Private Sessions

We offer a range of bodywork and massage services as well as private sessions on Sexuality and Spirituality in Relationship.

Click on the following to find out more.

 

[collapsible_item title=”Integrative Bodywork with Elfi Dillon-Shaw”]

Elfi Dillon-Shaw is a registered massage practitioner with over thirty years of professional experience. Her body work incorporates both eastern and western approaches. Her “hands on” practice includes massage therapy, Shiatsu, Craniosacral Therapy, therapeutic exercise and integrative bodywork that aims to teach people about their erotic capacities. She notes that conscious Eros “lets folks taste the life in their bodies. With this experience, they are much more likely to notice and connect with life in others of the same species and all the life on earth.” She is increasingly convinced of the importance of cultivating a friendly attitude toward the body, and therefore toward incarnation, and therefore toward life itself. “Our first tasks as humans is to surrender to incarnation. We have to realize that we are here in the body. We’ve got to get here; we’ve got to get grounded; we’ve got to breathe; and we’ve got to be kind to each other. Kindness is a very high form of human evolution.”*

People undertake integrative bodywork with Elfi for many reasons, including:

• to remember innocence confidence and the beauty of life;
• to practice love and respect for the body, affirming and appreciating embodiment and one’s own unique life-expression;
• to learn erotic communication skills that let you express your desires and boundaries;
• to feel enhanced spiritual awareness and the sacred connection between Self and Other;
• for physical healing;
• for healing of guilt, shame and confusion;
• to experience emotional clearing, and letting go of feelings that inhibit ecstasy;
• to feel erotic freedom, feeling safe and comfortable in a setting that allows you to relax and grow;
• for fun and pleasure.

*Based on Suzanne Blackburn and Margaret Wade (2007). Reclaiming Eros. Portland: Suade Publishing.[/collapsible_item]

[collapsible_item title=”Movement Therapy with Gary Dillon”]

Movement therapy focuses on the life process in movement. Life is movement and we are moving all the time. Movement Therapy works directly and psychophysically to free movement and therefore to free feeling. Balance is restored by changing body movement patterns, thus opening up blocked movement and perceptions; by experiencing one’s own flow of feeling; and by discharging energy in actions rather than unconscious inhibition and tension. The function of movement transforms from controlling and inhibiting life into the expression and creation of your life.

• Transform unconscious body feeling into conscious aliveness.
• Expand your movement abilities.
• Mobilize chronic tensions
• Increase your communication skills.
• Open blocked channels of expression
• rigidity into resiliency
• insight into action
• chronic resistance into response-ability

WHO COMES TO MOVEMENT THERAPY?

Persons who want to be in touch with their body, who want a sense of freedom and spontaneity in their life expression. Persons who seek a greater integration with body and feeling, body and soul, sexuality and spirit, who are ready to integrate into their whole expression what they are learning about themselves.

One way to find out if the Movement Therapy process is for you is to take a moment to look at a few of the “values and practices” that I list here. These will give some sense of how the Movement Therapy process might serve your “aliveness.”

VALUES AND PRACTICES

Aliveness: referring to a quality of experience in which there is a sense of joy and a unity between desire and purposeful living.

Barrier/block: What is between you and experiencing your own wholeness; the something inside you that prevents you from seeing what’s going on both inside and outside you.

Belief: A nonexperiential way of knowing, which often prevents a person from experiencing and thereby accepting what is.

Boundaries: The distinction between myself and others, between my experience and theirs–a distinction that is essential in order to give grounding and containment to the energy that is my own in relation to others and to the world; closely related to “space” (see below).

Buttons: as in the phrase “pushing your buttons,” triggering automatic behavior; reacting in a predictable way to certain stimuli and, especially, to things that relate to deep feelings such as love, anger, happiness, sadness; accompanied by a rationale (“reasons”)

Clear/Clearing: Clarifying an issue; removing the debris that prevents one from seeing something cleanly and sharply; to free from doubt, restriction and obstruction; cloudless. The intended results of clearing is a release to greater spontaneity and openness.

Contact. contactfulness: the ability to be interested and expectant in the place of meeting with others and to bring the whole resources of self into relationship with clarity.

Dance/dancing: Everything which the body gives through movement and breath which cannot be given by written or spoken words alone. A dance is the way that an energy or pattern in our lives gets revealed in many dimensions when it is channeled through body movement.

Desire: “inclination” or movement toward some person or object accompanied by positive feeling.

Get, Got: Means that someone realizes the meaning or significance of a communication or experience; a revelation.

Ground/grounding: a natural way of moving that is in relationship to gravity and the ground and where there is a downward flow of energy as well as an upward flow. Because of the nature of upright movement on the planet, a downward flow of energy is a flow toward support, specifically the support of the earth. Struggle in the body, manifested in ambivalence and inhibition, often leads to “ungrounding,” which is a pulling up and away from support.

Improvisation: to produce music, dance/movement, word language, etc. without prior thought or preparation. In other words, it is life itself concentrated to permit close observation and insight.

Process: a method by which a person experiences and looks at, in an expanded state of consciousness and without judgment, what is actually so with regard to specific areas in his or her life; often helped by the presence of a “witness” (see below).

Singing: Everything which the human voice gives that cannot be given by written texts (see “voice” below), i.e., nuance, emotion, presence, space, direct contact and knowing, truth.

Space: Space is not distance that can be measured, but distance that can be experienced. To allow somebody space is to let the other person be, do, or say what he or she wants freely and without imposing your own judgments.

Tension: because emotions are forms of energy, we can only suppress them by mustering counter energy–tensing muscles and controlled, shallow breathing are most common–and this leads to fatigue, tight, inflexible muscles, and impaired coordination. The antidote to unconscious tension is communication and expression.

Truth: that which you experience. In a psychophysical process like movement therapy truth usually arrives as body sensations and movements accompanied by intuition–a knowledge of how it is and what needs to be done.

Voice: use of body and breath to create auditory vibrations which carry through space; an extension of contact and inspiration (breathing). One consequence of tension and control in the body is to choke off the voice.

Witness/witnessing: one who observes the process (see “process” above) of another person with skillful empathy; the opposite of “looking at” or assessing. A witness relies on the grounding of his or her own body and a condition of inner spaciousness (see “space” and “clearing” above) to receive and clarify the truth of another person’s experience. As such a witness has a commitment to complete presence and service.

Private Movement Therapy sessions are usually in 1 hour or 1 1/2 hour sessions. Most often one to five sessions are contracted at the first meeting. No previous movement experience is necessary. Classes are also available.[/collapsible_item]

[collapsible_item title=”Lomilomi Massage with Gary Dillon”]

Lomilomi ke ala hoku

Lomilomi means “the great massage” in the Hawaiian language. The full name in this lineage translates as the “great massage journey” to the stars. Of course, “the stars” are here a code-word for “the Source.” Thus Lomilomi is a navigation through the body to reconnect with what is “the Source” of life and harmony for each individual.

It is a traditional and spiritual form of full-body massage originating in the rite of passage of the Hawaiians of the “old school.” Rites of passage which included massage were considered necessary in order to gain the deep alignment of body, mind, and spirit that would carry one to the next level of experience and awareness, in order to meet the challenges of new responsibilities in the community. This lineage was updated for modern presentation outside of this ancient context by Kahu Abraham Kawaii and has passed down to me and others in my Lomilomi family.

This massage flows from the heart out through the forearms and hands of the practitioner to navigate channels and connections in the body of the receiver. Both the practitioner and the receiver use the “Ha,” the breath of life, and the practitioner also uses pule—chanted prayers to inspire and inform the tissues. The use of vocal sound healing vibrates the tissues from the inside out. This bodywork is applied with continuous, long sweeping strokes that move across the body with both gentle and deeper pressures. It brings about an amplification and a transmission of an energy field so that the receiver can step into and be empowered by their own inner healing resource.

People find themselves drawn to visit the Hawaiian group of islands for many different reasons. To most it is an image of tropical paradise, a place whose reputation for beauty, romance, and sun-drenched beaches make it a magnet for longings of many kinds. Perhaps for the majority of visitors it remains an exotic destination, something to be tasted, enjoyed as a retreat from everyday life or a reward for hard work. Yet some of those who come to Hawaii find themselves stirred by something else, an unexpected and inexplicable effect of the place—it’s smells, it’s sights, it’s sounds—that does not readily recede to the periphery.

Even of those who feel it there are few who find in this unknown factor, mysterious and compelling, the inspiration to look more carefully into the hearts of the Hawaiian people themselves, whose ancestors deeply investigated this land as though it were a medicine—a medicine for the soul, a medicine that somehow increases and augments the capacity of a receptive mind to read the universe and find the true Self. This interaction of nature, land, and mind was called malama aina—caring for the land. It is an effect that some visitors of no matter what genetic heritage can and do also sense, perceive, and ultimately take in as a medicine to open their own hearts to the profoundest messages of our time and our situation. It offers a first lesson, too—that the most potent medicine is often to be found in caring for someone or something else with your whole heart. Bring out the best in it, and it will bring out the best in you.

I am fortunate enough to be one of those visitors who, as a result of encounters with those who were carrying the knowledge, and a long preparation to love the world deeply through skill as well as passion, have plumbed the depth and power of this malama aina, malama pono for myself.[/collapsible_item]