Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/943527
74 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k m a r c h / a p r i l 2 0 1 8 Except that this story is a lie. Worse yet, telling this story and believing it is like forgetting to RSVP to what might be the most important invitation you'll ever receive. Touching humans for a living is a daily invitation to be real and present. It doesn't matter how "healthy" you think those humans are or how much they do or don't "need" massage. It's not about their muscles, and it's certainly not about that big muscle on top of your shoulders. Personally, I make my living touching humans that would be deemed, by most standards, to be very, very sick and even dying. I have been lucky enough, since 2005, to do my work with people who find themselves in hospital beds either receiving care as they approach the end of their lives or who are being treated for severe and often complex symptoms from advanced disease. I go to their homes, I go to long-term care facilities. Over the years, even some of the "sickest" clients have willed themselves into their cars to come to my office. As a result, I've been invited to see massage therapy, and my own life, through a lens that makes it really hard to keep up the story. The story of "wellness" and that of the "wellness practitioner" is one of invincibility, expertise, and control. Of course, I've also had plenty of "healthy" clients who believe that story and who like the way that it allows them to not think much at all about being sick or about dying or mortality or how incredibly breakable they are. That's pretty typical. AN IMPORTANT INVITATION Humans are convincing storytellers. We are constantly telling stories about our spouses, our parents, our bosses, our clients, ourselves. Some are true stories, but most are just fabrications to make sense of things from a safe and comfortable distance. These stories help us pretend we are separate and that what's happening to another could never happen to us, or that we'd handle it better or differently than they're handling it if it ever did happen to us. Stories that let us believe we know things that will make someone else "better." Stories that have never been fact-checked, but that nevertheless shape how or even if we see each other. Massage therapists touch people for a living and, yet, we rarely see the people we touch. We want desperately to avoid the experience of having our own vulnerability mirrored back to us by the injured and malfunctioning bodies of our clients. We see pain and hear suffering as they tell us why they think they've The rub is that humans are breakable, and every single one of us will get weak or sick or old and every one of us will die. When you are honest about that as you're touching a person's body, it changes what happens.