Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/621015
strength to stand. And we didn't cover picking people up and placing them on the table in any of my classes. I'm pretty sure it would have been discouraged. (It's possible I have an advantage there, in being 6 feet, 7 inches tall.) I remember being told never to work on someone diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis. I've since learned that it's fine, under the right circumstances, with appropriate touch, and I have done it many times. I love seeing clients' dogs and cats when I visit homes, but I wasn't prepared when a man's golden retriever jumped onto the table, only a week or two after he had been in surgery to put a rod into his leg to stabilize a cancer-eaten bone. Or when a woman's seven Pomeranians all yipped and scurried around the table during a massage. Because of The Hand to Heart Project, I found my way to an integrative health center in Hanover, New Hampshire, where I have my private practice. That led to a collaboration between me and a psychotherapist at the center in developing a three-day NCBTMB-approved workshop called "Trauma, Cancer, Presence, Touch." The Hand to Heart Project also led me, rather circuitously, to cowrite a book with a Dartmouth College professor titled Let's Talk About Death: Asking the Questions that Profoundly Change the Way We Live and Die (Prometheus Books, 2015). MORE TO LEARN The book and the workshop, though, are secondary benefits. I do this work because of the relationships— the stories I get to witness and become part of. A few years ago, I began what turned out to be a short series of visits with a man who was fast approaching the end of his life. He'd never had massage before, but his wife encouraged him to try it when a hospice nurse suggested it. He took to it quickly. For the first few visits, he was able to get on the table. After that, he would stay in his bed, and eventually he wasn't very awake for the massage. His wife wrote this note after my last visit with him, which came just several hours before he died. "[My husband] had a very restless night and couldn't get comfortable, and in the morning his breathing was very labored and noisy. Amazingly, Steve appeared on our doorstep to give him a massage. Steve worked on him for quite a while, and when he was finished, the difference was remarkable. [My husband's] breathing had eased and he was able to fall into a quiet sleep. Such a relief! Our hope was that he could stay in his home and pass away peacefully, and that is actually what happened. Early in the evening, he just fell into a deeper sleep and we were all able to be there as he quietly just stopped breathing." Here is another thing I realize over and over again as I go about this work: the amount that I know will always be dwarfed by the amount I don't know. There is always more to learn from every person I see. I can be surprised at any turn, which is a great thing in a career choice. In his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, the 20th-century poet and philosopher Rainer Maria Rilke provided a brief passage that I carry in my mind constantly: "I am learning to see. Why, I cannot say, but all things enter more deeply into me. Nor do the impressions remain at the level where they used to cease. There is a place inside of me of which I know nothing. Now all things tend that way. I do not know what happens there." Life, death, and mystery. What more is there? Steve Gordon (contact@handtoheart project.org) is a licensed massage therapist in New Hampshire. He is the founder and executive director of The Hand to Heart Project, which provides free massage and compassionate touch to people with advanced cancer (www.handto heartproject.org). He is coauthor, with Irene Kacandes, PhD, of Let's Talk About Death (Prometheus Books, 2015). He is also coleader, with Erica Zinter, LICSW, of the massage therapy workshop "Trauma, Cancer, Presence, Touch." For information about the workshop, contact Gordon at gordons. cornish@gmail.com. HAND TO HE ART C h e c k o u t A B M P 's l a t e s t n e w s a n d b l o g p o s t s . Av a i l a b l e a t w w w. a b m p . c o m . 97