THE ART OF MASSAGE
A symphony must be like the world- it must contain everything.
- Gustav Mahler
Often you hear or read that massage is an art and a science. Massage schools curricula generally cover the science needed to knowledgeably do massage. However, that massage is also essentially an art is something which the field has never clearly and fully articulated, tested for or taught.
If a symphony must “contain everything”, how much more true is that for the compositions that are our sessions. Our medium - rather than just being notes – is the whole psycho-physical human being.
Just as music depends on the acoustical universe, we depend upon the wondrous structures and functions of anatomy and physiology.
Music uses volume, quality of tone, accuracy of tuning and technique, notes’ duration, rhythm, and instrumentation. The science-based art of massage uses pressure, quality of touch, accuracy of knowledge and technique, strokes’ duration, rhythm, choice of instrument – thumb, palm, fingers - and the harmonious use of two hands, as in a Bach two-part invention for piano.
“The human hand, acting in concert with the heart, mind and spirit, is arguably the most sophisticated tool in the known physical universe. With its pressure and warmth, guided by intelligence, care and inspiration, we can work with muscles and fascia, literally remodeling the human form and dramatically altering each and every human function.”
- The Deep Massage Book
Our manual art is applied to the unique themes and variations that constitute every human being. While the overall themes of human life are common – musculo-skeletal structure, cerebral organization of sensation, movement, emotion, and thought – the individual variations are infinite. Each person is a unique symphony of being. When we take a history, we hear a symphony.
The Art of Change
The great movement teacher, Moshe Feldenkrais, said, “A person can not change unless they have a new experience.”
Of all forms of healthcare, massage therapy is the most direct form of new experience – since it takes place in the conscious body. Because of its directness, the new experiences evoked by massage, give clients great opportunities, perhaps the greatest existential leverage they can have.
Therapists help people step out of the field of repeated predictable experience into a new world. To paraphrase the philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, “One would say that touch, in its newness, opens a future to experience.”
What is astonishing is how often clients come to us having completely forgotten or never having known what miracles they are anatomically, physiologically, and psychologically. They have often lost the sense that it is an incredible gift to be alive.
The Role of Beauty, Goodness and Truth (Plato’s “transcendentals”)
So when giving a massage, the therapist has the responsibility to help reawaken the person to their living beauty; to help them to feel the presence of goodness; and to help them recognize important inner truths.
We respond to the client’s accumulations of past stresses and to their uniquely developed virtues. We work attentively in the present, the only time in which we act. And we facilitate a better future by helping them remember and mobilize the incredible capacities they have in body, mind and spirit.
Restoring the important inner knowing - that each being is a miracle - is not hard! All we need do is ourselves work with respect and wonder and the knowledge of anatomy to reawaken the person to the marvel that he or she is! In touch, wonder is coupled with joy.
Simply touching with clarity, we restore the person to the experience of who they most deeply are. As the writer Jacques Riviére said, “This is indeed that unknown person I was – and so close to me!”
So often people are pre-occupied with outer beauty and appearances. But without the experience of inner beauty, of the beauty of life radiating from within, appearance means little. A good therapist will restore the person’s being in touch with being beautiful inside. What ‘divine’ creations we are!
In the Bible it says that the human is created in the image of God. This has to be more than just a figure of speech! Leonardo took it seriously, so did Michelangelo – so should we!
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. - Michelangelo
We need to recognize and cultivate the wonderful role goodness plays in our work. The direct application of kindness is the essence of massage therapy. Whereas the application of paint to canvas, or pen to paper can have a loving quality – the application of touch to the living body and mind of the client calls upon a kind of kindness that itself we know to be healing.
As therapists we get to do good. We get to put our clients in touch with the beauty that lives within them. We help them to experience more deeply the truth of their aliveness. Each person is a walking miracle. Each person is a masterpiece.
As Dante said, “Nature is the art of God.” If that is true, then each person is part of this divine art made from life.
Tips for Therapists
· Get Feedback – unlike paints and notes, our medium is intelligent and can tell us if our work is inspiring them! Brilliantly eliciting and responding to feedback can almost guarantee that you can optimize the experience in every single session. Every session is a collaborative artwork.
· Listen – with your hands. What is the body is telling you? What accumulated past tensions call for your attention? Make sure you palpate each place with care before choosing and applying techniques.
· Call and Respond. Like a jazz duet/improvisation, two players make the session together. Find important places to pause, giving the client crucial time to do their inner work undisturbed. Don’t call without allowing time for the response!
· Accuracy – Enjoy regularly refreshing and refining your knowledge and visualization of anatomy. The foundation for this art is a deep and thorough understanding of the muscles, fascia, bones, joints and nervous system.
· Find just the right pressures at just the right moments. Take out the looseness – pause – press into the tension – pause – sink in – hold – monitor for response – clearly disengage.
Time is what we are made of - Ben Franklin
· Be creative in your choice of duration and rhythm of strokes. Slowing down and letting a stroke seem to last forever can give your client a window into eternity. Take them out of the experience of “chronos”, chronological clock-time, into sacred time – known as “kairos” in Greek. Then, going more quickly through non-problematic areas will communicate a sense of lightness and celebrate the fact that the person is not a problem to be solved, but is fundamentally a healthy being with tensions here or there.
Tips for Massage Clients
· Remember you are more than a body. Be open to receiving in a way that is of optimum benefit to yourself.
· As much as you are comfortable with it, let your therapist know the sources of stress in your life and in your body. He or she can then make emphases that will provide the best benefits for you.
· Most of us are so focused on doing, giving our energy to home and work tasks, that we have lost the healthy ratio of giving to receiving. Feel free to just let go and deeply receive!
· Notice new experience – you are a wonder! Feel how much you learn about your structure, balance, energy. The manipulative effects of massage will last a while; the learning from a massage will last forever.
· Get out of your head! Enjoy the balance that comes from high quality attention to the vastness of life below your mind.
Love means you breathe in two countries - Naomi Nye
As is the case for all great art, a great massage will have a deep impact on our being. Like a wonderful poem, movie or piece of music, a great massage will re-inspire and empower us to be ourselves creative. It will help us feel more in touch with what is beautiful and miraculous about the remarkable gift that is human life. It will help us receive the good with gratitude - the gift of the caring touch of the creative therapist. It will remind us of deeper truths and important knowledge that reside within.
Andrew Taylor Still, the founder of Osteopathic medicine, said, the body contains all the healing substances it needs. This holds true for more than just body. Each person contains the healing resources in body, mind and spirit that he or she needs.
The art of massage involves helping the person remember that we ourselves are capable of creating ourselves anew. The capacity to self-evolve is unique to the human species.
To practice this level of massage is our responsibility, our opportunity and our greatest honor. To receive this quality of touch, this quality of kindness, changes the world.
