Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1315831
L i s te n to T h e A B M P Po d c a s t a t a b m p.co m /p o d c a s t s o r w h e reve r yo u a cce s s yo u r favo r i te p o d c a s t s 71 something that every human requires, alongside food and water and shelter and purpose. And our bodies benefit too. Every time we give a massage, we are touched ourselves. In other words, we massage therapists are saturated by touch. Our work is both a giving and a receiving of this essential element of existence. Work Creates Purpose It seems to me that the most common pastime of many massage therapists is to complain about being massage therapists. Crappy tips. Needy clients. Salt scrubs. The list goes on. Perhaps the most abundant topic of complaint is our own bodies. The way many of us describe it, we are perpetually on the verge of falling apart—rife with aches and pains and tingling and numbness. But nine months without practicing, I can say with confidence that the alternative is no better. These days, it feels like my body has no purpose. I have certainly gotten spoiled by all the extra time with my kids— extra time to run with them and wrestle with them words, the virus seems to stoke our sympathetic nervous system. We live in a fight-or-flight world these days. No surprise then that our collective tempers are shorter. We fight about stupid things. We fight about everything. Many of us refuse to wear masks even though masks are one of the few things that can help us. We live in a world of vitriol and aggression, our bodies both charged up for a fight and exhausted from the strain. But the discord of this era is a reminder that this is not the way human beings are meant to function. We are meant to touch each other. And not just the people in our pod. The huge realm of seemingly meaningless human contact—shaking hands and high fives and getting jostled together on a crowded subway—is actually vital to creating community and sustaining our well-being. I have never longed for a crowded subway like I do now. But our current moment of touch deprivation is also a reminder of how fortunate we are in our choice of profession. Because we get paid to create human contact! We have created careers out of offering TRINET TE REED/STOCKSY