Maybe… Everything?
I remember a lot of things from massage school. It was a potent sixteen months that fit my learning style well. Kinesthetic and visual learning aids were always there to reinforce everything I was reading and trying to memorize about anatomy and physiology.
Some lessons always stand out. I recall one exercise where we traded massage with our partners while describing what our intention was from moment to moment. This was at a point in the curriculum where there were so many different modalities thrown at us that it became overwhelming. Our teachers were trying to help us differentiate them all by keeping it simple, bringing it back to basics by asking the questions, “what are you doing here, why are you doing it, what’s the point?”
This memory stuck out from massage school because it was hard at first. With a teacher hovering nearby, trying to spit out why I had an elbow deep in that hamstring muscle belly, or why traction of the arm seemed like a good idea felt intimidating. We weren’t used to being challenged like this, and I’d venture to say that massage therapists still nowadays overall aren’t challenged enough to intellectualize or explain their actions. We are a sensitive and loving crew who are much more comfortable acting on gut feelings and being in a quiet space. (I might be generalizing) Perhaps it is the nature of developing a strong sense of touch. However, crafting mindfulness into what we do as bodyworkers feels imperative to me now. It is afterall the crux of what we do-bring presence and healing to the innermost part of the client by holding presence ourselves. Without intention, this would be nearly impossible. When I look back over these last 15 years of many different bodies and studying various modalities, “what’s my intention?” may be the most important question in any given session.
It is exciting and rewarding to remember that practicing intention has shown me not just to work the muscles, but fascia, nerves, connective tissue, bone, organs, energy, lymph and cerebrospinal fluid. The human body needs healing on all these levels. I’m very grateful to get to play with all these parts, with intention. My greatest intentions are to keep learning, to always approach each body with respect and allow healing to happen.
