Deane Juhan by Carl Nelson
Deane Juhan is the author of the
landmark bodywork classic: Job’s Body: A Handbook for Bodywork (Barrytown,
NY: Station Hill Press) 1987; Expanded Edition, 1998; Third Edition, 2003. Of
the first two editions, over 80,000 copies have been sold. This well-written
book gives a richly detailed picture of how and why the body responds to
therapeutic touch, providing a reader-friendly yet scientifically reliable and
detailed introduction to the human body. The book surveys bodywork practices
showing how they can alter deep-seated patterns of body and mind.
After three and a half years as a
doctoral candidate in English literature (specializing in William Blake) at the
University of California - Berkeley, in the late summer of 1973 Deane Juhan had
his initial experience with Esalen Massage as an impromptu gift from Ken
LeBlanc, a member of the Esalen Massage Crew. This event took place on a
Saturday evening in one of the communal tubs within the Esalen Hot Springs
Bathhouse forty feet above the ocean surf pounding at the bottom of the cliff at
the coastal center of Big Sur. Deane knew in some premonitory kind of way that
one of the significant events of his life had just happened. This led to a
sudden change in his career.
Then, after three and a half months
from landing at Esalen and after having served as a night guard there for about
two months, he took a weekend workshop on Esalen Massage presented by Bill
Liles. Deane describes this transforming event: “Bill walked over and stood by
my table where I was trying to reproduce what I thought I had seem him do, and
he just stood there and stood there. I was starting to get very nervous and
finally he just put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘I can’t correct what you
are doing. I have nothing to teach you. You’re a natural. You just keep doing
what you’re doing.’ Nobody had ever said anything like that to me about anything
I’d ever done. I mean I wasn’t a natural at anything I’d ever tried to do. It
was all hard work. And it really hit me, it was another one of those slaps
across the side of my head. And I said, ‘Maybe I should do this, because nothing
I’ve ever felt has ever felt like this and I’ve never been rewarded as quickly
and as sincerely for anything I’d ever done like this.’ This just seemed like
the thing to do.” Bill suggested to Deane that he apply for a job on the Esalen
Massage Crew whereupon working on four crewmembers he was immediately accepted
and found himself with a full schedule as a professional.
Deane has described Bill Liles as the
one who first showed him how to give the Esalen Massage experience to others, as
one of the best massage therapists that’s ever worked at Esalen, and has
described him, too, as a poetic therapist. I, too, like numerous others, feel
the same way. Later, Milton Trager, M.D., selected Deane as one of the first
five practitioner-instructors to teach his work.
So Deane Juhan with not more than 20
massage classroom hours from a master became a professional on the
world-renowned Esalen Massage Crew! From this light the New York requirement of
1000 massage classroom hours to become a massage therapist is absolutely absurd.
In Touched by the Goddess: The
Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual Powers of Bodywork (Barrytown, NY:
Station Hill Press) 2002, Deane Juhan presents a collection of essays with a
passionate call to the global community of somatic practitioners to recognize
deeply and fully the value of their work, and to share that recognition as far
and wide as possible. He views the impact of skilled and nurturing touch from a
great variety of perspectives – political, social, individual and public health,
the purely physiological and scientific, evolutionary, and philosophical. His
early training was academic, and he has devoted his life to the study and
research of somatics, as well as to its practice and teaching.
