Deane Juhan- Job’s Body
Carl W. Nelson | July 18, 2007Keith,
I remain most grateful to you for your gracious manner and your numerous insightful contributions. Your reference in #25 to Deane Juhan prompted me to write the following:
Deane Juhan is the author of the landmark bodywork classic: Job’s Body: A Handbook for Bodywork (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press) 1987; Expanded Edition, 1998; Third Edition, 2003. Of the first two editions, over 80,000 copies have been sold. This well-written book gives a richly detailed picture of how and why the body responds to therapeutic touch, providing a reader-friendly yet scientifically reliable and detailed introduction to the human body. The book surveys bodywork practices showing how they can alter deep-seated patterns of body and mind.
After three and a half years as a doctoral candidate in English literature (specializing in William Blake) at the University of California - Berkeley, in the late summer of 1973 Deane Juhan had his initial experience with Esalen Massage as an impromptu gift from Ken LeBlanc, a member of the Esalen Massage Crew. This event took place on a Saturday evening in one of the communal tubs within the Esalen Hot Springs Bathhouse forty feet above the ocean surf pounding at the bottom of the cliff at the coastal center of Big Sur. Deane knew in some premonitory kind of way that one of the significant events of his life had just happened. This led to a sudden change in his career.
Then, after three and a half months from landing at Esalen and after having served as a night guard there for about two months, he took a weekend workshop on Esalen massage presented by Bill Liles. Deane describes this transforming event: “Bill walked over and stood by my table where I was trying to reproduce what I thought I had seem him do, and he just stood there and stood there. I was starting to get very nervous and finally he just put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘I can’t correct what you are doing. I have nothing to teach you. You’re a natural. You just keep doing what you’re doing.’ Nobody had ever said anything like that to me about anything I’d ever done. I mean I wasn’t a natural at anything I’d ever tried to do. It was all hard work. And it really hit me, it was another one of those slaps across the side of my head. And I said, ‘Maybe I should do this, because nothing I’ve ever felt has ever felt like this and I’ve never been rewarded as quickly and as sincerely for anything I’d ever done like this.’ This just seemed like the thing to do.†Bill suggested to Deane that he apply for a job on the Esalen Massage Crew whereupon working on four crewmembers he was immediately accepted and found himself with a full schedule as a professional.
Deane has described Bill Liles as the one who first showed him how to give the Esalen Massage experience to others, as one of the best massage therapists that’s ever worked at Esalen, and has described him, too, as a poetic therapist. I, too, like numerous others, feel the same way. Later, Milton Trager, M.D., selected Deane as one of the first five practitioner-instructors to teach his work.
So Deane Juhan with not more than 20 massage classroom hours from a master became a professional on the world-renowned Esalen Massage Crew! From this light the New York requirement of 1000 massage classroom hours to become a massage therapist is absolutely absurd.
In Touched by the Goddess: The Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual Powers of Bodywork (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press) 2002, Deane Juhan presents a collection of essays with a passionate call to the global community of somatic practitioners to recognize deeply and fully the value of their work, and to share that recognition as far and wide as possible. He views the impact of skilled and nurturing touch from a great variety of perspectives – political, social, individual and public health, the purely physiological and scientific, evolutionary, and philosophical. His early training was academic, and he has devoted his life to the study and research of somatics, as well as to its practice and teaching.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:49 am
Job’s Body is a classic in all senses. I’m surprised it’s not taught at more massage schools. But there may be a reason for that.
While the book itself, is written in rather “easy to read” english style, the concepts are a bit complex, especially regarding the nervous system. The real benefit to any massage practioner who reads the book, is putting all those concepts together to transform clinical reasoning on the table. Being able to see this big picture may be difficult, though, for the average massage school student, with little, if any previous didactic education skills.
Juhan clearly had one-up on the average massage therapy student with his superior level of previous education. I’m not surprised he became such a qualified therapist with only 20 hours of formal training.
This story has re-enforced a concept which I’ve speculated for some time: We are not therapists because of our hands; we are masage therapists, instead, because of our brains.