Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/72195
TOUCH FOR HOMELESS CLIENTS Yet these are the very people to whom Finch feels God has called her, and the people who she's training other massage therapists to reach out to through the Care Through Touch Institute (CT), which she founded 25 years ago. They are the people who feed her own soul, even as she nurtures them. "When you touch another— whether a person or plant or animal— you make a connection, and they make a connection with you," says Finch, 67. "There's an invisible thread of energy that goes back and forth. Who knows who is giving and who is receiving?" In the past year, Finch, plus her crew of five interns, one paid CT staffer, and a handful of volunteers provided more than 4,300 foot, neck, and shoulder massages to San Francisco's homeless. And by all accounts, they touched at least that many hearts as well. "Many, many of these people have histories of trauma and violence, and they need to be touched," says Dr. Barry Zevin, medical director of the Tom Waddell Health Center, San Francisco's largest provider of healthcare for the homeless. "But the opportunities for that to occur in a nonthreatening, nonviolent, nonexploitive way are extremely limited. At the most superficial level, massage brings a sense of relaxation, a sense of feeling cared for that is very apparent and very real. "At a deeper level, it can really change how someone views the world. For people whose only contact with other humans has been violent or exploitive, having physical contact that is meant to be kind and therapeutic can have a real effect on their levels of trust. And once that trust is there, it can be expanded in all kinds of different ways," Zevin explains. Sonny Lovell, who spent a number of years living on the streets of San Francisco before finally pulling herself out of homelessness and drug addiction, is more direct. "Mary Ann put her hands on me," she says, "and it changed my life." A TRADITION OF GIVING Finch's journey has taken her from Berkeley, California, to leper colonies across India, to the streets of Calcutta, to the desperation of the Tenderloin. But it all began with her father, Joseph Finch, a fireman with a great heart for the poor. "He was a big man. I saw him as somebody who could carry the whole world in his hands," Finch says. "He would do anything people needed done. If they needed coal hauled to their basements in winter, he'd go out in his truck and get some coal. If they needed screens put in in summer, he'd be right there. If they needed their garbage collected, he was there. No big deal. He had a truck, so he could do anything." The family never had much in the way of material goods, but Finch now sees that as a blessing. "We lived simply. So I've never been afraid of that," she says. "People are afraid of the homeless because it brings up a lot of their own stuff: what would I be like if that were me? But in my case, being poor was not something frightening because I've never been anything but poor." Also shaping Finch's worldview was her Catholic upbringing. "My faith played a big part in making me aware of the need to really address the injustices in society," she says. "My tradition— and not just the Catholic tradition, but all spiritual traditions that have been a part of my life—espouses that you must not only be aware of these injustices, you must address them." That faith that took her to Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley to pursue a master's degree in theology and spirituality. She later became 72 massage & bodywork september/october 2008 an adjunct professor of Christian spirituality. She became interested in movement therapy and began studying massage as a means to tap into a more embodied experience of the holy. With a colleague, she founded the nonprofit Center for Growth and Wholeness to teach courses in holistic spirituality. "We started teaching how to evoke and connect to the spiritual dimension of self through the body. One of the ways we did that was through massage," she says. Over time, the massage component of the center became more and more popular. They launched the Care Through Touch Institute in 1989 to give a more thorough grounding in proper massage techniques. "We started with a 100-hour program, then went to 200, then 400, then 500 hours. We became a school that prepared people for their boards," she says. As the massage school became more successful, Finch felt herself losing focus. She had intended to train counselors and other outreach professionals in ways to incorporate massage into their practices. Instead, she was training people to become professional massage therapists and open their own businesses. "That was never what I had in mind when I became a massage therapist," she says. "That never matched my vision or my mission." TO INDIA In 1990, she decided to take a sabbatical and rethink her life's mission. She wanted to find people who needed massage more urgently than the people she was encountering in Berkeley. "We were already working with people with HIV, and those in recovery, but something in me said, 'There's more. Go where you haven't gone before.'" So she went to India.