Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1191154
What does "less" mean? Whatever feels right. In my continuing education classes, I encourage therapists to start by using half the amount of lubricant they normally use. This is terrifying for some practitioners. But it is a valuable challenge. So in your next session, start small. Pick one portion of the body—the left posterior leg, for example—and use just half the amount of lubricant you normally do on that part of the body. Then, in the massage after that, choose a different body part and again use half of your normal amount. If you experiment slowly, and in small bites, you'll be less likely to overwhelm yourself and get frustrated. Perhaps even more important, you have the chance to compare, in real time, what happens when you use different amounts of oil. Here's my guess about what will happen. Using less oil will feel terrible. It will feel confusing and frustrating and make you feel like you are at the first day of your Swedish 101 class all over again. And then, it will feel great. Because when we use less oil, it feels easier for us and feels better for the client. Here's Why Remember, the essential purpose of lubricant is to make slippery—to reduce the contact between two surfaces. Also remember that the client has come to the massage because they want that contact between your hands and their skin. There is a contradiction here. Most clients don't want you to just slip and slide across their skin. (And most of us can intuitively feel that the "slip and slide" approach isn't really satisfying.) You already know what happens next. The client asks for more pressure. Sound familiar? What do you do in response? You put the brakes on—you stop yourself from sliding across their tissue and you try to drill down with the muscles of your upper body, to prove that you can work as deeply as the client wants. (Again, sound familiar?) In these moments, you are essentially working against yourself. You have introduced I believe a key to long-term success as therapists is learning how to use the minimum amount of effort necessary in every stroke we do. Too much oil does the opposite. Too much oil requires that we use extra effort just to maintain meaningful contact. In other words, you are working harder than you need to for no reason. To make matters worse, the client feels your excess effort too. When we are just sliding over the client's skin, it's not satisfying for their skin, muscles, and nervous system. And yet when we dig in to stop from sliding, that's not satisfying either. It just feels like the therapist is trying to force the body to do something. 84 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 lubricant in order to create more glide, and then you are working against that glide in order to push deeper into the client's tissues. As a result, you are working harder than you need to, and you are creating conditions that make your work harder. Another way to put it: an excess of oil leads to an excess of effort. This process—applying too much oil, and then using our muscles as brakes to stop the effects of too much oil—is so second nature that we don't even notice it. Our forearms ache, our shoulders feel bunched in knots, or our lower backs tighten and spasm. Many of us just take for granted that this is part of the job. Aren't these just symptoms, after all, of what it means to be a good massage therapist—someone who cares about their clients? No. You don't have to ache in order to be a good therapist.