James, bodyworker

 

This happy man is James. He is a structural integration bodyworker. James joined the immersion to get some time on the mat, and this is actually the sixth year in a row that he joins the event. He is also helping out as Jonas's assistant, so whenever there some participant has a problem in their body that would keep them from doing yoga, James will fix it. He works with connective tissues, which determines the shape of the body.

I mentioned to James that I'm experiencing some pain in my right wrist in certain postures, such as the table pose. He examined me straight away. He asked me to relax my arm and my shoulder, took a firm grip and moved my arm around to feel what was going on, asked me to breathe and relax my shoulder again, tried the range of movements of the different fingers on my right hand and then the examination turned to massage while he explained to me what my problem was. The tissues were too short, and they needed some stretching. The problem was not in the wrist itself (so it's of no use to massage the wrist when it hurts) but due to the shortness of a longer stretch of tissue going from the middle finger up to the elbow - or actually even further up, and even the breathing comes into play. James showed me how I could artificially block the tissue with my hand (or ask a friend to stand on my arm while stretching!). Most importantly, he said I would be fine if I just worked on it a bit.

A couple of days later, the problem that I have sensed for over a year seems to have disappeared. The Anusara Yoga principles of how to root your hand to the ground also helped me, and perhaps the warm climate, but I'm very grateful that James is here. Thanks a lot James!

Here he is again, helping another Anusara Immersion participant: