Trager®: at the table—Part 3

This paper is the third in a series on the Trager approach from the perspective of an experienced practitioner. To the author's knowledge this is the first time the tablework performed in Trager has been described in- depth, in a forum outside the proprietary materials that each student of Trager receives. Milton Trager's work at the table changed over the years, from more vigorous and less specific, to less vigorous and more specific. The work of Trager practitioners vary, depending upon when and how they were influenced by his work. Trager guided his proteges from the principles of physical culture, to a growing emphasis on the power of presence. He guided his clients from passively receiving new movements on the table, to actively creating those movements, as Mentastics, off the table (Mentastics to be detailed in a future issue of JBMT). Trager developed varieties of ways to hold and move the body that were usually gentle and painless. Clients could sense their bodies moving but could not exactly feel how. Many of these ways of interacting with clients, and their bodies, are strikingly similar in principle to Eastern meditation and martial arts. To Trager tablework represents a dialogue between the mind of the practitioner and the mind of the client; a dialogue aimed at achieving wholeness as the practitioner takes the client on an inner journey. The Trager approach to the client has more in common to new somatic concepts of working with the body, than older approaches that try to fix what is wrong with the body. All the while the practitioner is 'hooked-up, ' so that very subtle information can be worked with, while never pushing through the client's resistance. Part of Trager's genius was that he was able to think and create outside the box of professional socialization. Many of the principles he taught and lived by are polar opposites of traditional methods in manual therapy and bodywork. Soft hands, no pain, less is more, change the mind-set, do not fix, and reinforcement, are just a few of his guidelines. In all these ways Trager's legacy challenges manual therapists to consider offering therapeutic relief from a different perspective.