My Lessons When Someone Else Bares It All

When I'm away from massage on my few days off I feel a little strange coming back into it. Touching mostly nude people with MY hands. These hands that use to type 30 plus emails a day and answer phones at my old job now know something more therapeutic. I have to reassure myself this is happening and I know what to do. I can help melt knots and tight muscles, aide in a person's health and healing if they allow it.

With this job I have to deal with many personality types, like in life, but here I have learned to put up my protective shield to stop the unwanted energy/responsibility. I had one client who complained of a constant headache from a bad eye surgery. The first half we were talking about many ways she had tried to fix the pain but with no relief and how no doctor wanted to get involved. I found myself feeling ill with empathy from her dead end situation. I needed to put up the wall and do my work. I just tried to use the information to lead my hands. I felt relief when I let myself be o.k. with no responsibility to fix her but I did offer her some avenues for her journey.

In this business I could take a class on techniques every week for five years and still have not learned everything. I am an infant in massage. That's why now when I get a client who is picky, angry, or judgmental I handle it better than I did in the past. I used to battle intimidation by these types but in massage I'm more relaxed. I'm aware that I can't be anything other than who I currently am. I offer good intention and all the tools that I have. One can choose to receive that or not I can only do my part. One client told me at the end of a massage that it was "beautiful...like a blessing". That made me so happy because she received my message/massage :).

Therapists can take it personally when a client doesn't relax. I am getting great at separating someone else's STUFF from mine. I had a client whom I could tell was very protective and untrusting when she would scarcely fill out the intake form. On the table she was stiff and kept her bra on, her arms clutched under her chest, her eyes open, she wouldn't use the headrest and she had her phone with her on the table like a Teddy Bear. She lay on the table contorted. This was a massage I was tempted to stop because I felt like we were wasting our time. She was not even relaxing so what was the point. But I kept on and told myself, "this is her massage it's not about me". I figured out her fear came in with her as we just met. It's never from me. I wondered what experiences she might have had that made her so uncomfortable. When I lifted the sheet to massage her leg her purse lay there under the sheet with her. I had to laugh to myself. I began to empathize and figured this was probably a big step in trust for her so I was glad to be a part of it. She was finicky during the massage; don't touch this or that and can you put the lotion on this way. I obliged her requests because I felt like she wanted me to give up on her. She really put up a fight when someone was being nice to her and I doubt many people had stuck it out with her. She even said the massage was good when we ended. Wow, you just never know what someone has been through!

Peace!

Sexual Assult Is Everyone's Issue

Here is a TED talk from a man who calls the violence against women a men's issue. YES!
http://www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue.html
There seemed to be a lot of interest in the blog about my first massage and I have to think it was because I talked some about overcoming sexual abuse. A long time ago I heard a statistic that 1 in 4 women will be a victim of sexual assault. When I heard that I was in a large auditorium full of students and I looked around the room and thought how many of us were in the same boat like it or not.


One in four college women report being sexually assaulted http://genderuniversity.com

My abuse was from a trusted person, as most abuses are. He was my gym teacher when I was about 6 years old. It took me many years to realize there was abuse because um, I was a baby! Back then I thought of him as a favorite teacher and I was sad when he left our elementary school. Years later in Jr. High I ran into him in the hallway as a dean at my new school and my fond memories evolved into, "Hey wait a second!" I was cold to him (as a 12-14 year old) through the years there. He seemed to be confined to the boys' gym activities at that school anyway so our encounters were few. I warned my little sister of him once she attended but that's the only person I felt the need to tell at the time.

In college I wrote about the abuse in a creative writing class. Still just seeing it as a previous incident. In the papers grade notes the professor suggested I might speak to a professional about the matter. That didn't register because I always saw it as something "in the past". There was nothing to it anymore as far as I knew.

In discussing the college paper with my parents I got some more information about what happened. My mother said she went to the principle at one point because I cried over a report card where Mr. _ gave me a "C". She said I was extremely upset. I told her he promised me an "A" (if I did what he asked). Hopefully that red flag had something to do with why he got moved to Jr. High teaching boys.

http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/sexinfo/

Fast forward to my first massage at age 24 where I came to the realization the abuse was not confined to the past but still with me. I discovered there was still distrust in my body revealed in the very spot he would sit near. After the massage it was more clear to me how in my daily life I was putting myself in similar uncomfortable situations but allowing it because it was what someone else wanted. What I wanted was secondary and unfamiliar. I realized I had been repeating that same situation over and over and over up to the present day. Still experiencing that discomfort and having no voice it was as if I had been 6 all of those years. I became very sad. I was diagnosed with PTSD in therapy and was prescribed pills for a year.
But I also broke the cycle.

Yes, this is personal information. It's boiled down but there is no shame just one of my life's many victories.

Clearing Chakras For Grandma



From http://decording.wordpress.com/

I want to talk about massage and changing generational habits. A while ago I understood the concept that we can stop, redirect or change behaviors in ourselves that have been going on in our family line for generation after generation which was so empowering to me. If I could change myself I could stop dysfunction for future generations. The buck could stop here? That is amazing to think about. Each of us has so much power for change that effects not only ourselves and our future family’s behavior but might I say the world.

That concept came up recently again when I got a massage for lower back pain where there is so much tightness in my hip area. My sister said, "We (our family) inherited tight muscles there".

After the massage I had a lot more emotions surfacing and I looked up what the energy gurus say is contained in that region. I thought what if it's not the tight muscles my family inherited but the way we process or don't process our emotions that we pass on and on. As a result we end up with tight hips and back pain. That's kinda what I've been thinking about. And the fact I sit way too much.

Do you have any family traits or behaviors that you can identify?

Above is one of several chakra charts out there. I find it interesting to note what could be going on where there is pain or tightness.
Sacral Chakra – The sacral chakra located about two inches below the belly button. It is associated with emotions, sex, manifestation, trusting the universe, and feeling enough. When the chakra is closed, a person will try to control everything in their reality and not be open to assistance. They will often feel inferior and unworthy. When the chakra is opened and balanced, they will be flowing in alignment with the universe and working with it. http://www.youaretrulyloved.com/enlightenment/vocabulary/#C

Massage Often Reveals My Junk





From Daily Cup of Massage

My first massage was not my idea. I was in my mid 20's and had a friend who was getting into spiritual stuff and healing. She did the research and always found Cat psychics, Priests who told your fortune, Mormon housewife healers, Psychiatrists and Doctors who would treat her for free. She swore by this energy massage guy Robert True and thought I should go for some healing myself. I just wanted someone to rub my tight neck.

I went alone to a regular house in an upper class neighborhood and parked around back where the basement studio was one evening. Robert was nice but it wasn't a traditional Swedish Massage. He did strange breathing and exhaling and I told myself I'm not falling for this stuff. I hadn't really heard of foot reflexology at the time but I recall the footwork and the pain he found in the arch of my feet. OMG!

Near the end I was lying face down when he was moving up from my feet and stopped at my mid back. His hands just hovered there for what seemed like many minutes. Doing nothing. I went from questioning him to anger for wasting massage time to utter deep sadness. He revealed to me the lack of trust I carried from abuse done by a teacher who would sit close to that very spot when I was just six.

I wept as I got dressed. I couldn't explain it at the time and I never expected anything like that to happen. But that massage changed my life in a positive way. It started an avalanche of events toward my healing from a trauma I hadn't realize was still with me.