Stories I Tell Clients: Tickles and Pain

I used to give massages to another therapist, a rather interesting woman, middle-aged and artistic, who said, “Under every tickle is a hurt.” I thought her adage was too simplistic, yet it did give me something to think about, especially when a non-ticklish person gets tickled during a massage. And it supplied me another story to tell.

Ray came to me regularly for massage. Among other things, I worked hard to relieve his sciatic pain on the right side. During a period when I had been reviewing class notes on deep tissue work, I determined to get Ray’s hard right calf to relax. So I set to work applying the deep tissue routine I was taught. Of course the work was painful. Ray directed me by reporting levels of pain as I worked. When finally I felt the muscles relax, I finished up and excitedly asked, “Does that feel better now?” Ray quickly replied, “Well yeah, a lot better since you quit!”

I laugh at this point in the telling, hoping the client I am currently hurting will have the same good humor as Ray.

Mixed media on paper.
Phillip Hoyle

Stories I Tell Clients: That's Really Different

I still practice massage at my own office and used to at a downtown spa. I seek to create a warm atmosphere of helpfulness and healing but refuse to preach at clients about their bad habits that stress their bodies. I am willing to tell a few stories, though—real ones. Of course, I am careful not to use names, to reveal too many details, or to lie! And I respect the silence of clients who don’t want any talk at all. But for the loquacious, I use my stories to help them understand the condition of their bodies or the process of massage.

Occasionally new clients ask, “How long have you been doing massage?”

I tell them, “I’ve given massages professionally for fourteen years.”

“What did you do before that?” they almost always respond.

“I was a minister.”

That stops the conversation almost as effectively as being introduced as a minister to a group of people drinking heavily at a bar. Usually my clients are lying face down and so can recover without my seeing their hesitation or chagrin.

“That’s really different,” many of them say.

“No,” I answer with a chuckle. “My clients still tell me their problems.”

We laugh together. Then I continue. “Actually it is different. In the massage context they edit their stories much less, and I don’t have to see them and their families next Sunday.” We laugh some more and sometimes hold a conversation or lapse into silence.

The Shavano Valley site of Ute Petroglyphs
is noted for its many hand, foot, paw, and
hoof designs.
Mixed media with acrylic washes, oil
pastels, and Prisma color, Phillip Hoyle

Table Talk: Touche

     Last December, just before the holidays, I was asked to bring my massage chair to the hospital recovery room and spend the day giving massages to the operating room support staff. The ten-minute-long massages were a “thank you” to the staff members from their coordinator and one of the doctors. During their breaks, people lined up to get massage.

     The staff members were appreciative of the opportunity for massage and commented on how much they liked my work. Their necks and shoulders relaxed, their headaches receded, or their hands felt relieved. Several mused what it would be like to have this at work everyday. One tech seemed very enthusiastic after receiving her massage. As I helped her get up from the chair, she declared, “Everyone should be required to receive at least one massage a week.” She claimed it would change human society.

     I have tried to imagine what it would take to accomplish such a change. Given the competitive nature of social groupings, it would seem easier to organize fencing matches rather than massage. But perhaps the United Nations organization might provide external rewards to motivate participation. Massage competitions could be organized with prizes going to the nations that accomplished the most change through massage. Well, whatever. There is power in touch, a power to transform. I have experienced it. Perhaps it could change whole groups or even the world.

     I would be pleased to say, “Touché,” to any other group, even my enemies, conceding to their victory in the world massage competition as long as I was getting my own weekly massage. Who knows?

     Perhaps we can relate such possible change in human society to the creation story in which the creator scooped up mud, formed humans, and breathed into them the breath of life. I wonder if we could do something similar to one another through massage, actually touch one another in ways to create relaxation, value, and joy. We could reap benefits of increased health. Perhaps, then, we could truly become the kind of humans and human society the creative impulse of divine love imagines.

Warrior, after Kansas petroglyph, by Phillip Hoyle

Using images of dueling or warfare to represent values of  spiritual import always seems awkward to me, even uncomfortable. I'm more of the "beat the swords into plowshares" kind of guy. Still I put this painting here to represent how willingly I would say touche to even a warrior who would give me my weekly massages.

Table Talk: Jesus Massage

Shaman's Quest, mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

     One day, Jesus showed up at John the baptizer’s spa down by the river and asked for the special water treatment. He followed John into the water and yielded himself to the immersion therapy. Following the treatment, Jesus experienced a further baptism of holy spirit. He was moved by a compelling sense of God’s transformative love. In these twin baptisms, Jesus celebrated his calling into a ministry of teaching and healing, and he understood baptism as a cleansing that prepared him for his new work.

     In the water treatment Jesus was born in a new way. The sparkling liquid was somehow eternal, springing from a live source--a spring that provided water to drink in a dry and thirsty land. Symbolically, rivers of living water could then flow out of Jesus’ heart and those of his disciples. Many people would be cleansed, have their thirst quenched, and likewise enter into lives of service to others.

     Jesus ministered to crowds of people and healed many of them. He didn’t hide his gifts but, rather, worked freely among the crowds of people as well as with his select few. He taught them that they were ultimately valued, illustrating his point by saying that God knew the number of hairs on their heads. With his own hands, he reached out and manipulated the hands of others. He consoled his closest disciples by holding them, as well as by speaking words of assurance. He affected people, put his hands over their eyes, gave them water and food. He took a woman by her hand and lifted her up; he stretched out his hand and touched a crippled man; he put his fingers into another man’s ears; he rubbed ointment on a man’s eyes and laid his hands on him. Jesus helped children onto his lap, held them in his arms, and laid his hands on them, blessing them.

     Jesus’ touch was powerful. Not only did his teachings intrigue, challenge, and help others, but also his body emanated healing energy. In fact, so much power radiated from Jesus that people in crowds tried to touch him so they could be healed. He understood that the amazing energy was not his alone. Jesus always pointed to a divine source for the power that made it possible.

     At least one woman anointed his feet with oil, tears, and kisses. Following her example, Jesus washed his own disciples’ feet. John’s gospel describes the event at what later generations called the Last Supper. Jesus washed their feet and then joined them as they, in the custom of the day, reclined on couches and were served the feast. He lay at table with his closest followers in intimate, though common, poses. They knew him. They knew his body, his hands in healing service, and the presence of his power.

     Another man named John, not “the baptizer,” became Jesus’ disciple and was known as “the beloved.” When Jesus touched John, his touch may have been felt as healing, sexual, friendly, or ordinary. We don’t know, but we do imagine it was somehow exceptional. In the words of orthodoxy, Jesus’ touch was sacramental, communicating that people were being accepted by the divine. But Jesus himself taught more about this touch. For him, it was his own contacting of the divine in the bodies, personalities, and faith of the persons he touched.

     Jesus was a practitioner of love and touch. He taught his disciples to live extraordinary lives as well, sharing a sparkling, transforming generosity with those around them. They entered his reconciling work, characterized by their encounter with the divine in the bodies of the poor, the ill, the destitute, the powerless, and others in need. Massage, like Jesus’ touch, has the potential to communicate power and many of the feelings his closest friends may have perceived. It is a dance of eternal peace, a ritual of love, a show of friendship, and always a transformation of the ordinary. For the client, it may seem healing, sexual, friendly, or ordinary. They may be confused, or they may find in it a divine power. For the therapist, such discoveries may also surprise. If it is to be a Jesus massage, it will reveal the divine in the body of the massaged one and will begin anew the flow of living water from heart to heart.

Table Talk: Adjustments

Mixed media with acrylic washes and graphite, Phillip Hoyle

     Yesterday I was pleased to work again with Lynn. For a year I had given monthly massages to this thirty-some-year-old, well-organized man. He regularly scheduled his massage at the AIDS clinic and never missed an appointment. Then, right after he told me he was going to go on disability, he quit scheduling. I assumed he must have taken an extended trip to his family home or moved from the community. Yesterday, one year and ten days later, he returned for a massage.

     Lynn hadn’t been away. He came into the therapy projecting cynicism, anger, and disappointment, although he remained pleasantly mannered as usual. His past year had been full of difficulty and challenges he felt he hadn’t met very well. Almost simultaneously, Lynn lost two important mainstays of his life: work and being a jock. Leaving his job was devastating. He had worked almost everyday for years, part-time while attending junior and senior high school and full-time ever since. He wondered if it was wise to quit work. Without it, he has lived with both regret and frustration. His job wasn’t his only loss. In a year’s time he lost an alarming amount of his muscle bulk. With horror he watched his butt fall away and his arms shrink to half their former size. He had to give up weight lifting due to a cold that had persisted for months. I recalled from earlier conversations how important weight lifting and running had been to him. His losses were great.

     Perhaps his not going to work and suffering such dramatic body changes threw him into an extended dying process. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described the process as a progression through denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, and depression towards the eventual acceptance of one’s impending death. I wondered if the feelings Lynn expressed were manifestations of anger or if he had progressed on to depression. I am not sure. But something changed recently, something that prompted him to reactivate his relationship with his AIDS case manager and to schedule a massage with me.

     I have been thinking over several things Lynn said during yesterday’s massage. He told me he had asked to be taken off the subscription lists of several AIDS-related magazines because he didn’t want to focus his life on the disease. “I’m just a guy who happened to get AIDS,” he explained. He expressed his impatience with individuals who major in being gay and HIV-infected people who make the disease their main focus. He, by contrast, wants simply to be a person who is homosexual and who just happened to get AIDS. He seemed angry about his muscle loss, his persistent illness, and his own inability to accomplish almost anything since he quit working. Perhaps his inability to get on with his life, especially when almost all his time has become discretionary, is a manifestation of depression.

     I wonder if Lynn’s re-emergence represents an acceptance of his eventual death and an acceptance that he is not dead yet. Kubler-Ross’ work emphasizes the function of hope and its almost constant presence for many people. Perhaps this double acceptance, should my surmise be correct, is, in fact, the emergence of Lynn’s deep hope in life.

     Perhaps coming back to me for massage marks some kind of acceptance of his death. Am I, as a massage therapist, to be an instrument of Lynn’s acceptance of death? I suppose so. Lynn may have come back because he knows I will accept and love his body even though it is betraying him. I assured him he still has a beautiful body, an ample butt, a wonderful face, and is a fine person even as he watches his muscles become smaller. Did he get strength from me? I don’t know. He did get acceptance. When someone compliments your body while they are running their hands all over it, perhaps you can more easily accept the idea of their sincerity. Or you can assume they really like you! Either one may be supportive enough.

     I probably cannot express how meaningful Lynn’s return to massage is for me. At first, I was simply pleased to see him. As the complexity of his reasons for returning started to become clearer to me, I found gratification in the fact that he counts me and my work as important in his life. And I am inspired by observing his responses to his dying process, even though its details still seem a bit unclear to me. I look forward to whatever time we have left to work together, whether weeks or years.

     We had a wonderful conversation while I worked on him yesterday. He received a good massage, many affirmations of his life and body, helpful talk, sound advice, and loving acceptance. It seemed like a very successful session. He left the clinic with his face alive, with a childlike radiance revealed through twinkling eyes and smiling mouth. Massage therapists know that anger can rarely be maintained while receiving a massage. Perhaps it emerged again today, and Lynn is still dealing with the anger, the depression, and the threat of hopelessness. But he is dealing with his life, making adjustments, and that’s hopeful.