ALTARED STATES - PREFACE TO "THE ART OF MASSAGE" TEXTS
The essay below is the preface to my on-line book of collected texts for deep reflection on our work - here is the link to all the texts (also registered as a CE)
“ALTARED” STATES
I have always enjoyed my massage tables. They are efficient and beautiful tools of the trade. But I never thought about massage tables very deeply until a few years ago.
In the Spring of 2017, I returned from a wonderful yoga retreat in Tulum, Mexico. During that time I received three massages, each excellent. After my second massage, I happened to meet a young, friendly man who introduced himself as Leo. I had heard high recommendations of his work from other people in the retreat – so I decided to sign up for a massage from him as my last session there. In that session, something happened that has changed how I perceive and give every massage.
I had signed up for a traditional Mayan “Yoot Keen” Massage. Leo began with some quite deep and specific abdominal work. It was interesting, as deep abdominal work often seems to bring up survival issues, due in large part to its being the largest vulnerable area of the body, having little bony protection. And of course it contains our “vital organs.” So Leo’s work here was a somewhat edgy. I had a little anxiety and mild discomfort in a few places, but overall it felt just like good deep abdominal work.
He then continued working with me, expertly covering the feet, legs, chest, arms, hands, head and neck with good, solid very three-dimensional work. Then he asked me to turn over to being prone and soon after turning over I had the distinct experience that I was no longer on a massage table.
What I felt then was that I was rather on an altar! The rest of the session I experienced not on a massage table – I felt distinctly that I was on an altar. As such everything he did seemed to have a sacred context, as well being physically effective. I felt more dramatically the freeing and aligning of my physical structures. I also felt an easy, organic flow of memories – as if past events in my life were circulating through me as well – releasing old no longer useful patterns and amplifying gifts from the past that I could yet own more deeply. So both time and space were being freed within. Most striking overall though was that overriding experience of being on an altar.
This brought home to me that there can be, even more consciously than I previously cultivated, a very natural, yet very sacred aspect to massage. Altars are basically not so different from any other table, whether it be study desk, massage table, a dinner table, or otherwise. The main difference is that we place on them objects of reverence, things that remind us of or may evoke a sense of sacredness.
If the client is on the altar, then every stroke has a sacred dimension. This doesn’t require any pretense – only the awareness that just as massage affects the body, and sometimes the mind, it can equally affect the spirit. And when the spirit is affected positively, it makes the context “sacri-ficial” (meaning literally “to make sacred”). The table then functions, in such moments, however brief or extended in duration, as an altar.
Spirit can mean many things, to many people. To me it is connected to the sense that this life is a gift. It is not ego-centered – spirit is not mine. It can manifest just as a sense of gratitude. It may be felt as a sense of energy flowing through us. Or it just may be the elation and natural ecstasy explored wonderfully in Robert Johnson’s book, “Ecstasy: Understanding the Psychology of Joy.” In that book, Dr. Johnson’s talks about the human need for experiences which transcend our everyday reality, these experiences fundamentally nourishing our being. We all have moments when we feel transfigured by experiencing the beauty of the natural world or of great art. We may have a conversation or a moment in a relationship that changes our lives.
To have the spirit touched awakens us to our own sacredness, our own miraculous nature. In the context of therapy, it turns the therapist to that extent, without the intention to do so, as well, into a bit of a spiritual guide through the work of his or her own hand, heart and spirit. It should be said Leo said nothing during the massage, so there was no “programming” going on.
Every session is an opportunity to revitalize the body, mind and spirit. If we will recognize that our tables may function as altars, and that we may be contacting the client spiritually, our clients stand a better chance then to receive the fullest benefits therapy may offer.
Of course, it is tricky not to impose this vision onto the client. I suggest only that we remember, from the very beginning of meeting the client to the very end of the session, that this spiritual dimension and benefit to massage may accompany the physical, emotional, and mental benefits. That’s just common sense.
This common sense, nonetheless, allows us, from the get go and the let go, to see that we are allowing and inviting gently into every massage we give, to some extent, a dimension in which our clients may experience the “altared state”.
This book itself is meant to induce an “altared” state of understanding and being. Massage is not just the manipulation of soft tissue. It arises from all the ways human beings have touched each other, physically and more than physically, throughout history.
All the ways we touch and what we learn from those, compose a kind of picture of what is most important, most exciting, and most vital in human life. This image of our life is like a “memory palace.”
It is a time and space in which the greatest treasures within us can be talked about and seen.
It is my intention that this book be a kind of altar upon which each passage rests. May each of the segments touch us so that we awaken again and again to what is most remarkable and valuable and yes sacred about human life. The book is organized like a mandala of understandings. In this mandala we explore through visions and ideas and words concentric circles depicting the many realms of life, in recurrent themes we go around, over and over in our minds, hearts, bodies, and spirit illuminating the paths we all take together and separately in our lives.
This human journey and this book illuminates ways of touching that can make all the differences in our lives.
This human journey begins with touch, the first sense to develop and the last to leave when we pass away. So may this first and last and most fundamental language and experience of 'ways of touching be a touchstone for your life and helping make our shared world, a happier, healthier, kinder place.
