Hellerwork

Hellerwork is a method of healing developed not be a physician or by a massage therapist, nor even a so-called “New Age” philosopher, but by a member of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Joseph Heller gave up working for the government in the space program in order to devote his time and energy to developing what would eventually become Hellerwork. Hellerwork is a holistic healing, combination approach to healing that incorporates deep tissue massage, bodily movement education, and verbal dialogue. The technique is aimed at reducing stress, promoting well being, augmenting healing, and promoting overall health and mental wellbeing of the patient.

Developed in the 1970’s, Hellerwork is the result of Joseph Heller’s study of bioenergetics and Gestalt therapy. Heller also studied under futurist and avante-garde architect Buckminster Fuller, body movement pioneer Judith Alston, family therapist Virginia Satir, and John Lilly – the developer of floatation tank therapy. Eventually, Joseph Heller developed his own school, based loosely on the techniques of Dr. Ida P. Rolf, in 1979.

Hellerwork begins first and foremost by improving the patient’s body posture. This brings the body into proper alignment and promoted the correct balance for the person’s body type. The realignment has been known to bring relief to a variety of ailments and increase breathing capacity, which in turn brings more oxygen into the lungs for the blood to use to clean out the body. The immediate effect is to relieve pain and improve the relaxation of the person under treatment.

The techniques also alleviate skeleton-muscular discomfort including back pain, neck pain, joint discomfort and swelling, as well as repetitive stress injuries in the shoulder and hands. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is known to be alleviated by the Hellerwork method, for instance. The connective tissue massage is very similar to Rolfing, but is also combined with other techniques to produce different results. As such, many athletic injuries are also treatable by the Hellerwork method.

Joseph Heller theorized that as people age, the injury and stress patters of their life become ingrained in the connective and soft tissues of the body. This in turn deforms the body and promotes unhealthiness in patients. By utilizing deep tissue massage, the Hellerwork breaks the cycle of pain and over-compensation, disrupting the cycle enough that new patters can be formed. Balance is another important part of the Hellerwork method in that without proper balance, the work done by the deep tissue massage thereapy will be easily undone.

Posture is important to balance and therefore becomes important to overall health and wellbeing of the patient. Adding to this is Joseph Heller’s experiences with family therapists and other mental health workers; verbal dialogue. Verbal dialogue helps the patient become aware of their body and the relationship between emotion, relationships, and bodily health. If the patient is unaware of their habits causing harm to their body, how can they be expected to proactively alter their health? This holistic method of healing has no side effects to inhibit patient recovery.

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