What is The Trager Approach?
The Trager Approach is a pleasurable, gentle and effective approach to movement education and mind/body integration. The Trager Approach helps release deep-seated physical and mental patterns and facilitates deep relaxation, increased physical mobility, and mental clarity. The benefits of a Trager session are long-lasting and cumulative, with subsequent sessions allowing for deeper and longer lasting changes.
At the beginning of your session, your Practitioner enters into a state of awareness that Dr. Milton Trager termed "Hook up," a state similar to meditation. From this state of mind, your Practitioner uses touch and movement to communicate with your body and mind the feeling of a freer and easier way of being and moving.
There are two aspects of The Trager Approach. In one aspect of the work, usually referred to as the "table work," you, the client, lie on a well-padded table in a safe, comfortable environment while your body is supported and gently moved within its pain-free range of movement and natural rhythm. You may choose to be fully clothed, or partially clothed and appropriately draped.
The quality of touch and movement is such that you experience the feeling of moving effortlessly and freely on your own. As your body and mind receive these soft movements, tensions disappear and new movement patterns become possible.
The other aspect of the Trager Approach, called Mentastics, involves instruction in the use of self-care movements. Mentastics is taught both in private sessions and in group classes.
Dr. Trager developed these simple, effortless movements to encourage playful exploration of "what could be freer" for your body. Integrating Mentastics into your daily life will allow you to enhance and recall feelings of ease, freedom, flexibility and joy. Mentastics can become part of the way you take care of yourself and relieve stress and tension.
The Trager Approach helps release deep-seated physical and mental patterns and facilitates deep relaxation, increased mobility and mental clarity. Many people seek Trager sessions for personal growth or increased feelings of joy and wellness. The Trager Approach has also been reported to ease or manage a wide range of conditions including:
- stress • back and neck pain • fibromyalgia
- limited movement • everyday aches and pains • cerebral palsy
- post-polio syndrome • multiple sclerosis • Parkinson's disease
- depression • sports and other injuries • carpal tunnel syndrome
- muscle spasms • physical/emotional trauma • headaches
The above information is as presented by the United States Trager Association
