The dark and stormy path

The curving and dangerous road of illness and injury is a path most of us go down at some point in our lives. Most of the time except the last, we manage to find our way out. My experience with most illness and injury is that it is a case of distancing yourself from the problem. The crux of the healing comes from walking back out on the path that got us here.

In my experience many illnesses such anxiety, chronic sinus infection, compressed disks, headaches are a pattern we create a virtual path that we walk. One step after another into the dark forest and obviously if we saw that it was a dark forest we would never go in there. (OF course some still will <smokers>). So it creeps up on us. We ignore the signs until it is upon us.

In the process of taking down a pattern that leads up to something like anxiety attacks you have to go back through the symptoms that you ignored on the way there. Which means that you start to feel the pains and problems you ignored prior. It really is a journey back to health. But going through all this on the way out can be scary. It is easy to think the healing journey is making you worse.

The process of walking out is an up and down pattern . You improve then it snaps back to close to where you were, but not quite. You keep going through this up and down aspect of healing, improving and learning the pattern you created in the first place. Soft tissue work in healing is not about “inflicting” changes on your body, it is about relaxing your body in particular places to so it can readjust to a pattern it likes. Your body really does all the work, I just help it relax and heal.

So, stand up straight, take a deep breath, a tall glass of water and get a massage. Experience what the road to healing feels like.

“Massage?! Who me? No way! I love being uptight, stressed out, bordering on stroking out at any second, and putting my body through the wringer on a daily basis! That’s where the excitement is.” Seriously though wouldn’t you like a nice quiet, warm, relaxing place, where you could truly and deeply relax even for just an hour? I know where you can get that, right here in St. Cloud. Yes, I know you have heard that massage is relaxing but you don’t have time for it. It costs too much, or my favorite excuse, How can I trust the therapist not to …”touch” me.
Well, It IS my profession to touch you, to work the soft tissue. It is my ethics and professionalism to work only the appropriate tissue. It is a no judgment zone. I don’t care if you are emaciated (REALLY REALLY THIN), overweight (I think everyone knows this when they see it), or somewhere in between. There are so many physiological functions of where, how, why, what (lather, rinse, repeat) going on that there really is not a lot of space for anything else.
That statement is one that strikes my funny bone more than you can imagine, but I understand the fear. It is said in a variety of different ways, by both men and women, but the feeling is the same. How can they relax when the fear of being violated is lurking. While the Massage Therapy profession and the State of Florida has put many laws into place to protect you, the client, it ultimately falls to personal professional ethics.
From a massage “therapists” point of view it is the furthest thing from my mind when you are on the table. Speaking from my own perspective, when I lay my hands on my client’s body my thoughts go to: are they hot, cold? Is it circulation or do I need to warm the room? Is the circulation in this area good? If not where is the flow blocked? What musculature is in that area? Does the tight musculature in that area correspond to what I saw in their movement when they walked in? How are they breathing? Is the entire rib cage moving, or just part of it? All that assessment and more are constantly going on. Then there is the actually body work, the constant questions and focused thought of the minute differences in tissue placement, temperature, alignment, and circulation demands 100% attention.
The first 15 minutes of a massage for the client is about determining whether the touch being applied is “safe”. My job is to take you through this time of determination while applying therapeutic work. Regular massage shortens this time due to familiarity. But it is still part of the process of relaxing.
SO stand up straight, Take a deep breath, a tall glass of water and relaxxxxxxxx. The water is fine.