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.