Bodywork with Gavain U'Prichard
(Oregon LMT (#13093). Certified: NCBTMB. Member: ABMP.)

Rates for Services

I currently have a studio space available at my home near River Road, three blocks north of the Chambers Street Overpass. I also offer bodywork sessions in your home. Call for an appointment. Same day appointments are available on a limited basis. I also offer evening appointments. Call (541) 359-2633 for details.


























What is Thai Massage?

Thai Massage (Southern Style)comes to us from India, by way of Thailand. It has been heavily influenced by the Buddhist Dharma, and is considered a form of vipassana (insight) meditation. It is wonderfully Universal, involving rocking, gentle but deep compression, and assisted yoga-like stretches to accomplish a whole-body balancing and energy flow.

General benefits:
A feeling of improved blood flow and vitality, limberness and equanimity in body and mind.

Technical Benefits:
Decreased muscle tension, improved range of motion, connective tissue de-adhesion, improved circulation, lower back pain remedy, traction and lengthening.



























What is Deep Tissue?

Deep tissue therapy is a refinement of Western classical, or Swedish, massage. Swedish massage provides deep relaxation and encourages a state of healing throughout the body by increasing circulation of blood and nutritients. Deep Tissue builds upon this by enlivening the deeper structural tissues (both muscle and connective tissue), and returning them to their natural state: free of binding adhesions (knots), relieved of painful points associated with muscle tissue dysfunction.

General benefits:
Relaxation, bodily experience of wellbeing and freedom, a new sense of self.

Technical benefits:
Increased mobility (especially for injured joints), pain/stiffness reduction, health maintenance of neuromuscular system, reallignment of connective tissue for proper support and function.



























What is Myofascial Release?

Myofascial release is essentially slow-paced, assisted stretching, with the unique aspect that, because the client is completely relaxed, the focus of the stretch is in the connective tissue. Connective tissue is the body's physical network for transmitting force and energy.

This therapy works to lengthen the connective tissue called fascia, which can shorten and bind to itself or other tissues, in trauma and injury. Among other functions, fascia provides the distributed tension throughout the body that makes movement by muscles possible. Very subtle work, Myofascial Release can nonetheless have very significant impact, from greatly increased range-of-motion in a joint, to full-body reprogramming of one's movement patterns in a more efficient, healthier way. This therapy can also access and release the emotional state which triggered the body's holding pattern, also known as "cellular memory."

General Benefits:
Increased awareness of body, limberness, ease of movement, a feeling of "opening up," greater ease in breathing, reduced fatigue, feeling light and buoyant.

Technical Benefits:
Increased mobility, increased fluid exchange in connective tissues, release of adhesions in fascial fibres, improved joint articulation, decreased pain.



























What is Cranial Sacral Therapy?

Bone is a connective tissue, similar to cartilage, fascia, and even blood. Although it is a major structural element of the body, bone shares a common characteristic with other connective tissues: it is built within a fluid matrix. Even the bones of the skull move, flexing microscopically with the tidal pulse of cerebrospinal fluid that moves around the brain and brainstem.

Cranial Sacral Therapy is involved with sensing this pulse and assisting it to restore normal motion in all the bones of the body, since every bone is directly or indirectly affected by the movement of cerebrospinal fluid. This therapy uses an extremely delicate, sensitive touch to locate where stiff joints or weak cerebrospinal fluid tides are adversely impacting each other, and to regain free, easy motion in these places. This work looks at causes as concrete as spinal chord injury, and as abstract as emotional avoidance patterns -- an unwillingness to move through certain states of being.

The cranial tides are great integrating forces within the body. Attuning to them aids in restoring health to any of the physical systems in the body, just as concentration on one's breathing rhythm helps in meditation and reducing stress.

Benefits:
Easier flow of cerebrospinal fluid, providing more nutrients to brain, mobility in the sutures between cranial bones, clearer vision, reduced hip and spinal pain, a feeling of being unburdened from trauma, mental/emotional clarity, pain reduction, greatly increased sense of wellbeing. Cranial Sacral work has such extraordinary impact (what might be called magical), it is better experienced than described!



























What is Shiatsu?

Shiatsu is a specific point (acupressure) bodywork modality that stimulates the same points and energy channels as does acupuncture. Instead of needles, finger pressure is utilized here. The specific points and energy channels (meridians) have been recognized within Traditional Chinese Medicine for millenia as corresponding to various organs within the body and elemental energies associated with them. These organ energies predict everything from typical emotions and likes or dislikes to sources of disease in the body, before symptoms manifest. Shiatsu offers wonderful self maintenance and preventative care, as well as a very effective balancing influence to work with existing conditions.

General benefits:
Very calming, affecting longterm patterns/problems in health, life, and personality, invigorating, capable of addressing subtle issues that cannot be diagnosed easily in Western medicine.

Technical benefits:
Improved flow of Qi energy, builds Qi, improves internal organ function.



























What is Polarity Therapy?

Polarity therapy combines elements of ayurvedic medicine, yogic philosophy, and Western physics knowledge of energetic fields created and conditioned by polar opposites (for example: positive and negative electrical charges).

Although it is hands-on, Polarity Therapy is intended to interact with the creative energetic frequencies that underlie all physical matter, including the human body. These energies can be broadly categorized into three dynamics: expansion(rajas), contraction (tamas), and the balance-point (sattva) of clear, delightful, spontaneous and adaptable calm poised between them. Rajas, sattva, and tamas are repeating at every scale throughout the Universe, and at every level in the human body, from the lifespan of the cell to the lifespan of the person.

Polarity therapy uses specific techniques to encourage the free flow of these dynamics through regions of the body that tend to align with one pole or the other: expansion or contraction. It is a holistic health-building program that addresses the physical, mental, emotional, and energetic aspects of the client.

Benefits:
An opportunity to explore the relationship between life habits and health patterns in a safe, healing environment. Reduction in tension, reduction in chronic pain, reintegration and re-membering of body parts to the whole body, dis-ease prevention, increased range of expression, improved intention manifestation (i.e. whole-body alignment behind purpose).
































Health, Clothing, Other Considerations

This section is intended to address some common concerns.
First, about clothing: several of the modalities offered may be done fully clothed, and do not involve massage oil. The list includes: Shiatsu, Polarity Therapy, and Cranial Sacral Therapy. Myofascial Release is best done wearing minimal clothing, such as shorts and a tank-top.

Second, although any of these modes of bodywork may be done separately in their own right, my preferred method is to combine these techniques in an integrated approach which I tailor to address each client's individual issues. My hope is to work with people who are deeply interested in and committed to finding the freedom in life which comes with embracing our fullest, loving nature, as human beings. Freeing one's life from the dictators of pain and fear is the first step in that evolution. I ask you to recognize that this first step leads to other changes, away from what was familiar, and into something new. Please be open to this.

Third: bodywork, as with all medicine, is intended to provoke the innate human ability to heal. However, healing is not always pleasant. Depending on what issues are troubling you, you may not immediately feel "better" after a treatment session. Occasionally, clients feel worse after treatment, as inviting big change into the body often heightens one's awareness of discomfort. Treatments are meant to facilitate holistic health and wellbeing in the longterm.
You can help yourself integrate bodywork into yourself peacefully by:

Fourth, the basis of this work is fullest respect and love for each other, recognizing how we come from the one being of the Universe. As the client, you know your own self best. Sessions are merely a facilitated discovery of yourself.
If at any time during a session, the client becomes uncomfortable, he/she may end the session immediately, no questions asked. A full copy of the professional ethics is available on request.



























About Gavain

You will find more information about me personally at www.idproject.us. Professionally, I hold a B.A. in Integrative Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and am a certified Holistic Health Practitioner with 1000 hours of training from the Heartwood Institute, Garberville, CA.. I am a member of the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. I am currently a licensed massage therapist in Oregon. Since 2007, I have offered Bodywork in Eugene under the name True Life Self Bodywork. Click here for a copy of my current advertisement.