Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1102144
58 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k m a y / j u n e 2 0 1 9 sure we finally know enough to never get it wrong again. If we learn enough, see enough, and get enough skills and techniques and perspectives in our bag, we'll always know the right thing to say and the right thing to do. Let's step back from the hardwired, expertise-seeking, totally reasonable and human goals of "knowing more." Is there room for genuine "Surprise me!" curiosity in that space? Curiosity not for mastery, but for discovery and deeper inquiry? What if our desire to learn was about getting really honest about how very little we truly know or will ever know? The choice to learn more about anything could be its very own open-ended question: What don't I know? No matter how much we learn about anything, we are always at the threshold of ignorance. The truth of this can feel like a raw deal or an exciting invitation to keep exploring. Confronting the Mystery Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, invited us to "Learn your theories well, but put them aside when you confront the mystery of the living soul." Many of us imagine our brand of massage therapy or the setting we provide it in keeps us safe from having to confront the mystery of the living soul. Maybe one day we'll be providing massage to cyborgs and robots. Until then, every single person who makes their living interacting with humans would do well to remember that our bodies are not machines, but containers for something much more intimate, complicated, and unknowable. There are things we can and even do know about the body. And there are countless other things about the body and how it interacts with the mind and spirit that are just not knowable. (And honestly? The number of "facts" I learned in massage school that science has since disproven or shifted is staggering, so I wouldn't hold on too tightly to what we think is knowable about the body.) Massage therapy works. Plain and simple. A skilled person who applies and adapts techniques they have learned to address a client's complaints will be basically effective and likely even make a good living. And that's fine. It does matter that your hands do smart things based on stuff you learned to do with them, but this is incomplete. Resist the temptation to believe that your hands and your brain are your most valuable tools. Meaningful massage therapy is more than clever tissue manipulation. Every person's life could fill a novel. No course about technique or anatomy or disease states will allow you to reasonably encapsulate the contents of that novel. We love the idea of Jung's pithy, concise wisdom. We print it out and tack it up on our fridge or office door, but we actually buck against the truth of it. Because if it's true, that means that the thousands of hours and dollars I have spent learning stuff won't save me from having to not know. Truly meaningful connection will still mean I have to show up for every single person I touch and for every person I say I love. I can learn all the knowable things and still, to be connected to another person in a meaningful and healing way, I have to show up in the nakedness of not knowing. I have to be here now. All the time. Every time. (Cue sad trombone.) Personally, I like to make people uncomfortable—an odd skill for a massage therapist, perhaps, but invaluable in cultivating real knowing and connection. When we get honest about the things that prevent us from truly connecting with each other, it's uncomfortable, but that's where the living is. That's where the real is. The beautifully hard truth is that humans are neurologically wired to avoid discomfort. We feel most at ease when we think we know what's next and what we'll do and say when it happens. We understand this experience as safety and safety is good. We cultivate personalities that allow us to skip off the surface of each other in brief and connection-ish experiences that help us feel useful and less alone while we remain protected and invulnerable. Think of this article as a hall pass. This hall pass will give you permission to stop telling stories that let you keep skipping off your life and the people in it. The first story you can stop telling is that your clients want you to be an expert in "what's wrong" with them or even in "how to fix" them. Let's Get Concrete A client shows up in my office or is in a hospital bed in front of me. I assume my job is to make it better; whatever "it" is. The patient or client assumes that part of me making it better means I already know who they are and what's important to them. You can laugh, but this is what happens. I hear this from massage therapists all the time: "I can't possibly learn what's important in the less than five minutes I have to conduct an intake." The other tack many massage therapists take is to decide that they already know. They let intake become a formality or, worse yet, a chance to show the client how much they know about them and/or their condition. Here's a practical tip: during intake, the client should speak about 75 percent more than you and most of your speaking should be questions. Short ones.