An article by Gerry Pyves, Founder & Creator of NO HANDS® Massage

The Victorian paradigm of healing, from Florence Nightingale onwards, has been that we must suffer in order to help others. This is deeply embedded in most western Christian cultures. It is a sacrificial act to help others. Like most paradigms, such honourable concepts achieved great things and the public service that sprang from it is truly praiseworthy.

Having conformed to this Victorian paradigm and having dutifully injured both my hands within three years of starting my full time practice, I decided that any bodywork that I developed from then on would not only be zero strain but intrinsically healing for the therapist as well as the client. That was in 1988.

The development of NO HANDS® Massage Massage meant the development of a new paradigm, which I call Healing Synergy. This means that each Massage stroke I developed, must not only be more powerful for the client than any existing strokes, but also increase my own health. The success of this philosophy is borne out by the fact that whenever it comes to practical work on our courses, students are arguing over who will give the treatment. This is unheard of in Massage courses.

The motto of NO HANDS® Massage is:

“Let every Massage be like a Tai Chi meditation, a yoga class and a work out in the Gym - for the practitioner”

This means that our practitioners become more healthy, the longer they practise. No need for “pre session” warm ups or meditation exercises. The touch and the movements of NO HANDS® Massage are sufficient and are intrinsically healing. For every stroke that is taught, at least ten others did not meet this stern criteria. Even so, NO HANDS® Massage consists of over 70 strokes never before seen in the Massage world. That is because the practitioner is at the centre of every single one of them.

What this means is that our therapists are generating business simply because the people they meet, “want a bit of that”, when they see the vibrant health of healers who “walk the talk” of healing. It also means that our practitioners will not only live longer, but they will be working as far into their dotage as they wish. More than that, they can see as many clients in the day as they want - without paying the sacrificial price of either exhaustion or injury.

Energy is a very important thing. An exhausted and depleted Massage therapist cannot build a business. People will simply shy away from them. Exhaustion leads to negativity and this is a business killer. Not only is my approach to Massage health building, but the treatments are so deep and powerful, that most practitioners go through enormous personal transformations on our courses. This is because we don’t do "practise sessions”. We give treatments to each other that are for real. This means that there is no talking during our sessions unless the trainer is instructing a student. Practitioners are real clients on our courses - that is how they discover the true power of this approach for clients. Because real Massage clients don’t talk.

There is a discipline in our courses that honours the client. As a NO HANDS® Massage  course progresses, Massage therapists learn more and more about the power of pure healing touch as we leave “techniques” behind and focus all of our attention on weight and gravity, compression and decompression. They learn most about NO HANDS® Massage as clients. Silent touch. Powerful touch. Deep touch. Touch that can heal the world. The mission statement of NO HANDS® Massage is:

"To heal the world through the power of transformational touch"

The immense satisfaction of helping others using NO HANDS® Massage is deeply healing. So much so, that when I took a clinical sabbatical for the first time in fifteen years, my health deteriorated considerably. Returning to Massage my health once again improved! Massage therapists are surely the happiest and luckiest people on the planet. To earn our income from helping others to feel so amazing after every treatment feels like a dream. To earn it by moving and breathing in a way that heals us as well as the client is beyond our wildest dreams. This can only happen if we shift paradigms and change the way we move and touch completely. We must adopt the philosophy of Healing Synergy.

BOOK A MASSAGE: find your nearest NO HANDS® Massage Practitioner here

THERAPISTS: Offer NO HANDS® yourself -  find your nearest course here