Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1191154
Why Use Lubricant? It is a deceptively simple question. You use lubricant, whether it is oil, lotion, cream, or gel to move across the client's skin and into the client's tissue. You use lubricant because otherwise you would never be able to do a full-body massage in an hour! You use lubricant because, well, body hair. All those answers are true. But these answers don't tell the whole story. More often than not we use lubricant out of habit. Old Habits Die Hard We use lubricant because our teacher, way back in our first semester of massage school, told us to use it. And we've been doing so ever since. My guess is you probably haven't thought much about how and why you lubricate your clients' skin. Perhaps you experimented with different kinds of lubricant. Maybe you used gel for a while, and now you use lotion. Or perhaps you experimented for a few weeks (or a few minutes) with doing bodywork without using oil. But chances are, you eventually went back to your usual routine. We all know how easy it is to get stuck in a rut—to do the same strokes over and over, mindlessly, without truly paying attention to the body beneath your hands. I think the same is true for how we use lubricant. It's a rut we get stuck in, a habit we rely on, and, even worse, I think our habits with lubricant actually worsen our other counterproductive habits. In other words, the way you use oil or cream or lotion might actually accelerate other issues in your massage work, and may shorten your massage career. There is, however, another possibility. There is a way to use lubricant that actually makes your work both easier on your body and more effective for the client. Rethinking Lubrication Use When I talk in my continuing education classes about the oil I use, everyone chimes in. We all have opinions about what is best. But amid these opinions about which (or what type of ) lubrication is best, there is rarely discussion about the why and the how of lubrication use. Lubricant is often an afterthought, but I am going to convince you that your use of lubricant shouldn't be an afterthought. It should actually be your first thought. Lubricant is the gateway. That oft- repeated action—the pump, pump, pump of the oil bottle, the squeeze of the tube of cream, the dip and swipe into the tub of lotion—sets up everything that follows. How—and how much—you apply creates the conditions for the entire massage. So, if we can clarify our intentions for using lubrication, then we can use it more effectively. I am proposing two small changes in how you use lubrication that will have an enormous impact on the quality of your sessions: • Use less. • Apply it in the opposite direction. If you are willing to make these two changes, something amazing happens. You will work a lot less, and your clients will benefit a lot more. What Is Lubricant? The term lubricant comes from the 17th century Latin word lubricat, which means "made slippery." 1 Whatever kind of lubricant you use, the fundamental purpose is the same—to allow your point of contact to move more easily on and into the client's tissue. But lubrication is a tricky thing. Lubrication is a double- edged sword—both a blessing and a curse. All lubricants reduce the friction between two surfaces in one way or another, making a task easier and more efficient. An engine runs more efficiently with motor oil because there is less contact between parts of the motor. Frying an egg is better with butter because otherwise it sticks to the pan. The value of making something slippery is that you make it happen more efficiently and you accomplish the task—get to the end—more quickly. In a massage, getting to the end is not necessarily a good thing. After all, if we are doing our jobs well, the last thing a client wants is for the session to end! What makes a massage amazing, is the opposite. Being immersed in the here and now, feeling like your body is extracted from the relentless rush of time (even just for a little while), enjoying a delicious and (seemingly) never-ending present, that is bliss. But lubricant—specifically, too much lubricant—can actually get in the way of a successful treatment. Use Less Clients come to us for many reasons. But underlying all of those reasons—pregnancy, or stress, or injury recovery, or on and on—is one more fundamental reason: our clients want meaningful contact. Across the vast spectrum of bodywork, from craniosacral to myofascial release and everything in between, there is one constant: the bodyworker is offering meaningful contact to their client. Yet the promise—the whole purpose— of lubricant is to reduce contact. To decrease the friction or tension or amount of contact between two surfaces. Thus, we should be wary of lubricant. Because if you think about it in this way, lubricant actually goes against our most basic goal! If we are just slipping and sliding over the skin, we can't create meaningful contact. To be clear, I am not advocating we throw away our gallon jugs of oil. I love the coconut oil I use day after day. I think all forms of bodywork, whether lubricated or not, have value. But only if they are done with meaning, with intention, with mindfulness. I think we sometimes get stuck and just go through the motions. We watch the clock, and we mindlessly muscle our way through the same routine in order to get to the end of the session. We are not immersed in the here and now. If you are using too much lubricant, you are exacerbating this already acute problem in our profession. With too much lubricant it becomes too easy to just slide to the 82 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k j a n u a r y / f e b r u a r y 2 0 2 0