Thomas Fischer has found a profound interest in the human body, the complete physical, emotional, intellectual and energetic aspect, when he started with his yoga practice seven years ago. A year and a half ago, he has expanded that interest to include working on other people by starting at a massage technician program at IPSB (Institute of Psycho Structural Balancing). One of the first impressions was that massage is like a 'real' conversation on a bodily level. Massage bypasses the superficial chitchat about the weather and goes right to the place, where the recipient is actively dealing with. Physically, it is some tension. Tension and tightness is ever present in our mind. A muscle going slack immediately alters our outlook and attitude. On a bodymind level, we are holding past traumas and scars in our muscoskeletal system. Maybe, that sore trapezius is, where one is holding the trauma of a divorce. Working on the muscle helps to deal with that trauma on a physical level. What would you be rather doing? Talk about a meaningless soap opera or resolve some issues of your life and move on?

Thomas clearly decided the therapeutic work was more worthwhile and moved on to taking more advanced classes. At this point, a more academic side, the anatomy of the body provided a lot of fascination. Thomas' background is software engineering. Putting together complex enterprise software system becomes a lot more organic and intuitive than one would imagine from taking introductory computer science classes. The human body is constructed in an amazing way with different structures having complex impacts on other parts. For example, the commonly known biceps brachii muscle is expected to do flexion of the elbow joint. Further study of anatomy shows that the biceps brachii is involved in turning the forearm (supination), bringing the whole arm to your side (adduction of the shoulder).

Has in the past any of your massage therapists done an analysis of your muscles? Or, did they dive right into working on the muscle that is tense? The body is very interconnected. The cause of that sore muscle may be another muscle or fascia (connective) tissue, which pulls on it. As long as that is not released, one can come back every week to have the original muscle released, because it got irritated again.

In spring of 2003, Thomas Fischer took a Thai massage class at IPSB, which ignited a new interest. Everyone seemed to point out Saul Raye as the best teacher of the Los Angeles region. So, this fall, Thomas went to Saul's nine day intensive class at the White Lotus Foundation, Santa Barbara. It was the most incredible class. The special highlight was the introduction to the spiritual foundation of Thai massage. The attitude of mindfulness and compassion makes a huge difference to the recipient and practitioner. After doing 6 hours of Thai massage, he just feels very energized and ready to party contrary to how one would expect to feel after 6 hours of physical work.