https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/82239.Job_s_Body

Job’s Body by Deane Juhan is “possibly the most famous and widely used resource in therapeutic bodywork, this beautifully written, detailed and reader-friendly picture of how and why the body responds to touch is both scientifically reliable and inspiring.”

https://www.jobsbody.com

If you ever need to be persuaded that coming for a massage is an excellent way to spend your time, read this book and you will be left in no doubt how essential bodywork is for us to thrive and prosper as human beings.

Reading this wonderful book inspires great enthusiasm for bodywork. The first sections explain in how and why we have lost contact with our own bodies. He describes the consequences of this disconnection and how we can restore our intimate sense of being ourselves and what it feels like to be alive.

He is not anti-modern medicine or anti-science, he simply wants to highlight that we have an amazing resource available for our own healing, autonomy and zest for life. He presents a persuasive argument for learning to pay more attention to our bodies and the miracle that they performing each moment we are alive.

Why bodywork works

This is what Juhan says about why bodywork is such a powerful form of treatment:

Almost all of the physicians and practitioners just mentioned have agreed on one or two fundamental points. One is that most of the body’s processes rely upon the appropriate movement of fluids through our systems, and that bodywork can be an effective means of promoting these circulations. Whether it is blood in the arteries, capillaries, and veins, the contents of the digestive tract, lymph in its vessels, secretions in their glands, or the fluids that fill all of the spaces in between our cells, manipulation can move them around much like I can push water back and forth in a rubber tube; and with a clear knowledge of these fluid pathways and some practice, I can become quite sophisticated in the ways in which I can stimulate their flows.

Another argument frequently made for the efficacy of bodywork is that both our musculature and the connective tissues which hold us together often become stiffened or shortened or thickened, distorting our posture and limiting our movements. These tissues can be especially troubling after surgery or any other trauma, when the muscles are either tightening up in order to brace an injured area or are contracting in a general withdrawal reflex, and when the connective tissues are scarring over a wound.