Namaste

During a recent discourse with a Therapist she shared two interesting experiences.  A woman called her offering to pay $3000-$4000 for a session with another female friend.  The Therapist’s job would be do relax them as much as possible using massage techniques, but to ensure sufficient time is spent on their genitalia to guarantee orgasms.  She indicated to the lady that masturbation is not one of her pastimes, so to do such for the two of them would be challenging.  Next was a Health worker who came by to spray the yard.   Upon learning that she does massages he decided that such is be ideal for his many complaints.  She invited him in and in a jiffy he was on her massage table hustling to unzip his pants.  A sizeable penis was promptly unleashed then he reached for her hand so that she could hold it.  She curtly asked him to secure his instrument and leave.

I was brought to tears.  My phone credit was running while I tried to find my voice to continue the conversation.  The anger, laughter, fits of cough, tears, etc. are all remind us of the abundance of life and the variety of emotions our experiences afford us.  The question is how do we find it in ourselves to continuously meet the manifestations of life as presented in the form of desires we choose not to fulfill, with unconditional love?  I would say by learning to shift our awareness from the preoccupation with ourselves to the wider field of things given that the disclosures a Therapist hears are no more excessive when compared to the swearing of a boss at the office or the average irate citizen with colour speech, or even the aggressive sex-based lyrics that permeate our airways.

We are in service to our environment, and quite often we do so without presence.  We are mentally off somewhere else as our hands work, so we are really asleep as we work.  Maybe the brash and sassy interjections wake us for a moment and force us to think of who we are, what we are doing, what more is being requested of us, and what effect that would have on us both in the short and long term.  In our wakefulness we clearly see the graph of opportunity and opportunity cost, and we make quick calculations as to the advantages and disadvantages of doing what the client desires.  It would be to the benefit of the client if we stay asleep and be swept along into doing their bid, but life graciously offers us a chance to better participate by abruptly waking us with a bit of ear-bending.  And as we ponder the two sides of the coin we might find it is easier to do a massage for Thank You than a paid one for someone we consider a pervert.

I stopped to ponder whether it is their ‘perversion’ that jars us.  I think it is their arrogance.  If we reflect we will find times when we needed something, but the arrogance or self-righteousness of the person giving it was such we decided to forego our need.  The much-needed gift they had to offer was somehow poisoned and we felt ourselves better off without their contribution to our lives.  So too whenever a client or potential client is overly confident about how we should do our job, the jarring inside us will start, and when their request extends to something we have no preference for we will justify not doing it, or ending the session quite easily.  We prefer thank you to a demanding attitude.  It’s like we’re oversensitive.  Maybe.  Over time in this profession our awareness increases our sensitivity to those in our space.  This is good, but not exclusive in that we might also develop sensitivity in ways that we did not anticipate.  For example, we might see our service as a natural outcome of our environmental awareness and find it in ourselves to meet the opportunities for service or interaction (whatever they may be) with openness.  So that the lady and her friend might be invited over as it could be that life is presenting an opportunity for us to overcome certain awkwardness about our own sexuality.  Ridiculous!  Massage has nothing to do with that, we keep telling ourselves.

As we know, massage is one of many healing modalities and healing is a labyrinth where everything works, but not for everyone.  People should therefore be allowed to explore and find what works for them.  We are the products of sex (well, most of us), so by right sex should hold the ultimate power to heal us.  But every time we (subconsciously more than consciously) try to explore its healing powers (outside of mono-practice), we are met with walls.  Those who know aren’t eager to share the experience with us, and many of those don’t know are ready to take advantage of us or pretend it is below their status.  So we return our gaze to those to whom we are espoused in an effort to get it right.  But we are psychoanalysed over our apparent sudden interest in variety in bed, or wherever else.  How do we explain that we are chasing, and/or hoping to capture that elusive really good feeling that might hold our healing?  It is tiresome, so we turn our attention back to those uppity Therapists, for we have an uncanny feeling that they hold the key to our dilemma.

Massage is a creative and holistic tool.  That is a wide definition, but literally accurate which is why as Therapists we will find at some point that during the course of using this tool our soul will act from its own initiative in the name of love.  Where there is love there is no fear, which means that the insecurities we generally feel will disappear with some clients and we will find ourselves open to the idea of working with folks like the lady and her friend or the Health worker.  Our openness might only be brief before the tyranny of preference kicks back in.  And it is our prerogative to repress that which we have glimpsed of ourselves in the moment, and even become agitated by suggestions of expression from the client.  Agitation is in order, for far be it from us to let soul act in the name of love…creatively and holistically.  Just imagine the freak-show love would make of our profession.

One Therapist told me that she grew up in a home with twenty-three persons.  I’m not sure how many of us are still having such extended experiences given our preference for the nuclear and single-parent family, but in that regard it keeps in focus who we are connected to and what their traits are, and makes it easy for us to see how those traits manifest in the young generation.  While some of us casually talk of curses and blessing that extend to the third and fourth generation, the reality for others is that there is great visibility in their extended families.  They are constantly reminded that curses and blessing are not external impositions, but that they are activated from within.  They have to be resident in our bloodline for us to suffer or benefit from them; which means a lot of what we blame people for doing to us is actually our ignorance of what lies within causing us to activate aspects of our lineage that are better left dormant.

Science says that there is 99.6% probability that we have DNA from all of our 16 great-great grandparents.  If it is that strong four generations back, then we can go as far as ten generations back and still find significant DNA.  So that that which we call our career does not belong to us, it is a baton passed on by our ancestors. (The I is such a tiny part of who we are that we should keep it in lower case).  We did not awake one day with a liking for massage. Our bloodline has been gradually activating it over time and kept us driven until we decided to formalize our studies.  A blessing, maybe.  On the other hand, sexual healing (a curse?) being another aspect of Touch Therapy is part of our lineage. and the vibrations being resident in us act as a magnet.  Hence we need to show unconditional love for the Therapists who consciously or unconsciously continue this aspect of the work of their ancestors, as well as for the audacious clients who are attracted to us.  If we cannot shift our awareness to include the possibility that our ancestors are willing to act through us to treat clients in the way that the clients prefer, then maybe part of our centering exercise prior to giving a massage could include an internal dialogue that specifies what we consider the limitation of our practice so that we have the full cooperation of our bloodline.  On the positive side, given the combined wealth of wisdom in our DNA, the client would not be hastily ushered off, but given appropriate counsel and the type of massage that sets our heart at ease.