Listening Hands: My Story

Last night a friend asked me why I am a massage therapist.  It is not something i recall being asked before, so here is the story that unfolded.

I remember quite a long time ago massaging my father's feet with an Origins peppermint lotion.  I hadn't a clue what I was doing as I had not yet embarked on my massage course.  My dad was in hospital at the time with cancer.  Massaging his feet was my way of saying all the things I wanted to say without uttering a word.  There are no words when you are in that situation or none I could tell my father that would not betray a sense of hopelessness when all he needed was positivity.  As I gently and probably quite awkwardly rubbed his feet as there was nothing skillful in it I can assure you, I sent him my love and thanked him for all he had done to set me on my path as a young woman.  I willed him to get stronger and poured my love into his feet.  It was then that I probably subconsciously realised there was more to the human touch than I had ever realised.

I hadn't really thought about massage as a profession before.  I came from an "old school" background on my father's side where being a teacher, lawyer or doctor were good career paths but as I was working at a Golf Club at the time organising golf days, I had clearly missed that memo.  Not long after my fathers' passing from this earth to another, a family friend who happened to be a tutor at the London School of Sports Massage saw a lost soul in me and signed me up to a Sports and Remedial Massage course.  A year later I learnt what pain was!  Those first few months broke me down every weekend as massage students from rugby and athletic backgrounds pummelled me to oblivion.  It was not a smooth introduction to massage by any means as a slim built person I reckon I took more knocks than some.  None of us had learnt that fine art of listening to the body of the person you are massaging.  It wasn't until Alex, the youngest on our course began to partner me that I opened my eyes and senses to someone who knew how to listen to the body.  I felt instant trust and acceptance that any technique he used would be welcome and my body learnt slowly to accept the human touch.  It was a slow process because I quite literally felt battered by the rough hands before and as students you have to stop and start and work deeply, find your way doing something so new. It is a huge responsibility working with the human body.

It is one I try to do with humility.  That came later after I overcame the awkwardness.  You start out a a new born foal, stumbling along until you find your legs.  There is nothing remotely graceful about being a student but it is a necessary path to earn your right to work with the human body.  This course gave me the grounding, the roots to work upwards but it was not long before I realised the body is not a separate entity from the mind.  And as long as there is stress in the world, there will be tension in the physical body.  Unless you have mastered that fine art of letting go and switching off, then so too will your body move with an ease and grace that is usually only found with ballet dancers. I have enormous admiration for athletes of this calibre.  So fine tuned are their bodies that watching the swan lake you can see those that are the principal dancers en pointe and those that are not as their backs glisten with the effort of bringing their arms up and down like wings.

My movement from student to practitioner was slightly less graceful. I see it more as stripping myself down completely to the most vulnerable I could be.  The reason this happened is that to earn that right to work with the human body and mind, you have too know yourself inside and out so that your work comes from a place that is very pure.  I will explain this more.  I had so much to learn.  Fortunately a client of mine pointed me in the direction of Lastone Massage (the original hot and cold stone massage).  I took this course initially in order to help clients to relax, unwind and let go during a treatment so I could work with my deep tissue techniques to release tight muscles with ease.  Little did I know it was the start of my inner quest to let go of anything I held onto that could get in the way of treating.  The stone courses were always challenging me with letting go of the mental focus and allowing the intuition to come to play.  It is something I expect I will continue to learn for the rest of my life.

What really challenged and changed me as a therapist was learning to walk with the stones as the native Americans Indians still do.  One lady in particular, called Jenny Ray from a reservation in Turtle Bay, Arizona talked me through her way of applying the stones to the body with respect.  Before we were even allowed to pick up the stones, Jenny created an altar as taught by the Elders of the Thompson family, members of the Santee people from the Dakota tribe of the Sioux Nation.  Every altar is different and specific to the person who creates it.  Unlike the Christian "altar", this one is not for worship and is simply created to hold certain items or keep sakes that are precious.  Our altar was set up with the four compass directions -north, south, east and west.  A smudge ceremony is performed by burning sage from the abalone shell or pot at the centre of the altar.  The East represents the dawn, the colour yellow and the element air so a small container is placed there. The energies are change, new beginnings, birth and the present moment.  A candle is placed in the South to represent fire and growth.  West is a stone or something else to represent the earth and is the place of dreams, rest and the autumn.  North is winter and water so a small container with water can be placed here.  It holds the healing energies.  We were given tobacco, and different coloured squares of material to represent each direction and some ties.  During the ceremony, you take your coloured square wrapped around the tobacco and with intent you smudge it and place it at the direction with a silent prayer for your new beginnings, personal growth or gratitude for your lot.  It is a sacred space and it felt like one once all the rituals were performed.  It prepared us for picking the stones up with more reverence than i would have ever imagined.  As with any course, you naturally receive and give a treatment.  Over the course of 4 days I began to open up and learn where my weaknesses and strengths lay.  We all did.  It was quite a humbling experience.  Sometimes it is hard to understand at the time everything you are being told but years later, the penny drops and another veil of conditioning is removed.

It was not straightforward to bring this essence of stone massage into an existing sports massage clinic, so slowly but surely i integrated the aspects in a subtle way.  Some times you don't need to express anything, you simply walk with the stones and they act as your guides.  That is my end goal!  Over the years, i have evolved, and adapted to new ways of working.  The last thread and no doubt not the least was a back injury in the Autumn on 2012.  This was a defining one for me as it prompted me to search for ways to fix my back without surgery, deal with constant pain and accept that anyone in any profession that involves some kind of repetition will benefit from some form of home exercise to prevent injury.  My back was a direct result of bending over a massage table and of all people i was in a place of knowledge when it comes to good posture and preventative work.  I had a regular pilates class once a week and monthly massages but it came down to being too little and too infrequent to prevent my back cracking at the seams.  Over this year i have recovered from a prolapsed disc which according to my osteopath and a doctor would have led to surgery in many cases as it was a good 'un!  Fortunately I'm stubborn and could not afford the time off work for surgery, so built my own recovery program involving home exercises, massage, osteopathy and lots of ice packs.  The back is strong and 95% recovered.

It has inspired me to create a home program or app that prevents others needing to walk down the surgery route for backs, neck, shoulders, knees and hips.   It won't be a miracle cure but it will be possible with discipline, and a short amount of time spent daily looking after your body to strengthen, tone and mobilise your joints.  As with the hands that learnt to listen to the body, it will be a labour of love to create this program as the exercises need to flow, to teach people how to breathe correctly and let go while lengthening muscles and sculpting a body that weathers what life hits it with. We ask a lot of our bodies these days so we need to offer something in return.

Why did the search start?

Once upon a time I was a typical university student with a diet of pot noodles, too much partying and little to no awareness of the human body and its precarious balance between good health and bad.  At this point in my life I had a year abroad in Spain and France.  My stint in France proved a revelation of sorts.  It introduced me to the power of the human touch.  I stayed in a flat with 4 other girls, one who happened to be a mature student with plenty of knowledge on the benefits of massage.  She became a teacher of sorts and helped me to understand how the body responds to a gentle nudge here and there.  I still spent far too much time at the Irish bar and too little time recovering, but when a full force cold hit me, a magic head and neck massage from Fadzilah took the headache, the congested feeling in my sinuses and neck tension away.  It only took 20 mins or so.  Now that was a miraculous moment for me.

Sadly I had to leave France 6 months later and those healing hands.  It might have been the impetus for my work now but it definitely opened my eyes to a world of relaxation I never knew existed.  Some people switch off with music, some with high adrenalin exercise but many need a sense of total relaxation starting with the body  to switch of the mind and let go.  I fall into the latter category.  My love affair with massage has not been a straightforward one.  I'm sure I'm not alone when it comes to the world of massages you would rather forget....I'm not talking romantic ones, purely professional.

I'm going to start with the most memorable massages in my collection, for the wrong reasons I might add!  Starting with the French vest man.  My family were on holiday near Montpelier when my sister and I decided to book a massage.  We chose a beach pretty close by.  We booked two massage appointments and set off together.  We were walking down this beach heading in the general direction of a couple in normal beach attire, when the girl's skirt was whisked up in the breeze to reveal no bikini or pants.  So we were heading towards a massage clinic on a nudist beach.  We were feeling a tad over dressed in shorts and t-shirts but that was nothing compared to the apprehension at what we were about to encounter.  This tent like massage room on the beach had a man in a grubby looking white vest with greasy hair inside.  Obviously he was our therapist as no one else was there.  My sister has an amazing habit of finding awkward situations hilariously funny.  I panic.  The room and table looked clean enough to me i thought as my sister kindly volunteered me to go first.  Then I really panicked as there was no way I was going to relax with this French man's greasy hands on my body.  Suddenly sister jumped into action and nodded for my best acting skills as she told vest man that I was feeling really sick.  I pretended to gag a little unconvincingly and off we ran as fast as we could until we couldn't see another naked body in sight.

The second most memorable massage has to be the oily Indian one.  I had been intrigued by Ayurvedic medicine ever since a Patagonian yoga teacher talked about its healing ways.  I never learnt an enormous amount about it but I understood the essence of treating the body, mind and spirit as a whole.  Ayurveda is the natural healing system of India.  Yoga is its spiritual aspect.  There are 3 different constitutional types that we fall into: vata, pitta and kapha.  Don't worry too much about the terminology but I had been told I was vata -pitta.  Knowing this much, I booked myself an Ayurvedic massage at a lovely hotel in Kerala, southern India.  I think an Ayurvedic physician looked at my tongue, hands and eyes and decided I needed the five senses massage.  I was game!  I sat on a stool while my head was slathered in oil and pulled about with some head massage which was heavenly.  The massage part.  I lay down on a wooden slab or table with low sides all around it.  There was no pillow or towel.  Oil was literally thrown all over me from my feet right up to my face and I found myself being pushed and pulled with each massage stroke.  I kept waiting for the head crash as I slipped off towards the head end of the table.  Odd, and really unrelaxing.  The vigorous pushing and pulling stopped and I waited as she turned my head and poured something into my ear.  I couldn't hear a thing.  The next ear received the same treatment.  I then had to sniff what can only be described as chilli powder up my nostrils that came back down my throat.  By now I was counting off the senses:  sound had gone, smell was definitely off the cards so touch, sight and taste.  Oh help!  I think I have blanked on the eye treatment, it must have been horrific.  I swallowed some oily stuff and I guess the vigorous massage was the touch.  End of treatment..,huge sigh of relief.  Instead of peace , I had to stand in a shower while the massage therapist showed me how to scrub off the oil with a rough sponge and some green exfoliating substance.  She started downstairs. I was quick to point out I knew what I had to do thank you very much!  Dressed and clean, I exited the shower room to sheepishly run out of the massage room only to discover I needed some curry powder rubbed into my scalp.  Why?  I spent the flight home smelling very potent and having no friends.

Suffice to say that it has been a mission in recent months to find that elusive holy grail of massage that would relax me, iron out the knots and leave me feeling balanced. I know some brilliant therapists who have been ironing out my knots for years but i was looking for something different.