Clear-Minded Insights of (Self-)Awareness

Professional massage therapists are at their best when in a state of love with every client.

Here is a definition of the purpose of massage therapy:

“Massage is a systematic manual application of pressure and movement to the soft tissue of the body– the skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia (the membrane surrounding muscles and muscle groups). It is felt to encourage healing by promoting the flow of blood and lymph, relieving tension, stimulating nerves, and stretching and loosening muscles and connective tissue to keep them elastic.”
– http://www.camreports.hs.columbia.edu/diseases.html

It might seem strange that “love” and “musculoskeletal therapy” could belong in the same sentence…

Why is love so important for therapeutic massage?

Understand love as a beneficial and nurturing attitude, choice, state of being, and style of perception. It’s not really something you do or have or give, but something you experience and abide in. Attitudes are contagious: when you are in a loving state, others in contact with you are more likely to experience the healing, calming state of love.

Clients will sense that you’re more present, more attentive, more confident, more committed when you are simply loving. This is huge. All you have to do is hold the positive attitude of lovingness as described already, and all those other qualities develop automatically. These are the qualities that will keep people coming back to you – if they benefit from it. These are also the qualities that help inspire people that Yes, they can heal. And it inspires clients to actually do their agreed physical homework (like strengthening or stretching or ice packs) between sessions. The presence of love inspires trust and relaxation in people. (An exception are individuals who have strong psychological barriers.) This means most people will become receptive to the manual techniques and further positive states you bring.

As a massage therapist, you’re transmitting “states of being” through one of the most powerful mediums: physical touch

Once I made a girl have to pee, just by touch. =) I held that “have to pee!!” feeling in my mind and rocked her leg. (When I stopped and disengaged, she didn’t have to pee anymore.) This was when a massage teacher had students secretly hold an emotion, and see what happened when they rocked their partner’s leg at the same time. Recipients, who were lying back with their eyes closed, afterward reported spot-on or close to the emotion intended by the transmitting person.

If emotions and states of being can be transmitted so effectively through touch, imagine how therapeutic it can be to convey the healing, nurturing state of love!

Massage is so much about helping soft tissues wake up and realize that some healing process has been interrupted, slowed, or ineffectively carried out. Everything from daily living to exercise puts stress all over our bodies… and at its best, the body mends and adapts to such things very effectively for many decades. Most of us aren’t living in the most healing environments and mental states, however, so mending isn’t as effective as it could be. Sometimes it’s downright sloppy! Internal microtears, joint misalignments, fascial dehydration, metabolic waste buildup, and wounds of all sorts (including emotional) accumulate into tightening, pain, scar tissue, and poor postures.

A quality of love is for the body to respond appropriately to current reality. If loving appreciation is about accepting reality for what it is… then the body follows suit. Old, unneeded tensions held in the body release. Fibrous connective tissue that holds our muscles and bones and guts together – the fascia – gradually relaxes out of outdated protective constrictions (like overzealous sports wrap), especially with hands-on manipulation. Occasionally it will liquefy rapidly just by a loving mental attitude… the most dramatic example for me felt like waves of lava. I was lying down in a relaxed, loving meditation focused on healing the body. Suddenly the back of my neck (which had been painful and tight for months) flashed hot and ‘melted’ like downward lava over the next couple minutes. In the mirror, my shoulders were no longer hunched up! They’ve never been as bad since.

If a massage therapist can successfully transmit a state of loving, relaxed, acceptance of reality… the clients’ own bodies can experience similar transformations. Professional training accelerates and guides the process by physically by moving/lengthening parts into the right places, stimulating various reflexes, and breaking up old internal scar tissue (fibrosis/adhesion). Love – a nonlinear intuitive mindset – combined with intellectual training – linear and logical – allows such powerful and holistic treatment. Again – a bodywork professional who trains himself in intellectual or mechanical understanding must also train himself in managing his mental and emotional state of being to be excellent. Most successful therapists know this to some degree. Many don’t understand how love is such a powerful and appropriate state of being to embody. It is practical, essential, and totally relevant when understood for what it is.

On the other hand, some therapists de-emphasize intellectual understanding of the physics and mechanics of bodies, favoring instead divine or inherent healing powers. I believe reiki and energy-only healing has its wonderful place. But it’s a mistake for a client who truly needs massage therapy: it often results in a session that feels good or is psychologically/spiritually relieving, but doesn’t result in lasting bodily change. Sometimes bodily ills are purely psychological or energetic, and energy work is all they need. Great! But if bodies have been physically shoved out of health for so many years (or in one-time traumas), illness and thus treatment is best physical as well as energetic, mental, emotional, or spiritual.

Also, the dominant belief system of our culture is that physical illness is cured by physical intervention… Many clients’ minds will not allow their own healing unless there is physical manipulation. Until those clients are educated and experienced enough to understand the multiple aspects of healing, you serve them best by at minimum working with where they’re at. For all these reasons it is normally extremely effective to work in both physical and other dimensions simultaneously. Coincidentally, I believe this allows for some of the most intense experiences for both client and practitioner, which is a challenge I gravitate toward. Transmitting love is a type of energy healing work, by the way — but we don’t need to call it that for it to serve its purpose.

Love needs to be balanced with other human capacities. Otherwise you observe what I call “large heart syndrome”: There is so much love! You can feel their hearts radiating good will, sensitivity, desire to serve, not wanting to hurt a single soul… But there is some sort of incompetence and inability hindering them; they have not used other aspects of their humanity (will, intelligence, resources, focused attention) to develop their capacity to serve through the level of tangible reality. Tangible skill has great practical value. Tangible reality is a medium for transmitting and actualizing the positive intentions of love.

A cycle of dependency results from lack of true love. In love, you don’t want your clients to have to come back to you. You want them to heal and be so functional and healthy and alive on their own that they don’t need your services at any level. If it’s only a want and a pleasure and no more therapeutic intervention is needed, then great!  The truest love spreads empowerment – you want them to be in a place where they’ll do great whether without your massage or with it. That is freedom.

How does love affect communication with the client?

Love compels you to interact more with the client, to recognize and care about their needs. If you hit a sore spot, it’s natural to acknowledge their verbal noises, even mirroring them. (Normally you’ll want to be slightly quieter or more subtle than your client with vocalizations, so you don’t distract them from their own body and emotional process.) As a skilled, loving therapist, you can make some sort of supportive vocalization as you sense something beneath your hands (“ah” or “here it is”), at the same time or immediately before the client says something or twitches.  They’ll wonder how you knew. =)

I mentioned in Part 1 that love facilitates accurate intuition. Ideas about next steps can go straight through to your hands without conscious understanding of why exactly you’re doing it… This is very powerful. Intuitive nudges will also suggest whether it’s working or not, and when to stop, and how to modify. But when in doubt, consciously monitor any results (along with the client’s face and breathing!), and ask the client.  Asking the client what they’re feeling is a reality check in the spirit of humility and service.

How do you prevent a massage therapy client from misinterpreting your love as romantic or inappropriate?

One protection is making clear your philosophy and understanding of love, like I am here.

Here’s one scenario:  A client can be so overwhelmed by your unconditional love through touch that they think they’re falling in love with you.  But really it’s probably not you, but the vibe that you give them permission to experience.   They may project that you are the source of their love, whereas it’s actually an attitude already accessible within them at any time.   You can let your clients know that emotions and states of a wide variety are very common during massage therapy.  You can reiterate your purpose as a therapist and your focus for the session. Perhaps more importantly —

Focus and clarify your own intentions like a laser.  People can sense intentions from a mile away.  People can really sense intentions through your hands.  If your mind wanders into inappropriate thoughts (erotic, aggressive, romantic, or distracted life thoughts), instantly forgive the lapse.  You are a funny human animal. =)   And immediately guide your focus back to your purpose:  you’re there to manipulate soft tissues, facilitate bodily healing, and thereby improve overall quality of life.  You do this in love and understanding and expertise.

Manage the visual and verbal impressions you give off, which might be different than what you’re holding in mind consciously. Do you come across as professional? Seductive? Cold? Friendly? Aggressive? Ask trusted others who are able to give criticism about how you come across in various situations. Decide what impressions you want to cultivate as a massage therapist that will allow no doubt in your clients’ minds what your intentions are.

Another way to incorporate love professionally into massage therapy is by client intention work, which takes the law of attraction and amplifies it under ideal conditions.   Propose that your client think of (ideally write down) a positive intention about their life or their body or both.  Inform them they can either tell you what it is or not.  You are not their counselor – this role separation minimizes overattachment and dependence.  Regardless of the intention’s content, though, ask how it feels in their body when they hold that intention in mind.  Ask more until you really get a palpable sense of it for yourself:  maybe a lightness in the chest, a relaxed feeling in the abdomen, giggly loose happiness, a non-painful shoulder, whatever it is.  This will give you a major focus for how to align with your clients’ ideal state of being, and work with the tissues accordingly!  This means you are working with their mental expectations and ideals, rather than only imposing your own.  With professional training you know how to manually lighten a chest, relax the abdomen, loosen joints, and relieve shoulder pain.   Have fun and get it done!

Ask not only what’s wrong with them, but their ideal healthy state reflected in their body and hold that in mind.  Encourage the client to hold their intention in mind and visualize (feel) it throughout the massage as well.  In a relaxed, loving state, intentions readily embed themselves in the unconscious mind… which has direct effect on unconscious functions of the body.

You and the client are focusing on an inspired vision of the client’s potential reality, together focusing on an explicitly healing purpose.  This draws attention off of any questionable relationship between you and the client.  Any feelings of nurturing, caring, and support the client feels are more clearly understood as toward the healing purpose and not as a personal, inappropriate affection.

Be realistic and make no promises about fixing, curing, or healing them.  But in love, you facilitate their empowerment and bodily healing by helping things along.  Transformative effects are evident with this client-intention method and with love overall.  Love is nothing less than transformative in professional treatment work with its open recognition of how things are now, and inspiration toward potential healing and growth.