|
Teaching the Trager Approach in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka
by Kelly Prentice
As you fly overhead, Sri Lanka’s coast is a tropical paradise of lush green palms and aquamarine waters.
From below, the scene transforms into a chaotic thriller as buses zoom in and out of lanes, jolt out of
ditches and barely miss pedestrians.
More than two years since the tsunami swept through, signs of its wrath still haunt the fishermen who lost
their boats and wives who lost their homes. Even more frightening is the civil war that continues to rage
between the Sinhalese Buddhist government and the terrorist Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The infamous
Tamil Tigers have been fighting for an independent homeland since the 1970s.
Things seem calm in the south, but gunfire echoes in northern Jaffna and eastern Batticaloa, where suicide
bombings had their origins. The glimmer of hope for reconciliation after the tsunami didn’t last long, as
the race for aid money only widened the country’s ethnic divide. In a country of fewer than 20 million
people, the civil war has killed about 63,000, displaced one million and held back the island’s economic
growth. About 22 percent of the population live below the poverty line. Sri Lankans love their island
paradise, but this is a land of uncertainty.
It was the sheer force of the tsunami - the largest natural disaster in world history - that first drew
Michael Lear to this island paradise in 2005.
“Those waves were like a slap in the face from their mother, their sole provider,” says Lear, a senior
Trager® practitioner and ashtanga yoga instructor. This Pennsylvania native escaped the tsunami by mere
miles, and grieved its destruction alongside strangers in a tiny café in Goa, India. With more than 220,000
lives lost and millions more completely devastated, Lear’s focus turned immediately to Bodyworkers Without
Borders - a concept he developed years back in hopes of sharing the Trager Approach with the developing world.
Then, he had a lucid dream about a big white building by the sea.
More Than a Dream
Two months later, Lear found himself standing on the veranda of that very building on Sri Lanka’s southeast
coast, staring at the ocean yards away. It was unmistakable: Navajeevana (which means “new life”)
Rehabilitation Hospital was the building that appeared so vividly in his dream. A private hospital unlike any
other in Sri Lanka, it aims to serve those most isolated along the coast.
In 2007, Lear was able to return to Navajeevana for his third time to share Milton Trager’s innovative
approach to movement re-education, thanks to support from the U.S. Trager Association and the Real Medicine
Foundation. His six-week stay would include dozens of Trager sessions with Navajeevana patients, many bumpy
trips in miniature took-took cabs to villages served by Real Medicine clinics, and hours of training sessions
for therapists in Trager’s approach to movement and selfcare.
On his first day back in Tangalle, Sri Lanka, Lear meets with Navajeevana’s new physiotherapy manager A.T.
“Arun” Arunkumar, who reports that 50 percent of the 2,500 patients they serve are experiencing painful
conditions, which may include post traumatic stress issues, chronic pain or spasticity. Another 40 percent
are children faced with congenital neuromuscular disorders such as cerebral palsy. Lear knows this kind of
neuromuscular tension—intensified by shock and fear—is the kind of condition Trager addresses most
effectively.
The Trager Approach uses a two-part system:
-
Table work done by a certified Trager practitioner using weighing of the limbs, gentle rocking
motions, wave-like shimmers of the tissues and gravity-assisted swings
-
Mentally directed movements that patients can do at home to access their body’s own fluidity called
Mentastics® or “mental gymnastics.” These movements suggest to the mind feelings of lightness,
freedom, openness and pleasure.
Continue <1
2
3
4>
|
American Massage Therapy Association®
