Customer Reviews

Chinese Self-Massage Therapy: The Easy Way to Health

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
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On the plus side, some of the self-massages in this book did seem to help somewhat. On the minus side, this book uses highly technical terminology and instructions. For the AVERAGE person, a description of a location such as, "two body inches lateral to the twelfth thoracic vertebra" is VERY hard to figure out. I must look up words and look at skeleton diagrams to even have a clue what they are talking about, and that still leaves me with a hard time finding the point on my actual body! Most of the time I do not even know if I am doing the massage correctly! The book does contain pictures, but they are not detailed enough to show exactly where some of the points are. Of course not all of the points are this hard to find, but almost all of the massages contain at least one point description that will leave you pulling your hair out! So if you have passed a few college anatomy courses, this should not be a problem for you; but if you are an average person, you are going to need to do some research just to use this book at all.

I had the fortune of taking a class with Dr Ya Li Fan, and I am the richer for it! She is a great doctor and healer who uses Chinese massage in her practice daily. The excersizes in the book really work. You can Really feel the chi. If you are a TCM practitioner or student you will have no problem understanding the book, and can easily photocopy the appropriate chapter for your patient, explaining where the "twelth thoracic vertebrae" is.

I liked this book so much that I gave it to one of my favorite teachers, and am ordering a second copy for myself.

The downside to the book is compliance (of course). Even though I have great results when I use the massage, the sequences can be kinda long for Gen-X attention spans. If your or your patients' conditions aren't that bad, you/they probably won't treat yourself/theirselves daily. However, it's probably OK to use a few of the movements from a protocol instead of all of them while self treating.

I found the book very complete and easy to follow so as to give my patients some homework and co-responsability for their treatment. As always Dr. Bob Flaws' books are highly recommended, even here in Portugal.
Thank you.

The techniques in this book are very powerful. It may take some time to find the points initially but once you know where they are, its a great tool to have to relieve tension. It could use some re-editing, but is quite good as it is.

This is a wonderful book. The points, sequences and methods of applying pressure are very effective. I have had some great results using these techniques. It does take some time initially to decipher where they all are. Some descriptions are kind of cryptic and the it seems that occasionally the drawings do not match exactly to the picture in content and order. But if you work off the descriptions only you can figure out where the points are on your body. Once you know where they are, you're all set. This book is very powerful, but could use some editing and a new edition to make it more accessible for those not so in tune with their bodies.

This is an interesting book, as it shows a lot of way to massage your self. It was shipped fast.