Table Talk: Witness

     A few observations and a short conversation often disclose a lot about a person. Since most of our guests at the spa are women, and many of the men who schedule ask for a woman therapist, I was pleased to find a male client on my schedule a few Saturdays ago. I met the man who looked to be about thirty-five, healthy, and friendly. Watching a brief interaction between him and his wife, I judged his manner rather fawning but not insincere. As a couple they seemed too emotionally connected, like a pair with no offspring, who treat one another as if each were the child of the union.

     Our conversation during the massage revealed my client to be a salesman by occupation. He must have been successful, as he was able to afford monthly trips with his spouse to expensive hotels and fancy spas. He had played football in high school and was still in good shape due to working out regularly at a gym. As a young adult, he had studied art, hoping for a career as an artist, but had not pursued his dreams for some undisclosed reason. I listened and looked. Details of his Colorado Springs origin and abode, his clean cut good looks, his too-precious manner with his wife seemed to speak clearly to me. “Help,” I thought. “I have an evangelical on my table, and I’m about to be witnessed to.”

     My assumption seemed accurate. His approach was subtle as he sought to make an opening in the conversation for his testimony. The first assay related to his assertion that one has to experience inner change in order to change one’s body, its health and muscles. I didn’t take the bait. The other was his statement that God surely made the body amazing. I simply agreed but didn’t encourage a conversation. For a salesman, he seemed a bit unsure in his witness, or perhaps he was the consummate salesman who knows whether he really has any chance of closing a deal.

     I had successfully deflected his attempt to lasso me. In so doing, I may have missed having a significant conversation about the body, but I didn’t want to hear about the personal change that comes when one takes the five steps to salvation, inviting Jesus into one’s heart. While I am Christian, I really have tired of the earnest witnessing I have often been subjected to over the years. I didn’t want to explain my complicated theology to someone who seemed content with his own formulaic certainty. I just was not ready to be assaulted by a true believer, not even by a nice one.

     To give my client a break, he seemed to be a decent guy and has a beautiful body that he continues to keep fit. I suspect an important inner change did alter his life, and that the divine may have rescued him from some destructive future. These would be fine things to share, but I didn’t invite him to do so.

     Instead, I insisted on sharing my own witness, a silent testimony I proclaim through massage. In making it, I am not trying to convince people to accept a particular belief. Rather, I exalt the body as it is--regenerated or not, appealing or repulsive, healthy or ill, thriving or dying. While I am not a creationist and some days barely a theist, I still marvel at the truth of the divine communication in human form. Divinity loves through persons, presents itself in community, and encourages creative living. These divine touches are the most meaningful aspects of my witness.

     This is my witness: to my clients, to the beauty of their bodies, to what and to all that they are. I testify silently with hands, body weight, sweat, and the techniques of massage. My message avoids words; massage speaks its own language. The divine is not separate from the body but, rather, is a continuous revelation of love in any particular body. It seems ironic to me, but I have become a massage evangelical, making my silent witness to everyone who comes to my table.

God, help me keep my witness silent and subtle. Amen.

Peace Rose from the Garden  Photo by Phillip Hoyle

Same rose as above from a different angle

Table Talk: Contemplation

Cross mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

     Historically, we are not sure when Mary Magdalene became a mystic. We are not at all sure that she traveled to Provence to evangelize and stayed on to the end of her life, meditating and living as a hermit. But we can assert that she began her contemplation when she wouldn’t give up Jesus’s body, even though he had died.

     In an effort to understand her preoccupation, we recall that she rushed to his tomb to anoint his body as soon as the sun came up after Sabbath. We may wonder if she really was the appropriate one for this task. Wasn’t it his mother’s responsibility? Did Mary Magdalene volunteer on behalf of a grief-stricken mother who couldn’t pull herself out of her deep depression? Did she go to the tomb as a sister of Jesus, or as some interpreters read, his wife? We don’t know, but she hurried there, full of curiosity, grief, and need. She discovered the empty tomb.

     When she asked a man nearby where they had taken Jesus’ body, he called her by name. Recognizing Jesus’ voice, she reached out and embraced him. But Jesus said, “No. Don’t cling to me.” Never before had he rejected her anointments of oil and tears or her rapt attention to his teaching. He had praised her willingness to leave all and follow. But now the relationship was changing. He was going away. She would have to rely on her memories. Thus Mary Magdalene began to contemplate the body of Christ, a practice she continued for many years and that earned her the distinction of becoming patron saint to religious contemplatives.

     The word “contemplation” comes from an ancient Latin word that described the work of a class of Roman priests who, through observation and study of signs and portents, foretold events. The word connotes both great intensity of observation and a space dedicated to that work. Mary’s strength of observation and feeling seems matched only by that of two or three other disciples of Jesus, but unlike them, she didn’t wait for Jesus to wash her feet. No, she washed his and dedicated herself to his ministry in unparalleled fashion. Although she reputedly retired to a hermitage late in her life, her earlier contemplation focused on the space of Jesus’ body as the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. What did she see there? What revelations came her way? What indications of the future?

     I imagine that Mary, in her contemplation, regarded the body of Christ: its beauty, its calluses, its tired muscles, its responsiveness to touch, its desire to be washed, its need for anointing. From her vantage point in the maritime Alps of southern France, she recalled his rather normal body and saw there visions of loving service to all kinds of people. She reflected on Jesus’ skilled healing touch, and considered the meaning of his holy acceptance of the body even when it was diseased, despised, and rejected. She pondered experiences of his love communicated through unusual relationships with ordinary folk. Perhaps she augured the power of Jesus’ acceptance and love as a model for bodyworkers and other lovers of humanity.

     She had seen his resurrected body fixing food and sharing meals with his followers as well as teaching them, and she realized his intention was to teach them to do what he had done. Jesus made clear that his ministry would be continued by his followers, who were to do even greater things than he. Mary contemplated the body of Christ within the space of her own body. Surely she accepted that her love for him was a beautiful thing, a monument to his power, and a glorification of the human body that foresaw and experienced resurrection. The continuing work of Christ would be caught up by hands that, like hers, reached out, touched, ministered, fed, and loved in an amazing variety of ways among an even more amazing variety of people.

     Christians too often try to bypass the body in the quest for spiritual growth and maturity. We risk missing Mary’s insight. We forget the corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth, his daily interactions with disciples, his hands of healing love, his great compassion for individuals and crowds who thirsted after the kind of life he exemplified and taught. We eagerly hear St. Paul’s words of resurrection as a spiritualization and conveniently forget his other difficult teachings of the resurrected body. We want to resurrect a spirit ministry but forget the hands-on nature of Jesus’ and Mary’s love. The risen Christ taught, yes, but he also fixed fish over a fire, broke bread, and otherwise entered the daily lives of his faithful followers. He taught them to feed hungry people, give clothes to the naked, heal the ill, and wash one another’s feet. Mary’s contemplation valued these acts as the greater things Jesus’ disciples would accomplish in the divine name.

Mary, Saint and patron of contemplatives, 

bless us as we join you in humble service, anointing the body’s hurts and communicating divine love. May we too contemplate the body of the living, dying, deceased, and risen Christ and come to see his and our bodies 

as the temples of the Holy Spirit of the Divine. 

Amen.

Fee photos by P Hoyle.
Can you think of them as somehow communicators of divinity?

Table Talk: Saints Rescue

This group of Artist Trading Cards are inspired by the shape of a bird's egg, one of the symbols associated with Saint Mary Magdalene who figures into this week's meditation on the body. Artistically the set was part of a larger group that comprised a study in contrast rather than making an illustration for Easter or an interpretation of a saint. I think I need to buy a better camera!

Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main

concern, and includes and is the soul;

Leaves of Grass, W. Whitman

     Growing up, I had never known saints religiously. I had never knelt at one’s shrine or addressed a saint to pray on my behalf. I had only known them as names of churches and towns: Saint “X” Catholic church and school in our city, the village St. Mary on the road to Topeka, and St. Paul’s Lutheran Church where our neighbors attended. Of course, I ran into more saints as I matured. In mid-life, I even told a few saint stories to children and used saint images in collages. I came to see the saints as icons of holiness. As such, the saints intrigued me.

     I started reading more about saints, wondering what perspectives they could lend my life and interests. I wanted saints to make statements that could bring together spirit and flesh, sacred and secular, and other pairs of contrasting values and experiences related to the human body and sexuality. I used (or misused, as one friend accused) saints in collage icons, showing advertising models as holy figures. I wanted to rescue saints from what, to my liberal Protestant self, seemed to be superstitious practices, and at the same time, to make symbolic statements that would communicate my own values.

     But I discovered saints don’t need rescuing. To my surprise, I found out that their lives, works, and legends could support life and work in the opening decades of a new millennium. Perhaps that’s too grandiose. What I needed to figure out was how they could guide, enrich, and, somehow, rescue me.

     For a while I had the notion that I might rescue Mary Magdalene by making her the patron saint of massage therapy. She got a bum rap over the course of both Catholic and Protestant centuries. She symbolized repentant sinners, not a bad thing in itself, but surely her patronage of them reflects the questionable assumption that she reformed after years of demon possession and prostitution, that her conversion into a follower of Jesus transformed her from a sex-focused individual to a spirit-filled person who didn’t need or want sex. The selling of sexual services has long been perceived, in Christian parlance, as one of the worst of sins, and Mary was saved from this awful life.

     I was surprised to discover that another long-standing tradition declared her to be patron of contemplatives. She supposedly became a mystic and a hermit, and if she did not really do so as a person, she did it as a saint, perhaps fulfilling some kind of Third or Fourth Century penance for having focused so much on the body in a prior lifestyle. To make her patron of massage therapists, I reasoned, might somehow rescue her by giving a positive slant on her body-centered activities and make a helpful statement about her continuing and important interest in Jesus’ body. The new assignment could honor Jesus’ words about this anointing female who for eons would be remembered for doing a beautiful thing.

     Whether or not Mary Magdalene was the anointer of this particular story, John’s gospel did picture her hurrying to the tomb to reverence Jesus’ dead body by anointing it. Neat switch. She, the corrupt turned clean, was to anoint the clean tragically turned corrupt. Mary was amazed to find that God had already rescued the corrupt body with the anointing of a new physical spiritual life. Still, her own work did not go unrecognized, and in John’s gospel, Mary became not only a rescued individual and an anointer of bodies, but also the first announcer of the good news of Christ’s resurrection.

     Since Mary was who she was and has come to symbolize both repentant sinners and contemplatives, my efforts really ought to aim at rescuing massage therapy and therapists, including myself. The saints represent holy values and have often rescued under-valued human experience. They show us how house cleaning, printing, hair dressing, carpentry, studying, and basket making are, in fact, sacred. Surely this is my present task. I want to help rescue massage therapy from its being equated by some with hired sex. I want to encourage people to see this work as communicating love, hope, and enthusiasm for life. I want to interpret massage therapists as caregivers to the holiness of the human body. 

Mary, dear Mary, as we give massages, may we honor you and ourselves with the same love Jesus showed you. In so doing, may we become bearers of the glad tidings of the body’s beauty, worth, and healing. Teach us not to fear touching the profane and the sacred in the human body. Help us anoint the lively and the dying with equal love and concern. Rescue us by becoming our symbol of acceptance, wholeness, and love. 

In the name of the lover of all humankind. 

Amen.

Table Talk: Miracle

Sunflowers mixed media with collage by Phillip Hoyle

     My primary massage teacher, Mark Manton, told our class we’d be lucky if we didn’t work miracles. I felt relieved, as if some expectation was lifted from me. I went into massage because I enjoyed the work and thought it to be a good way to make a living so I could afford to do my artwork. But in massage I had encountered assumptions about healing and miracles that paralleled those of some Christians. As a minister, I never wanted to be perceived as some kind of miracle worker. I understood events that some people considered miraculous simply to be experiences beyond our common understanding. Still, some people wanted their minister to perform miracles, and now I find myself dealing with the same issue in massage. Some clients want and even expect miracles. 

     Mark reasoned that people get the best results from massage therapy if they contribute to their healing by changing habits of posture, hydration, and more. But sometimes a therapist releases a trigger point, and a person who has endured pain for years walks away from the session pain-free. When that happens, all their relatives and friends may line up at the massage therapist’s door looking for the same instant healing. Always a teacher, Mark wanted his clients to learn responsibility for their own health, not dependence on him for miracle cures.

     Obviously, miraculous-seeming releases from pain do take place. They indicate something important about the wonders of the human body to heal and of the potential for human relationships to encourage that healing. That’s enough of an explanation for me. I don’t want to be responsible to perform or believe in miracles in massage. Still, I do my massage work in the context of Christian images and stories, a context full of miracles.

     Although I am not very interested in the miraculous as such, I do find a strong correlation between the traditional actions of Christian healers and the modern-day practice of massage therapists. Reading the Bible, the lives of saints, or church history, I pay close attention when a healer takes an ill person into his arms or uses oils to anoint. Such images spark my imagination. I like to picture the scene at the temple gate of the lame man, newly-healed by Jesus’ apostles, running and leaping and praising God. I take to heart the words of the blind man who, when questioned, said of Jesus’ miracle, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” This ancient story from John’s gospel intrigues me. And I am moved by the sight of a modern minister solemnly anointing a dying person as she refers to the ultimate healing of being gathered into the arms of the divine. The apostles had spoken powerful words; the lame walked. Jesus made a mud plaster and placed it in the man’s eyes; the blind could see. The minister touched the body of the terminally ill person; the patient found healing relief.

     Most of these images and traditions find a similar kind of expression in current massage practice. Massage creates a particular relationship between therapist and client, not unlike that of religious leader and follower. One approaches a massage with trusting faith that the practitioner will be prepared and the work will be effective. Entering a massage room may feel somewhat like entering a church for a religious ritual. The skilled touch takes a variety of forms, often anointing the skin with oil, an act akin to the sacrament of unction. The therapist’s words may appeal positively to a person’s faith and may further instruct the client in self-treatment and care. For me, the correlation is strong, at least in its movement and its faith content. And besides, I now want to imagine myself as somehow continuing a healing ministry in the tradition of Jesus. The difficulty comes in the recognition that, in addition to being a teacher, Jesus was known as a miracle worker.

     While I incorporate these healing images into my work, I still have no expectation to perform miracles. Rather, I tend to think of my massage as an art, and list it alongside my writing and painting. I sometimes worry about designating massage as artifice. Is art adequate to healing? Can assuming a dramatic role be authentic? Will it heal? The ancient Greeks thought so. Surely some of their traditions have survived in Eastern Orthodox churches although many practices have been lost. Perhaps the older way of mixing drama, music, incense, and ointments in relationship with healing holds the key to my own growing understanding of my healer self.

Rio Grande mixed media with collage
by Phillip Hoyle

     I, an artist, may teach, but I hope never to work a miracle. I will lay my hands on person after person in order to touch their pain and release their muscles. I hope at least some clients will realize the beauty of their own lives, and I suppose that might be considered a miracle.




Life symbols in my mixed media paintings speak of natural processes that sustain life. I have always been amazed to find sunflowers adorning the driest landscapes and have long been amazed at the long, life-sustaining course of the Rio Grande River from southern Colorado, through the center of New Mexico, along the southwestern border of Texas and Mexico, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Our lives likewise have great resources for both sustenance and meaning, even in life's most challenging moments.

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: 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. 

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.

Table Talk: Meditations on Massage

     Mom passed on a bit of Jewish wisdom. “In the old days,” she told me, “a rabbi learned a trade as well as to be a religious leader and teacher.” She repeated the information several times as I was preparing to study religion and practice ministry. I assumed she was talking about rabbis, while she was advising me in her typically oblique style. I didn’t take the hint. So at age fifty, as I considered leaving congregational ministry, I had no trade to fall back on as a way to make a living, no interest in other kinds of church work, and no desire for another profession. 

     My situation was complicated by my recent separation from my wife of many years. We had irreconcilable differences; at least we couldn’t see our way to solve them. The separation was amiable although not without anger, sadness, and stress. Thoughtful, moody, elated, and a little unsure, I was making my way into a new life of relationships and vocation.

     I felt unprepared to switch to some other kind of work. I wanted to find a job that would allow me time and energy to write and do artwork. Nothing seemed quite right. From the organizations to which I applied for jobs, I got polite rejections. But in my daily perusal of want ads, I kept stopping to read ads for massage schools. "What a kick that would be," I thought. I could work part-time as a massage therapist and still do the other projects. Friends who wondered if I was falling apart might be relieved to know I was at least going to school.

     So I enrolled in massage school to learn the skill I should have mastered in response to my mother hints. Immediately I was intrigued by the diversity of my classmates. They included nurses, a physical therapist, teachers, a recreation director, an office administrator, a computer specialist, and others, whose work I could not quite determine. One student had studied bug science, another physical education; several had not completed high school. We ranged in age from seventeen to fifty-four. Two students claimed to have come to earth in some distant past from other galaxies, and I could almost believe them, given their distinctive perspectives and personalities. Although I had spent much of my life hanging around with artists and musicians, most of them had been related to the church and, as colorful as their lives seemed, they paled when compared to the lives of this new group of students and friends.

     Care-giving practices and values developed during many years of ministry extended into my new work. I knew how to listen to my clients who sometimes unveiled troubling aspects of their lives. I took them and their perspectives seriously. But now, rather than the church, massage therapy became the subject of my meditation; its practice, my daily discipline. I began to contemplate the human body as the occasion of divine communication.

     I found Christian teachings and images useful to me as I gave and wrote about massages. I thought about how the body is so often perceived in the church’s theology, how its urges often have been called the enemy, and how it has been degraded as dying flesh. I gained insights into biblical stories as I realized my work sometimes mimicked the actions of ancient healers. And I started thinking about biblical and canonical saints and appropriated them as symbols for the nurturing and healing work of massage therapy.

     My volunteer work at Colorado AIDS Project invited an additional level of reflection. I came to appreciate massage therapy in relationship with matters of death as well as matters of life. Giving massages to chronically or terminally ill persons has provided a perspective that seems helpful to my clients and sustaining to me as one who works with them in the extremity of their illness.

     Some people are surprised by the idea, but I now consider bodywork to be not only my trade, but also my ministerial practice. The stories I will present in weeks to come try to express how this is so. Perhaps the correlation of Christian and massage images may be as helpful to others as they have been to me.

A shaman ran by, painting by Phillip Hoyle

In its focus on healing, bodywork seems to me more
 closely aligned with the work of shamans rather than ministers.
Still, ministers do engage in healing work, but in my experience it arose
in connection with hospital ministry and sometimes counseling.
I learned enough in such work to help prepare me for this hands-on work.
My understanding of my massage work mixes Christian and other images 

in my mind and practice.

Watching Shavano

Antler Dream by Phillip Hoyle

All my life I’ve lived in buildings whether a single-family home, duplex, dormitory, or apartment; always a building except for a few days I lived in tents. Then I cooked over a campfire, slept on a thin mat on the ground, snuggled into my bedroll, and yearned for more comfortable accommodations. I’ve endured few days without running water, central heat, or electricity, days that taught me to appreciate my life of relative physical ease.

     But now in Shavano Valley, I sit alone on a low sandstone outcropping looking across to the desert-painted escarpment that defines the valley’s northern edge along Spring Mesa. I can make out the old Ute trail that climbs the steep slope amid boulders black, red, and tan that for centuries provided shelter to people who camped there. The people came and went, staying a season, chipping stone tools, hunting deer and elk, processing nuts and berries, weaving baskets and mats, and making ready for the challenges and opportunities of the seasons to come. They followed predictable migration patterns year after year. These people, who included the precursors of modern Utes, found reasons to return to this spot on the eastern edge of the plateau lands that stretch far to the west. While they camped, they marked their habitation not only with castoffs but also with hundreds of petroglyphs. I sit here trying to imagine their lives.

     I know my contemplation is hardly more than speculation. I have little experience in common with my subjects except to know how the desert sun burns, the rocks hurt, and the cacti prick. Summer days here are usually hot; the nights cool and sometimes chilly. The daytime sky is almost always sunny; the nighttime sky brilliantly full of stars. Daytime reveals grasshoppers, dragonflies, black flies, bees, and small clouds of gnats; nighttime swarms with mosquitoes. I guess without screens, the place might become pretty uncomfortable. I live here in a house with screens.

     For nearly forty years I have read about Native Americans but don’t know much about the Utes, particularly the Uncompahgre band, who lived in western Colorado near the San Juan Mountains and used to stop here. So this summer I’m supplementing my knowledge by reading all the books Montrose Public Library offers on the tribe and its several bands. That’s not much. A 1920s study, Western Colorado Petroglyphs, includes a chapter about the stone carvings in the valley where I now sit. On my first try to locate its reported petroglyphs, I found a group of two carvings un-catalogued. The author, W.C. McKern, and his team of archaeologists and anthropologists probably needed another day in the valley. He reasoned both early and late Utes were nomadic, but the eariler limitation of foot travel made for more consistency in technique in the pre-horse society. The later petroglyphs display a great variety of techniques indicating for McKern changes in Ute culture due to the increased mobililty provided by horses. The new hurry-up society took less time for artwork and borrowed time-saving techniques from tribes they had never before known. I have gained perspective for my consideration from this and other books and recalled two titles about Utes I read when I was young: Ouray the Arrow and The Last Indian War. Books and my memories from books are aiding my understanding.

     Place names on maps and in local lore have provided a few clues for my consideration. I’ve walked the Indian trail up the side of the mesa, gazed at Indian Lookout on the edge of the valley just a short walk from where I sit, drove the ten miles up Colo. 90 to Arrowhead Springs picnic area, and visited the city of Ouray about thirty miles to the south. I’ve looked trying to imagine the Utes there but think this valley is my best place for contemplation. So I’ve clambered over the boulders around Picture Rocks and made rubbings of many petroglyphs. I’ve searched other outcroppings in the valley hoping to discover more petroglyphs. I didn’t find any. None appeared at Indian Lookout, but I did discover great views of the valley. I climbed another, taller butte about half a mile away where there was no evidence that anyone else had climbed it (well, this is a fantasy of discovery). A shed snakeskin lay beside a small pool of water, an observation that brought caution to my steps and the good idea to climb back down to the road. But first from this high point I took in the vista that included the valley’s far north end. A scout could sight intruders or visiting friends from sufficient distance to alert anyone living near Picture Rocks, but he’d have to run.

     Sitting here on my low rock, I wonder if the concentration of petroglyphs across the valley ever served as a place for vision quests. I imagine I am an older man (not too difficult for one in his mid-forties) who watches from the distance to be sure the young man in his charge doesn’t get into trouble during his vision quest. I am alert to the possibility of other tribes moving through the area and want the youngster to be safe. I sit in solitary far across the valley out of sight in the shadows of these rocks. The young man has no idea I watch. At that distance he appears to be about the size of a tiny ant.

     I realize the fantasy is probably off course. Any young man seeking the power of the spirits would surely be unafraid of other possible dangers he might encounter. He seeks power for protection, motivation, and personal strength and would not tolerate the unnecessary care of some tribal elder. I don’t have any idea if this is true and wonder how customs varied from tribe to tribe. Did the Utes even have vision quests?

     The books. I’ve read nothing actually written by Utes. I have found some traditional stories collected by ethnologists and several accounts of Ute encounters written by early settlers. These latter were mostly observations about how different and primitive the Utes seemed to them, stories about fears and about meeting fears. I hope someday to find more such resources and possibly tribal histories written by Native authors.

     Although there were few written records, there are things the ancient residents left behind. I look for arrowheads on the hillside above the canal road. After a rainstorm a couple of years ago my nephew found a beautiful point just below here on the road. I search the top of the hill where some large rocks and a scattering of junipers and piñon pines could have sheltered a family or two. About halfway down the hill I find a rock that may have served as a pestle. Its river-rock shape and igneous origin differ from the sandstone all around. I’m sure someone left it here. I search under trees, among boulders, in full sun and shade, and find several chips of hard rocks that contrast with the sandstone. Finally I locate half of a broken arrowhead. Did a lone watcher sit here making points for his arrows while a young vision-seeker or a cluster of families lived across the valley beneath the escarpment? I don’t know the reasons why, but I do know someone was here. Perhaps many people over the ages called this valley home.

     History depends on things read, things found, and ultimately, things imagined. I wonder how to envision what is not here and how to see what I cannot imagine. My wife’s uncle, a very successful Paleolithic point collector, once told me he always went collecting with a buddy who could see the tiny points that he himself could never see. His friend always overlooked the larger points. Between them they reaped a generous harvest of things left behind by an older culture. I’m out here alone and wonder what I’m missing; surely it must be plenty.

     In this valley, white settlers enthusiastically erected buildings, dug wells, strung fences, and planted fields once the Utes were forced to move away to Utah. Yet these pioneers were latecomer recipients of the valley’s fertile offerings. Before their exploitation began, the valley had given up harvests of reeds, succulents, and cacti; flowers, herbs, berries, nuts, seeds, and roots; deer, elk, beaver, and rabbits; and much more. The petroglyphs on boulders and cliff faces celebrate the plants and animals along with other wonders. People had been coming here to hunt, harvest, socialize, dance, and thrive for centuries.

     Shavano Valley had many artesian springs and, still sixty years ago, according to my father-in-law, lots of wetlands. Beaver lived here, but farmers wanted more land to plow. They filled springs with rocks, drained bogs, and otherwise prepared the flattest portions for cultivation of crops: potatoes, onions, corn, beans, and grains. They killed off the beaver, but before long more of them would move in and burrow into the banks of the drainage undermining valuable farmland and damaging roads. The farmers here continue to wage war with nature to wrest out an uncertain living. That’s one of the things farmers do.

     Now as a citified adult on sabbatical from my life-long church-related career, I am in the valley considering the past and my own past. I write, read, hike, and help out with Grandpa, who is afflicted with some type of senile dementia. I refinish furniture, keep the yard and flowers near the house, and even chase the cows out of the green alfalfa. I am pleased to be doing all these things. The leisure of it has taken me back to childhood, to my early loves as I walk the valley and simply watch.

     With too few facts and too much imagination, I sit here weaving images. I really can’t imagine myself living in a brush wikiup or in the shelter of huge boulders with a roof of sticks overhead, a rush mat beneath. I don’t know what I am looking at. If people lived a few feet away from where I found this arrow point, just where did they build a fire, erect their hut, or lay out their blankets? The attempt to picture it seems the proper outcome from my having lived as a wanna-be Indian, but I realize I cannot know. The problem with my efforts is the superimposition of my own experience and values. I wonder if there is any validity in my ideas, and I wonder about my theme of protection. Probably this latter is a projection related to the fact that from my rock I can see the house where my son, daughter-in-law, and several grandkids live. Part of my vision includes my intergenerational concerns. I want my kids and grandkids to gain visions here for their lives, to gain dreams of possibility and hope.

     I feel small in this valley with its huge boulders, steep escarpments, and awesome breadth. I feel unprotected. Who is watching out for me? My father died a few months ago, and my mother and in-laws are aged and frail. I sit on the cusp of becoming an elder watching a generation pass as a new generation grows here. I wonder how often this ancient place has watched such developments. It’s seen the change of ages, the archaeologists’ Archaic-, Proto-, Prehistoric, and Historic Utes, then Whites, and now my wife’s family’s fifth generation! But this last is little, as small as I am in the landscape.

     I think of my months here as being an in-between time similar to the Native vision quest. I am nearing the end of my career. I’ll give it one more shot hoping to work in churches until retirement. But I know I will never do this work in the same way, with the same meanings, or to the same ends. My Shavano break is for me definitely a visionary time for gaining a renewed personal insight into what I have and have not done, a chance to explore other themes of importance. It offers me power to live in a new way. I laugh at my self-important language. I am simply having a plain old midlife crisis. I really love not going into the office, not attending endless meetings, and not delivering sermons and speeches. I like tramping around the hills with little schedule or responsibility.

     Watching Shavano, I experience the exhilarating excitement of imagination mixed with the dulling realization of not knowing. My attempt to correlate these experiences has been a life-long try. Had I never lived in a house with electricity’s advantages, I think I wouldn’t question myself so thoroughly. I view Shavano, the valley’s shortening then lengthening shadows, its contrast of desert browns with plowed field greens, its variety-filled landscape, its constant flow of water, its maturing crops, and its abundant native plants; its changes minute and large. Watching, I place myself in a landscape of possibility and change.

Denver, 2010

Shavano Valley's Spring Mesa escarpment, home of dozens of petroglyphs