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.