Table Talk: Macho Dos

Bear  painting by Phillip Hoyle

     Clients often do not want to tell their therapist about the pain they are experiencing in the massage, and when they do, their communications are sometimes hard to interpret. It took me quite a few massages to understand that when Richard laughs, I’m hurting him. With Tom, silence means all is well, but moans indicate pain. Some people scream or say “No,” but more folks seem to grit their teeth and bear the pain in silence. I imagine that they lie there chanting over and over to themselves, “No pain; no gain. No pain; no gain....”

     One evening Sergio called. “Can you work on my brother-in-law?” he asked. “He fell at work and hurt his leg.”

     “Sure, but you come with him because I’ll need a translator,” I replied.

     Juan, Sergio’s brother-in-law from Mexico, had fallen off a ladder while painting a house. His facial expression and his noticeable limp while climbing the stairway indicated that he was in a great deal of pain. I examined his leg, compared it with the other. There was no bruise or significant swelling, but Juan winced at my touch. I began working in Swedish mode, knowing I would apply deeper pressure to his injured leg if he could bear it. I warmed up the tissue near the injury employing a variety of strokes and explained, while Sergio translated, what I hoped to do. Since I would have to work deeply, I taught a monitoring system so the work wouldn’t cause unnecessary pain. I asked Juan to respond to my inquiries with a number on a scale from one to ten. One, uno, indicates pressure with no pain; ten, diez, indicates way too much pain, “get out of there now.” My training considers numbers between four and seven to be therapeutic. As I worked, I asked periodically, “¿Que numero?”

     Juan answered, “Uno.” Again he replied, “Uno.” Still again, “Uno.” 

     I was a bit surprised at his tolerance for the pain. As I began working right at the point of injury I asked, “¿Que numero?”

     With a ragged voice he barely croaked, “Dos.”

     “Oh,” I exclaimed, laughing gently, “¡Macho dos!”

     Sergio almost fell off his chair in a fit of laughter. An embarrassed Juan amended his numero. “Ocho,” he admitted. I lightened my touch slightly to lower the pain level and continued to work, but I wondered whether I would ever know how much this work hurt my client.

     My colleague and friend Tony gave me a massage. He worked deeply, but I didn’t feel pain as his elbow hooked into my lower trapezium muscle and then as it bumped over my rhomboid minor muscle. I was surprised since this move often causes a high level of pain in my clients. Why the difference? I’m not quite sure, but some of my clients, like myself, don’t feel much pain at all. Other people, like Juan, bear high levels of pain out of some notion of self-image.

     Still others feel intense pain but really seem to like it. I realized one client had grabbed onto the legs of the massage table and was hanging on as if for dear life while bearing extreme pain. He seemed to love the pain I didn’t intend to give. When I noticed his grasping of the table, I lightened my pressure. Another client told me, after our second deep tissue session, “Phil, I’m really starting to like the pain.”

     I hope he was only kidding. My intention is to reduce pain. I don’t like to cause my clients discomfort, but I am capable of it and not unwilling to do so when I believe the painful work may actually prove beneficial. The big problem is that similar pressure doesn’t feel the same to different clients. The client must monitor the pain since one person feels uncomfortable, another one is in unbearable agony, and still another one is not registering any pain at all.

     In general, I want my clients to become more aware of their pain so they can do things to prevent or relieve it. Sometimes they can correct their posture, learn relaxation, and otherwise help themselves. I want them to learn self-treatment--how to massage themselves and how stretch their muscles. To accomplish such goals, the client and the therapist must work as a team, cooperating and communicating. I want them to think about themselves in order to discover what they can do to lessen their own pain, both during the session and in the weeks that follow it.

     Juan was in pain. I didn’t want to cause him more. My goal was to get the muscles out of spasm and to increase circulation in them so they could heal more readily. I hoped to lower pain in the area through the treatment of any trigger points that might have formed in the muscles from a prior accident. I was sure the work would cause additional discomfort, but if he would monitor me, I could keep the pain within a therapeutic range. I needed Juan’s help. When he finally gave me realistic responses, I was able to adjust my pressure and work carefully and appropriately in the affected area. Juan helped me, and in so doing, increased the effectiveness of the massage.

Brown and Black
painting by Phillip Hoyle

People of all kinds and sizes and with all kinds of expectations come for massage. Some want pain; others want only the softest touch. Both types of massage can be effective in dealing with pain. I figure whether I'm dealing with a grizzly bear or the gentlest black bear on my table I know I can help them with their pains. Actually I find the factor of the unpredictable in massage keeps me alert. You never know what kind of work will be called for to help your client.

Table Talk: Arf!

          Antonio and I are addicted to drinking coffee together. We became acquainted at a coffee shop that serves great drinks and has couches that often serve as our living rooms. I noticed him there occasionally over several months before we talked with one another. I appreciated the way he greeted and conversed with many different kinds of people--beautiful and unbeautiful, outgoing and shy, young and old. Eventually, we started acknowledging each other’s presence with a nod or a smile. Now we talk while I sip coffee, he a mocha.

      As our coffee drinking demands grew, we started fixing brew in one or the other’s apartment, and when I’d come to his place, I was enthusiastically greeted by his miniature poodles. Shinti, a white fluffball of energy would immediately jump into my lap, greet me with licks and love, and hold court over the rest of the house from her high throne. Konti, her more reserved brother, would sidle up to me and quietly lean against my leg. Nice dogs. Nice master. I enjoyed petting the dogs and drinking coffee with Antonio.

     One day, when I was still a student at the massage school, I was having a cup of coffee at Antonio’s apartment. I reached down to Konti and massaged along his backbone from his neck down to his hips. He arched his back into my touch, encouraging me to keep up the good work. With my fingertips I made circles around his hips and shoulders thinking about how the musculature was similar to that of humans. When I finished, Konti shook his ears and whole body, looked up at me, and then trotted away.

     Next time I showed up at their apartment, Shinti didn’t have a chance even to greet me before Konti was on my lap, pushing his little hiney into my stomach. When I didn’t immediately put my hands on him, he looked around at me with his big eyes as if to plead, “Massage me.” I did and was amused at how he took control. When the pressure wasn’t quite right, he leaned into or away from me. When a particular place seemed finished, Konti presented me with another spot he wanted me to palpate. Over the next weeks I watched this quiet, beautiful poodle metamorphose into an insistent massage hog.

     Since that time I’ve met other dogs and found out they all like massage. My friend Michael had two cute dogs. Willie was a White Westie, and Ozzie, a Blue Karen Terrier. Always-friendly Willie and often-grumpy Ozzie enjoyed my improving doggie massage technique. (Konti and Shinti had taught me almost as much as my schooling.) Willie got more massage because of his easy-going ways. Ozzie, on the other hand, was more insistent, and when he wanted a massage, like Konti, he turned his back or shoulder or head to me. He’d paw my hand anytime it went slack and would try to lift it with his wet nose to get it back into action.

     This summer, Ferdinand, the house painter’s pooch, started getting massage. Large, reddish, and long-haired, he accompanies his master to the building where I live and hangs out in the shade while Jay paints. The dog loves my touch. He likes whatever I do to him, but he always presents his right hip for massage. If I forget to work it, he follows me, pushing his nose into my hand and his hip against my leg.

     I keep looking at advertisements for canine massage training. Some days I think I might enjoy study and work in that area, but most of the time I realize I simply want to work on these dog friends, small and large, and enjoy their individual responses to my massages. I did learn a therapeutic move from Willie, who loved to shake his soft toys back and forth when he finally won a tug-of-war. Now, while doing chair massage, I sometimes grab a client’s shoulder and give it a doggie shake to loosen the upper trapezium muscle in the effective way Willie demonstrated. (I usually refrain from growling while doing so.) My best hope from these dog contacts, though, is to be the kind of massage therapist that combines Shinti’s enthusiasm, Konti’s calm, Willie’s good nature, Ozzie’s clarity, and Ferdinand’s beauty in my work, along with a strong brew of Antonio’s vast charm.

Photos of Shinti and Konti provided by Tony Garcia Pelaez

Table Talk: Vision

Collograph inspired by vision
Phillip Hoyle

     While receiving a massage, I had a vision. I wasn’t asleep but, rather, I was well aware of my classmate Pam’s fingers working around my right shoulder blade. Her fingertips were seeking out and finding tiny irregularities in tissue there. I don’t know what she touched under my scapula, but when she pushed it, I had a vision of a woman standing beside a box. The image was similar to one in a dream, but more focused; rather than Polaroid-fuzzy, the picture was 35-millimeter clear. I carried away from that massage a memorable image of a woman adorned in beautiful Medieval robes, standing beside a colorful, three-foot-high box, similar to an enameled reliquary. I knew she would open the box, which made the image seem an invitation to self-discovery and mystery.


     I knew I was having a vision although I had never had one before. But where did it come from? In the past I had visualized places and people during guided imagery exercises. This time, by contrast, no leader was instructing, “Imagine a building..., enter it..., meet a person...,” etc. Did the aroma of incense and the flicker of candlelight in Pam’s therapy room help prepare me to see in this new way? Did her work stimulate some chemical response, touching some memory embedded in muscle?

     I was curious to know what the vision meant. Since the image came while a woman was working on me, perhaps it communicated my need to touch something feminine within myself. Maybe it was a message that my anima, my woman spirit, would lead me into more adventures of learning, relationship, and love. The image seemed religiously important. Conceivably massage would become a sacrament of holy visions for me or even a new religion. I wondered what mysteries this religion could reveal.

     I believe that something real, if not exactly religious, occurred in the vision and is unfolding in my life and practice. I am attuning more to my own feelings, becoming more alert to nuances of my needs, desires, and hopes. Certainly, I am more responsive to my body needs--pain, hydration, diet, exercise, and more. At the same time, and perhaps as a result of my own growing self-awareness, I am becoming more sensitive to the complex needs of my clients, to emotion-based proclamations from their mouths and from their muscles.

     My hopes are being realized. I moved to Denver wanting to learn how to live into my feelings, letting them more deeply influence my decision-making and experiencing them more fully instead of setting them aside in deference to the needs of others. I am more alert to the vivacious movement of the spirit and am listening to my anima.

     While I don’t expect to make a religion of massage, I certainly am interested in the relationship of massage experiences to my perception of the divine. I hope to gain insight into my religious tradition by an immersion into massage. Although I am not sure where this visionary, feminine line of thinking leads, I am sure I will follow it to some logical, creative, and emotional end or insight. Such a journey is the goal of my meditations on the body. I find this spirit voice of love more powerful than the voice of rules that fearfully guided my life in the past.

     No one else has touched the spot Pam found; if they did, their palpation failed to stimulate a vision. Perhaps I learned enough from the image and am no longer blocking the feminine love feelings; thus no new trigger points have developed there. My medieval lady has not reappeared except as an icon I collaged a few months ago. I think it is time to hang her image in my therapy room like a visual prayer, so her beautiful, wise countenance can influence my imagination and my work. Surely, new treasures will emanate from the box as she continues to open it for me. This is no Pandora’s box, but rather a repository of relics, people, feelings, and experiences of the past. It contains stories, artwork, friendship, and healing for my future. Perhaps, in addition to visions, I also will receive auditions, olfactions, and perhaps, some other extra sensory perceptions.

Table Talk: An Honest Question

Turtle painting by Phillip Hoyle

     I gave massages a few times at an AIDS hospice. One client there didn’t want a second massage. I asked why. He hemmed and hawed and finally said it didn’t do much for him. He was expecting a miracle but didn’t get it. I suggested that massage is not a cure for anything but, rather, a process that can reduce stress in the body and bring a sense of ease to the mind. He said he might try another one sometime.

     On another occasion a young client asked, “Why get massages?” I had given her several massages at the AIDS clinic, both general relaxing massages and more specific work on a leg injury. She hesitated as if trying to choose the right words for a difficult question or to avoid insulting me. Then she asked, “What does massage do?”

     I was surprised about her questions. I assumed anyone who scheduled and showed up for massages would know what they were doing and why. I supposed the massages were in some way their own answer. For example, “I feel relaxed after massage, and that’s something I want.” “I have less pain in my legs because of a massage, and I don’t like pain.” For me, attention to the effects of the massage provides obvious and often the best answers.

     Anyway, I gave her a partial explanation, verbalizing ideas from a handout from school: massage brings an increase in circulation which helps muscles relax while also ridding them of toxins. Her facial expression seemed uncomprehending. “Besides that,” I added as an appeal to her own experience, “massage just feels good.” At the time I didn’t feel my answers communicated very well; I haven’t seen her since the day she asked. My explanation and her experience of massage may not have matched enough. My first answer may have been too technical, and she may not have valued her own pleasure enough to bother scheduling more massages.

     I suspect many people coming for massage want hope. If they are ill, they want to imagine for themselves a disease-free life stretching out over decades to come, the same hope every healthy person holds. Massage can bring hope in a limited sense. It serves as a complement to medicine and other therapies. It may bring enough relief to make tolerable the uncertainty of a diagnosis or the side effects of a medication. In an HIV context, massage sometimes helps prolong health while patients wait for a cure. For the healthy, massage’s stress-reducing capacity may offer all they need. Their expectancy may not extend beyond the next few hours or the evening’s rest. Expectations and results vary.

     I don’t set out to work miracles in massage, but rather, to touch the body therapeutically. My work may increase circulation, support the immune system, and release endorphins. Or it may simply bring relaxation to a tired client. Always, I want my massage to encourage living life creatively and, when there is illness, to invite healing.

     For some clients, this straightforward approach may be an entry onto a healing path. For others, it may be a simple break from the stress of work. But massage can be more. It can keep one in touch with pleasure by providing new and insightful experiences of one’s body. For example, one woman recovering from breast cancer thanked me for a massage, claiming it made her feel normal. Or, massage can create a simple one-on-one relationship based on massage therapy and similar to a friendship. And sometimes it can open up unsought benefits as when during a massage one becomes aware of pain and finds relief in its treatment. Clients sometimes discover the value of stretching, receive a helpful referral to another practitioner, or discover how they can correct their posture to reduce their pain and stress. Such unforeseen benefits may come as a pleasant surprise.

     One phrase on my teacher’s handout suggests that massage can stir the waters of life. Like the creative spirit of Genesis, chapter one, massage can hover over the face of the deep, imbuing its emptiness, turmoil, and chaos with meaning, calm, and order. Perhaps even a single massage, skillfully administered, can communicate creative possibility. In opening the self to massage, one can discover an answer to a question not yet imagined. I wish I could have communicated something like this to my client who wanted to know why.

Turtle in some Native American stories succeeded in recovering mud from the bottom of the ocean, mud from which land was made for plants and animals to live on. Water images relate to massage as well as to creativity. The image above comes from an archaic Cherokee petroglyph. 
For me another Cherokee image speaks to massage as a process in which two people gather at the tree of life to find healing. The practitioner uses traditions of therapy to bring relief and increased vitality to the client. Of course, these ideas are my interpretations of massage rather than the interpretation of ancient artists.