Massage and Our Bodies’ Intelligence
Our bodies contain such an incredibly complex array of tissues, nerves, chemicals, specialized cells and symbiotic bacteria, all designed to adapt to the way we move and interact with our environment. Our intestines know how to break down and sort all the nutrients we need from whatever it is we decide to eat. Our skin knows how to close its pores, or produce cooling, evaporative sweat to adapt to the 100+ degree temperature changes we experience here in New England. Our ear drums can even protect themselves by temporarily restricting air flow when we experience loud sounds. And nearly all of it happens without our conscious mind. It's the intelligence of our bodies.
Let's say you seek out a massage therapist for your neck pain. During the course of a session, you may discover tightness around your shoulder blades, or tenderness in your hips, or some pressure in your low back when stretching your quads. On one hand, these can help paint a picture of some broader patterns that may be contributing to your neck pain. On the other hand, just feeling all of those sensations opens a conversation between your conscious awareness and the places in your body that are calling for some attention.
As the practitioner works with different areas, you receive a full range of sensory information about your own body. You might feel things you never felt before. You might find tender areas you didn't know were there. You might feel a sense of relief or relaxation that you didn't know was possible. You might feel surprising emotional or mood shifts while certain tissue is being worked. All of these felt sensations allow you to build a more detailed and layered map of your own body. They give you a sense of all the different possibilities of feeling. They build and strengthen the neural pathways that connect our conscious awareness to our felt presence.
The way our modern lives are structured we spend a lot of time in our heads. A lot of the information and stimulus we receive engages our conceptual minds. At the same time, the health of our bodies and nervous systems depend primarily on relationships with our tangible, physical environment. Shoveling snow in sub-zero temperatures, stacking firewood in August, or even just getting out of bed in the morning, our internal tissues and systems are working endlessly to adapt and take care of us.
So, focusing our awareness on the body brings us into contact with that inner intelligence. If sensation is the language of the body, then massage can help us to build our vocabulary and listening skills. When we are in active communication with the whole of our body, we are better able read the patterns of adaptation. We are more able to notice areas that need attention before they break down. We can sense when a movement, posture, or situation is putting unnecessary stress or strain on us. We can learn how to respect our capacities and our limitations, and build trust in our own experience of the world. It's the difference between being an active participant in our physical lives, or just a brain being carried through the world by a body that's set on auto-pilot.
Through my practice I want to help people discover, or expand in this relationship for themselves. Massage is just one of many ways to tap into this. And it just so happens to be one of the easiest and most pleasurable!
