, from Fire in the Earth (Langley, WA: Many Rivers, 1999), p. 55. Reprinted with permission.

Edited by Nancy Grimley Carleton, Candis Graham, and Paul Latour Text design and typography by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mairi, Audrey

Trager for self-healing : a practical guide for living in the present moment /

Audrey Mairi. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-932073-19-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Exercise. 2. Mind and body. I. Title.

RA781.M337 2006

613dc22

2006017637

First printing, September 2006

ISBN-10: 1-932073-19-1

ISBN-13: 978-1-932073-19-5

Printed in Canada on acid-free, partially recycled paper.

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is lovingly dedicated to my two mentors:

My Trager mentor ,

Karen Hortig ,

September 7, 1945May 10, 2005

My writing mentor ,

Candis Graham ,

February 14, 1949November 22, 2005

There is a way of being

Which is lighter Which is freer

A way in which work

As well as play

Becomes a dance

And living a song

We can learn this way

MILTON TRAGER

It is natural for the mind to move towards the fields of greater happiness.

MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI

I f the above statement is true, then pressing questions immediately arise: Why are our minds and through them our bodies so obviously susceptible to unhappiness, inner conflicts, unnecessarily contentious relations with others, fear, pain, chronic conditions, degenerative disorders, and the rest of the host of demons that plague us? What so distances us from our natural heritage, handed down to us through millennia of evolutionary development, of keen self-awareness, effective self-regulation, and successful adaptation? What are the obstacles that divert us from the joys of learning, from an enthusiastic curiosity about ourselves, from a more conscious engagement with our past, our present, and the possibilities of our future? What are the pitfalls that trap us and disable the powerful resources of self-healing that nature has given us?

Here is a book that directly addresses these questions and offers important answers drawn from the authors twenty-something years of practical experience in self-healing, bodywork, counseling, and teaching. And more important, here are a book and a depth of insight that offer simple principles and practical steps to follow on your personal journey out of those negative susceptibilities and around those obstacles and pitfalls. What you have in your hands is a map toward the rediscovery of the powerful resources within every one of us, resources that have been hamstrung by the intense stress from the industrialization and technologizing of our lives, and by the educational, medical, and spiritual models that have been given to us. Through mutual reinforcement and self-fulfilling prophesy, these models have become the core of our acculturated beliefs about our minds, our bodies, and our capacities for self-healing. Their underlying and debilitating message is that effective alternatives are not possible and that other than seeking expert intervention, there is little to nil that we can do to better our lot. What Audrey Mairi tells us is that this just aint so.

In his novel Jitterbug Perfume , Tom Robbins writes that as a guide to regulating human behavior, the Ten Commandments are redundant; we really need only one: Lighten up. In the midst of the multitasking demands on our modern lives and the consequent self-expectations we levy against ourselves, we have lost sight of the potentials for self-development and healing. These are not resources that can be forced upon us or made to emerge under pressure. The hurly-burly social forces around us and the emotional pressures within us are the very things that have obscured them. It is useless to strive for them the way we have learned to strive for everything else in our lives. Instead, we must slow down. We must pause. We must listen to ourselves. We must cultivate an inner quiet wherein the unconscious wisdom of our bodies can reemerge more consciously in our lives.

The work developed and passed on by Dr. Milton Trager was the result of a lifetime of learning to cultivate this slowing down, this pausing, this quiet questioning of the body and active engagement with the answers it offers. Audrey Mairi has been a longtime student and practitioner of Dr. Tragers work, and it along with her successful resolutions while on her own personal journey of healing and teaching deeply informs what she has to say here. The work is not a technique, a protocol, a procedure, a formula, or an intervention. It is a learning: learning to slow down, to pause, and to find that inner quiet from which the answers to our pains and dilemmas can emerge from the natural wisdom the impulse toward greater happiness that is our heritage.

Audrey Mairis book is the most thorough and accurate description of the Trager Approach that I have ever read. The successful use of this book will require active engagement on the part of the reader. It will be to no avail if you simply read it, close it, and say, I got it. Let your reading be an opening to a doing, to a practice and refinement of the simple but powerfully effective meditations in awareness and movement you will find here. And why not? The engagement called for here is with yourself the most accessible and most important person in your life. So take this book home not as a weekend read but as a long-term companion. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, Keep coming back; it works if you work it. Here is a guide out of the cul-de-sac of impotence and debilitation. Work it. Lighten up.