By Debra Brooks

	Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., has a powerful and clear personal vision: to bringscience, medicine, psychology, and spirituality together in the service of healing.
A scientist, clinician, and teacher, she is on the leading edge of the mind-body revolution, and has become a world-renowned spokesperson for this new approach to health.

Trained as a medical scientist and a psychologist, Borysenko has developed both depth and breadth beyond her traditional academic training. She is a cofounder and former Director of Mind-Body Clinic at the New England Deaconess Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in Boston. It was there that she developed her best-selling book, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc., Reading, MA, 1987).

She was interviewed during a speaking tour stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Q: From your perspective, what is it about massage therapy that is so foundational in the healing process?

Borysenko: Often times people are stressed in our culture. Stress-related disorders make up between 80-and-90 percent of the ailments that bring people to family-practice physicians. What they require is someone to listen, someone to touch them, someone to care. That does not exist in modern medicine.

Let me address where touch is most absent in the healing process. One of the complaints heard frequently is that physicians don't touch their patients any more. Touch just isn't there. Years ago massage was a big part of nursing. There was so much care, so much touch, so much goodness conveyed through massage. Now nurses for the most part are as busy as physicians. They're writing charts, dealing with insurance notes, they're doing procedures and often there is no room for massage any more.

Every once in a while, you see hospitals that are truly dedicated to having a massage therapy department. That is a fabulous thing to happen for everyone in the healthcare environment. So I believe massage therapy is absolutely key in the healing process not only in the hospital environment but because it relieves stress, it is obviously foundational in the healing process any time and anywhere.

Q: What specific benefits have you received from massage therapy?

Borysenko: I?m a big believer of the body-mind-spirit?s need for massage therapy. I need a massage right now!

Number one, when I get a massage I tell them I just want to be nurtured. I need to be nurtured because I am always nurturing other people. I travel all over the country seeing how I can help, what I can do, and I need a time when I don?t have to take care of anyone else, when I don?t have to talk with anyone, where I?m not expected to make conversation, and when I can just be cared for. Nurturing is an incredible component to the foundation to the healing process, allowing yourself to surrender completely to the care of another person. That can only happen during a massage.

Secondly, of course, I love the muscle release that comes from massage therapy. It's an incredibly deep feeling of relaxation that massage therapy brings. I try to have a massage at least couple of times a month.

Massage is a foundation of Chinese medicine. My hypothesis is that massage stimulates my immune system, which I feel is always under chronic stress because of all of the travelling I do. There may even be research on this. So for me, massage is a basic health practice. It's one of the most important things I do for myself, right up there with exercise and eating right.

Q: Do you believe massage therapy creates a self-awareness via touch?

Borysenko: Yes, I do. Many people don't like their bodies. Maybe they don't like the shape of their body. Maybe they've been abused as a child, so they've learned to disassociate from their body. There's not much sense of body awareness. Many people can't tell when they're tense and they can't tell when they're relaxed. When touch is nurtured it can be emotionally corrective in terms of self-image and in terms of safe touch. Gradually, one allows oneself to become more aware of the body. And that is an enormous benefit that massage therapy provides.

Q: How can massage therapy (both for relaxation and for the treatment of soft-tissue dysfunction) complement mind-body-spirit medicine.

Borysenko: I think there are actually three important components of massage therapy that complement all forms of healing.

First is actual physical touch. We know a great deal about physical touch, for example, on the immune system. Physical touch releases growth hormones that will help your immune system recover. Without touch, the immune system cannot recharge. Everybody needs to be touched and although most of the massage research literature on touch deals with babies, the need for massage certainly continues throughout life. I do believe we are a touch-deprived culture.

People are afraid of being sued if they touch. You can't even have a teacher any more touch a crying child. What has happened in our society regarding touch is truly pathetic. So going to a place where it is safe to be touched is very, very important. It is effectual at the most basic hormonal, physiological, and immune system level.

The second component is the specificity of the touch. For example, releasing tension in the muscles, causing relaxation, doing trigger-point work, and doing things of that nature. All of this works very well via the work of massage therapy. The effect that massage therapy can have on healing a deeper injury by releasing tension in the muscle is remarkable.

And the third component is the energetic aspect. The research on energy, medicine, and touch that is therapeutic comes down to one very basic thing: when there is a respectful intention to heal, some kind of energy flows from the healer to the one who is being healed. So when a massage therapist has that kind of respectful care in her hands, then more is happening than just at a physical level. Something is happening at an energetic level, as well.

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