Table Talk: On Edge

Sage Advice Giver painting by Phillipl Hoyle

     Often, when giving a massage, I walk along an edge. I teeter on a ridge of feeling making judgments about touch and technique, hoping to make them appropriately. For me, the experience relates to choices I make in response to the feel of tissue, the hardness of muscle, or reactions of the client to what I am doing. I am aware that with my use of massage techniques I can bring help or harm, healing or hurt. The knowledge keeps me walking on the edge.

     The client, too, may experience an edge. The source of the edginess may be the touch of a new therapist, the need to retain or relinquish control of the body, or simply the stress that led him or her to the table in the first place. The experience of uncertainty can evoke new feelings and a new sense of the body. It sometimes raises issues and invites dynamic growth and self-realization. Massage may take a client to an edge of experience and possibility.

     Sue came for massage at the recommendation of a friend. She had never received a massage before. As a young person, she seemed to be looking for new experiences and entered the session with confidence. I gave her a rather vigorous Swedish massage. She liked it well enough to schedule another one for the next week. I worked more deeply during the second session. My response to the tightness in her shoulders produced a continuing result. When she returned for her third massage she told me about awaking during the night after her second massage. For the first time in her life, she could actually sense her back without touching it with her hand or rubbing it against the mattress. Massage had given her a new sense of her body, one that acknowledged this hard-to-see part of herself. She was thrilled.

     When Sue showed up for her first massage, I was aware that she might be uneasy. She was going to take off her clothes and be alone in an apartment with a man she had met only one time before, when our mutual friend introduced us. I was going to work on a young woman, giving her a first experience of massage. I had worked on women’s bodies--my wife’s many times over many years and those of women students of massage over the prior few months. I was not afraid of her body and did not experience it as a temptation, but I did see this work as a responsibility. I would influence Sue’s relationship to massage in the future, and I had the potential to help her in relationship to how she viewed and valued her own body.

     This latter responsibility was taught me, in part, by being reared with my four sisters and, later, by living with my wife and my daughter. Their complaints, confidence, and fears, expressed many times and in a variety of ways, helped me realize that the manner in which I related to Sue’s body had the distinct possibility for hurt or health. Certainly my words would affect her, but mostly, I would communicate through the way I touched her. My loving touch could respect her body and her sense of modesty, inviting muscular responses that would lead to relaxation and relief. Eventually, the massages could encourage postural changes that might relieve back and shoulder strain. I hoped that my work would help Sue feel her own body differently so she could make changes that would have a long-term beneficial effect. I wondered how I would be received.

     I recalled a workshop in which I was learning Sufi dancing. Our teacher encouraged us to look at one another with “soft eyes.” She didn’t want us exchanging hard looks, calculating leers, or flirting glances. We were to gaze at one another as if we were looking at all humanity, celebrating grace, compassion, and acceptance. I wanted my massage to be similar to the dances: experiences for my young client that conveyed my acceptance of her, that communicated my love of humanity, and that invited her into a life of health and relaxation. I was pleased to be involved in a positive experience as Sue’s muscles loosened. She found the massage beneficial and returned for more. The work was going in a good direction. Her new sense of body awareness was gratifying to both of us. We were able to walk successfully along an edge of experience and growth.

Walker by Phillip Hoyle

Grandmother Spider, like the image at the beginning of this post, in any number of Native American Stories advised various heroes of dangers and gave them powers to be safe as they fulfilled their tasks. I listen to the advice of my teachers, but sometimes in massage I feel like the lone walker to the left who, if one could view the whole cliff wall would see he is walking among bears. 

In short, while massage is a wonderful occupation, a fine service to offer to folk in pain, for any number of reasons the massage therapist is often walking along a very narrow margin of confidence. Like any other service, it may help or hurt.

Table Talk: Seeing the Body

Vision painting by Phillip Hoyle

     Massage has taught me to see. I recall observing Troy. He came to me for massage at the AIDS clinic in one of my first weeks there as a student intern. I watched him approach down the hallway, walking as if he had to think through each stride like a young child learning to take its first steps. I noted the gaunt features of his face and wondered how advanced his disease might be. When he was on the table, his hands and feet looked too large for his slender body. I saw that while his disease seemed to be killing him, his eyes were bright with life and humor.

     While giving massages, I sometimes feel like an artist trying to see just the right line to put on a canvas. I try to imagine and make the right combination of strokes to bring relief to clients in pain. I look for imbalances to work out and shortened muscles to lengthen. I observe posture and gait as clues to guide me into my work. I am alert to my clients’ bodies in order to imagine what will make them feel better. I also look into their eyes to see how much they will be able to respond to the massage.

     Troy’s lively eyes contrasted with the rest of his body. I felt that the massages I would give him could be quite helpful. I noticed that he was looking too, not at his own body but, rather, at mine. Was he hoping to benefit from my robust health? Was he wishing that he had the energy to give massages? Perhaps he simply was enjoying his sight, one of the few systems in his body that was not yet failing, while soaking in the warmth and comfort of my touch. I wondered what the man was seeing.

     The renowned art teacher, Kimon Nicolaides, emphasized to his students, “We see through the eyes rather than with them.” He wanted them to use the other senses in order to check out everything they thought they saw with their eyes. “If you attempt to rely on the eyes alone,“ he warned, “they can sometimes actually mislead you.” In massage, therapists may first see with the eyes, but then they must see with the hands. The first professional masseur I met was blind. He worked in a YMCA spa giving massages. He saw only with his hands, and that sight was sufficient for his work. In a way similar to Nicolaides, my massage teachers knew about what the eyes cannot see. They made us work blindfolded so that we, too, could learn to see with our hands. Sometimes I still close my eyes so my hands can tell me what I am seeing in the bodies of my clients.

     Troy eventually complained of the tingling and pain in his arms and legs, a condition rather common in AIDS sufferers, but that wasn’t until our third session. In the first, due to watching his gait, I suspected the condition. Palpating his body, I discovered that the ligaments and muscles in the lateral and medial compartments of his legs were extremely tight and short. I conjectured they might be hypertoned due to Troy’s constant need to make up for the unreliability of support and balance. Furthermore, my hands observed that Troy was not simply a slender guy but that he had lost almost all the fat from his body. I figured the loss was due to wasting syndrome, a common ailment in people with HIV. Touching him, I realized that his feet were not too large for his body, but, rather, that his muscles had deteriorated. Eyes and hands together discovered the dry patches on his feet, but only my hands could detect the adhesions in his abs. I was using my sense of touch to confirm, correct, and further what my eyes saw. I still am not quite sure what Troy was seeing when he looked at me. He did warn me not to wear spandex shorts when working, thinking it might be detrimental to the health of some of my clients. Funny man. He saw me with his eyes, but he sensed even more through my touch: the warmth of my hands, my skills in soft tissue manipulation, his own relief from pain, and a perception of the unity of his body--left and right, upper and lower. I hope that with some sixth sense he was picking up on my love of massage and of my clients. What I saw when working with him was a changing body, a weakening life, but one that had the important qualities of insight, love, humor, and enjoyment. Massage with Troy was helping me to look, observe, and see the body with all my senses.

A very young Phillip Hoyle at Picture Rocks

For years I visited the petroglyphs west of Montrose.

I studied them, drew them, photographed them and 

eventually made rubbings. Often I wondered what 

the images sought to represent. As I looked deeply and used

them in artwork I got more and more ideas. Using the same design

I would interpret it differently. I had to imagine the world the 

Native artist was experiencing. Similarly I look deeply at my massage

clients to imagine what they experience in order to apply my techniques

in such a way as to bring them relaxation and relief.
Can you find the image on this rock that I used in
the painting at the beginning of this page?

Table Talk: Spaced Out

Was someone asking to see the soul?

See, your own shape and countenance....

Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

     Spaced out. That’s how I felt after experiencing my first professional massage--plain spacy. I couldn’t really focus on what I was doing. I seemed to have lost any sense of direction and future. I was just there, feeling strange, wondering about the sensation. It probably was a good massage. Then, I had little way of judging, and now, the memory of the massage is not so acute. I stumbled to the shower room, washed my body thoroughly, and enjoyed the cedar-scented lotion provided in a shower-side dispenser. I found my companion, and we made our way out to a forest-surrounded hot tub. The total experience contained new sensations, but mostly I felt dopey, unable to focus, and not really caring to concentrate.

     My second professional massage a couple of years later also left me feeling a bit spacy, but this time I had a new experience that changed my perception of massage. The therapist asked if I wanted her to focus on any particular muscles. “Yes,” I surprised myself in answering. “Could you concentrate on my hands and forearms?” In the past months I had been practicing piano scales and arpeggios, writing a book, and playing computer games; and my right hand hurt. The pain and tightness mostly affected the back of my hands and my forearms. The therapist, a woman in her fifties who had studied with several celebrated teachers in Massachusetts and who brought years of experience to the massage, worked deeply in the area using what she called an interactive massage technique. She seemed to dig into and between the muscles while I kept my elbow moving slowly and slightly. A couple of times I thought I’d jump right off her table, but wanting the relief, I stayed put, bore the pain. To my utter amazement, I had no pain for three and a half months following the massage. I gained great flexibility that lasted long enough for me to realize I needed to change my habits. I didn’t want to recreate the pain and restriction in my arms and hands. My therapist’s effective work changed massage for me. No longer was it simply a luxury item that left me feeling spaced out. Oh, I felt like I was floating all right. I could hardly walk and had to sit in the sun for a while before taking a chance on driving the car. But I realized that massage could take away pain and help one regain full use of a limb. And three months later I was still amazed that the immediate effect of the work lasted. Massage became for me something serious and health-related in ways I had never before imagined. The spaced out feelings brought me into the present with no worry about what lay ahead; getting rid of pain helped prepare me for an amazing future in my own massage career. What wonderful and simple gifts I have received from massage.

Pas du Trois, painting by Phillip Hoyle

These bears painted under the influence of an Osage Indian petroglyph

express the kind of exuberance I experience when I see a person

regain ease of movement and the absence of pain. 

I want to to join them in a dance of joy.

Table Talk: Meditations on Massage

     Mom passed on a bit of Jewish wisdom. “In the old days,” she told me, “a rabbi learned a trade as well as to be a religious leader and teacher.” She repeated the information several times as I was preparing to study religion and practice ministry. I assumed she was talking about rabbis, while she was advising me in her typically oblique style. I didn’t take the hint. So at age fifty, as I considered leaving congregational ministry, I had no trade to fall back on as a way to make a living, no interest in other kinds of church work, and no desire for another profession. 

     My situation was complicated by my recent separation from my wife of many years. We had irreconcilable differences; at least we couldn’t see our way to solve them. The separation was amiable although not without anger, sadness, and stress. Thoughtful, moody, elated, and a little unsure, I was making my way into a new life of relationships and vocation.

     I felt unprepared to switch to some other kind of work. I wanted to find a job that would allow me time and energy to write and do artwork. Nothing seemed quite right. From the organizations to which I applied for jobs, I got polite rejections. But in my daily perusal of want ads, I kept stopping to read ads for massage schools. "What a kick that would be," I thought. I could work part-time as a massage therapist and still do the other projects. Friends who wondered if I was falling apart might be relieved to know I was at least going to school.

     So I enrolled in massage school to learn the skill I should have mastered in response to my mother hints. Immediately I was intrigued by the diversity of my classmates. They included nurses, a physical therapist, teachers, a recreation director, an office administrator, a computer specialist, and others, whose work I could not quite determine. One student had studied bug science, another physical education; several had not completed high school. We ranged in age from seventeen to fifty-four. Two students claimed to have come to earth in some distant past from other galaxies, and I could almost believe them, given their distinctive perspectives and personalities. Although I had spent much of my life hanging around with artists and musicians, most of them had been related to the church and, as colorful as their lives seemed, they paled when compared to the lives of this new group of students and friends.

     Care-giving practices and values developed during many years of ministry extended into my new work. I knew how to listen to my clients who sometimes unveiled troubling aspects of their lives. I took them and their perspectives seriously. But now, rather than the church, massage therapy became the subject of my meditation; its practice, my daily discipline. I began to contemplate the human body as the occasion of divine communication.

     I found Christian teachings and images useful to me as I gave and wrote about massages. I thought about how the body is so often perceived in the church’s theology, how its urges often have been called the enemy, and how it has been degraded as dying flesh. I gained insights into biblical stories as I realized my work sometimes mimicked the actions of ancient healers. And I started thinking about biblical and canonical saints and appropriated them as symbols for the nurturing and healing work of massage therapy.

     My volunteer work at Colorado AIDS Project invited an additional level of reflection. I came to appreciate massage therapy in relationship with matters of death as well as matters of life. Giving massages to chronically or terminally ill persons has provided a perspective that seems helpful to my clients and sustaining to me as one who works with them in the extremity of their illness.

     Some people are surprised by the idea, but I now consider bodywork to be not only my trade, but also my ministerial practice. The stories I will present in weeks to come try to express how this is so. Perhaps the correlation of Christian and massage images may be as helpful to others as they have been to me.

A shaman ran by, painting by Phillip Hoyle

In its focus on healing, bodywork seems to me more
 closely aligned with the work of shamans rather than ministers.
Still, ministers do engage in healing work, but in my experience it arose
in connection with hospital ministry and sometimes counseling.
I learned enough in such work to help prepare me for this hands-on work.
My understanding of my massage work mixes Christian and other images 

in my mind and practice.