Graduation Paper
Course of Certified Jahara® Specialists

From Patient to Therapist
A Personal Story

By Menachem Mendelovitz
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THE 5 CONCEPTS

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Mario, Tova and me during integration course

Interactive Assessment (Trust)

When establishing the structure of therapy session, this is the stage when the relationship between the three partners - water, therapist, and patient - needs to be upgraded. So far, the three parties focused on familiarizing themselves with the others and with the role each one plays in the therapeutic encounter. The time has come for them to infuse the association with meaning - not only acknowledging the abilities each party has, but also trust the other's abilities. While so far we spoke in terms of learning, now we are speaking of trust - trusting the partners to do their job. While before, the patient was supposed to become aware of his body posture in relation to himself and his surroundings, at this stage he needs to believe in himself and trust his ability to focus on and feel the gentleness of the water and the therapist's presence.

A unique characteristic of Jahara® is that it is the therapist who at this stage needs to do everything he can to provide the patient with as much space as possible so that he could have a complete encounter with the water. The therapist needs to minimize himself, turn into a tiny speck that has no dimensions at all, but that constitutes the common center of the powers of gravity that are at work between the three.

Expansion (Wood)

"Most people do not use their bodies properly and have a strong resistance to learning how. This is especially pronounced in the case of the handicapped. They try to separate themselves from the part of the body which is crippled, so it is hard for them to work on those areas"
(Self-healing - My life and vision, Meir Schneider)

Once the patient becomes aware of his body and the sensation of water around it, the therapist should move on to the Floating. Making the patient float in the water and using the Third Arm (TA) helps the therapist create positive tension in the patient's body with his hands by applying pressure in opposite directions. Moving in the water in exactly the same way as in Aquatic Footwork emphasizes the flow of water on the patient's body, while creating a gentle stretch, which is actually created by the water's resistance to the movement.

The patient experiences that gentle traction as physical expansion. The joints become softer and expand, while the body becomes straighter and longer. The water that flows with and against the body movement gently embraces the body, relaxing the peripheral muscles while the core muscle feel relieved as the body floats horizontally, also sensing the Positive Tension that emanates from the therapist's hands and the TA.

As I mentioned before, muscle weakness increases the tonus in every movement. For example, when I sit in a chair, I do not lean against the back of the chair because my neck muscles have grown longer while my nape muscles became shorter. Thus, to keep my back erect, my core (stomach) muscles, as well as my buttocks and legs, are tightened hard to keep my body from falling forward. When I stand or walk, in addition to the effort I make to keep my back straight (due to the weakness of the abdomen and lower back muscles) and while keeping my head from tilting backward (due to the weakness of my shoulder-blade muscles, the rhomboids), I lock my knees to increase my sense of stability. This practically makes walking harder, forcing the buttocks and thigh muscles to work harder than they have to, which is why they cramp.

With these daily hardships I encountered, it is easy to understand the relief I felt when my body started floating in the water. In the water, my body posture helped my joints soften, my muscles relaxed, and my mind focused only on the light hold that was needed to sustain that tiny tension in the core muscles. Free of the fear of falling down, I was fully aware of the sense of liberation my limbs experienced as my body moved with the motions of my therapist, spreading the sensation further and deeper into my body and thoughts.

When the session ended and the therapist gently lowered me, while my body still sensed its entire length and the calm that the water infused it with, already my mind was returning to the ground posture: As my head was emerging from the water, it was time to instruct my shoulder muscles to carry it. The muscles needed to be organized for the effort required to climb the ladder out of the pool, and so on.
Still, something was different. Deep inside the muscle fibers and my consciousness, a feeling of letting go, of relaxation and elongation was retained. The movements that previously required serious efforts were now performed with more ease, more gently, with a sense of harmony and flow with the rest of my body muscles, weak or strong. That sensation was so strong at times that I could even feel some movement in muscles that I knew were completely atrophied.

The more I practiced, the clearer it became to me that this sensation could be retained even when I was out of the water. In fact, I learned that an inner "reservoir of calm" was being recharged. I learned to be aware of it and then noticed how in the course of a day, mental and physical efforts slowly deplete that reservoir. I realized that anger of stress consume large amount of relaxation from that reservoir, making me lose that sensation completely at times. I noticed that when I move out of habit, unconsciously, I consume more "calm" than when I perform the same motions while intentionally maintaining the sense of expansion my body experienced in the water.

I mentioned before that I came across Jahara® when I was involved with intensive activity. I decided to become so active because I wanted to pull myself out of a mental crisis I was in after I lost my optimism and felt helpless in view of my deteriorating physical condition. Searching for therapeutic frameworks that could help me, I met a body-mind therapist who introduced me to the idea that the body has endless self-healing capacities. As part of that worldview, he stressed that the patient must actively take care of himself by both performing physical exercises that suit his condition and by working on his mind in an attempt to create a positive attitude to life. This is the approach I refer to when I quote from Meir Schneider's "Self-Healing - My Life and Vision". As part of this healing concept, it is advisable for patients to learn to treat others. Caring for others increases sensitivity, understanding, and the ability to give, while empowering one's self-healing capacities.

As a person who viewed himself as physically disabled all my life, it never occurred to me that I could treat others using methods that involve motion, methods were my body is physically active. It all changed one morning when I came early for my therapy session in the pool, and while I was waiting in the water for the session of the previous patient to end, I realized that the therapist's feet movements were very similar to the Active Exercises I was doing. As I stood there watching, I suddenly understood the connection between the exercises I practiced in my session and the movements that were created in me as a patient who was being kept afloat by the therapist. I was actually able to feel what the other patient was experiencing. I could feel how the sensation of the water changes with the therapist's motion, and I could "see in my mind's eye" the impact it had on that patient's mind. I noticed how the therapist's and patient's common feet movements created a common balance and saw how, by using a "gentle break" of this balance, the water became a full partner of the therapy session.

This moment was augmented by the emotions and sensations I had experienced so far. I knew that given a chance - if my limitations are not used against me, I would be able to harness my newly gained confidence, the new calm with which I was then approaching challenges - I could learn how to treat others. I knew I could learn how to work in a field where my sensitivity and self-healing mechanisms could be enhanced. Here, as an inseparable part of the experience of treating another person, I will "have to" maintain a high level of attention to my body and my surrounding that is even higher than when I am the patient. This level of awareness will feed the reservoir of calm within me - that place where the feelings of relief and elongation - which was the foundation on which my decision was made: I made up my mind to learn how to help others in a field that requires physical activity.

When I informed my therapist, Tova Rosen, of this idea, she thought for a few seconds and then said, yes. That was one of the strongest expressions of support I ever heard. She was fully confident in my ability to adjust myself to the course requirements, of my ability to extend the "world of the patient" that I was familiar with to the "world of the therapist," and to expand my connection with the Jahara® world.

It was as if my personal story encompassed the Concept of Expansion and the Element Wood from five elements of Chinese philosophy - an element that represents the power of life - growth, development, and expansion. Thanks to its energy, vitality, initiative, and optimism, this element creates new growth in life.

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