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.