TO UNDERSTAND MASSAGE

We know that touch can be meaningful, just like music.  But can we say we “understand” touch, “understand” a massage?  It’s similar to understanding music. Music and touch don’t mean things like words do.  Both are rooted in the meaning, in the language, of “gestures”, not in definitions given in a dictionary.  Music originates with gestures made on instruments and those result in gestures in sound – similar to the way the tone of voice communicates as much or more than the meaning of words.  As a matter of fact, studies show that up to 93% of communication is non-verbal!

Of course massage therapists and bodyworkers also make “gestures,” non-verbal communications, through meaningful movements with their hands in contact with skin, fascia, muscle, and bone.  And the client interprets those movements with one of the most detailed senses we have – the kinesthetic sense.  We can feel a touch that seems to come from anger, or from affection, curiosity, tentativeness, consolation, reassurance, from blessing.  Touch can convey many messages: I care about you. You are not alone. You can be free in your body and soul. You are a worthy person. There is hope. You are beautiful. You are strong. You are whole. 

And the cumulative meaning of these touches, in the best of therapy, results in an experience that’s meaningful and sometimes even transformative.  A massage initiates multiple associations and is a kinesthetic system that’s enjoyed and may persist in consciousness.  But if we were to ask the therapist or the client what it means, they couldn’t say, couldn’t reproduce the experience, certainly not in words – as in music again, as the jazz great, Eric Dolphy said, “When you hear music, it’s gone in the air, you can never capture it again.”

Sound is acoustical vibrations that affect the ear and touch is kinesthetic vibrations that affect the whole bodymind.  In touch, these vibrations coalesce; they possess for us an intrinsic value.  They may evoke strong emotions or wondrous reveries.  And since touch doesn’t mean in the same way as words do, we might say it speaks directly to the soul through the body. Each massage has a spiritual content which is inseparable from the whole massage itself.  It ”speaks” to our essence.  As Margaret Atwood said, “Touch is the first language and the last and it always tells the truth.”

Yet its content remains irreducible.  The massage possesses a psychophysical content immanent only in the work itself.  Only direct content unveils the living being.  The soul of every artistic production is after all fused with its body, as our bodies and souls are fused.

We follow these progressions of touch, just like the progressions of melodies, harmonies and chords in a symphony.  At a certain point of active listening, we follow the gestures of vibration with resonant experiences in body and soul.  And it is this stimulation of inner accompaniment and resonance that is the accomplishment of artful, effective massage.

Every time we visit the “landscape” of the body – our body being every bit as natural as a meadow and its underlying earth - we have the opportunity to see and feel it with new sensation, new emotion and understanding.  As Proust said, “The only true voyage of discovery…would be not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.”  The ideal therapist will aspire to discover, to understand, the other person with other eyes, awakened touch, an open mind and an inspired heart. 

Such a voyage in a massage session gives the client the opportunity to rediscover meaning in their own life, to understand themselves - to see and feel the power, the freedom and the unity of themselves.  We are mercifully able, as in the creation story, to see everything that we have made of our life and to behold it as good.  Ultimately maybe the way to truly a understand massage is to understand and be true to oneself.

This piece was inspired in part by the essay, “To Understand Music” by the composer Stefan Wolpe.