TOUCH FACTOR MASSAGE & BODYWORK
Blog Layout
Unbecoming: A Recent Client Experience/Connection
Joe lavin
I absolutely love it when a bodywork session transforms into something unexpected and wonderful. These are some highlights of correspondence between me and a recent client of mine after our first session. Everything is shared with permission and you can see more of
Tanith's paintings here.
Client:
Wow. It’s hard to explain how beautiful and unexpected our session was for me. You have a gift, and thank you so much for making time for me today with not much notice. I was very nervous, though excited, as I didn’t know what to expect.
Your skill is truly astounding and masterful. I’m in awe of how you allowed me to let go and guide me into some really fantastic places with no judgement and freedom to express myself. I never felt so free to be my imperfect self, and to trust someone so quickly and naturally.
You gave me a gift. I want to thank you for that. I felt my heart open for me and for you - as the one to allow me to receive and release these emotions.
I’m curious, as someone who this is your profession, what did you make of my session? I was pleasantly surprised that it was so emotional, though it makes sense for me as I tend to hold a lot of emotions inside. But I’m curious if you happen to have any insights?
Me:
I thought your session was wonderful, especially for your first time with me. I definitely sensed a point where you (your nervous system) really let go. I felt like you went from trying to interpret the work cognitively, your body wanting to control its responses, needing to understand before giving in to the work we were doing...to a much freer place where you "decided" to flow with the work and allow yourself to experience what was happening on a deeper, less process oriented level. I do not usually "fly" clients in their first session but I was so happy that you agreed to let me be more creative and take you a little more into the unknown and unexpected. I felt a sense of joy and youthful abandon from you while you were up in the air as well as trust.
As for the emotions, I hear what you are saying there. I hope that you know that you can freely and fully express any emotions that come up for you on my table. However, I am not in the best position to give you insights or advice on where they are coming from. I tend to just embrace them and trust that you will be open to exploring where they are coming from or what they are telling you. However, I am always open to listening to you and helping you process things that come up.
I tend to process through writing and I wrote this to process my part of our experience together. I do not know if it will be fully relevant to you because I wrote it to process my thoughts, but I think you might find something useful for yourself in here....
Maybe it isn’t
about
fixing you
(as if I could)
or healing you
(as if you are broken)
or helping you become something
(as if what you are now is not worth celebrating)
Maybe it is
about
letting you
“unbecome”
maybe it's about
letting you
fall apart
and not
trying to
(needing to)
put you
back together
Maybe it isn’t about
anything at all
so that it can be
everything
that you need it
to be
Client:
I’ve been thinking about the “Unbecoming” words you shared with me. They are so powerful and healing. As an artist, I express myself through art, and your words had such a profound effect on me that I had to use them in some way.
I hope you do not mind that I have borrowed your words. They mean so much to me. I make oil paintings inspired by Iceland, since Iceland was such a healing place for me that it made sense to combine your beautiful words within that landscape. What I love about these paintings are that the words are legible but not easily so and it takes effort to read them ... you have to get up close.
These paintings are special to me, and I wanted to share them with you. Thank you so much for everything.
The Importance of Community in the Massage Industry
I used to recommend some fairly intricate kinesio taping to help with posture modification for my clients but I have found that a simple posture correcting harness/brace does a fantastic job and are much easier to use. You do not need too heavy duty of a harness unless you have extra thick shoulder musculature, are looking for a more aggressive correction or are very active throughout the day. The nice thing is that you can try as many different posture correctors from Amazon as you want until you get the right fit and just return the ones that do not work for you.
I had an experience with a client shortly after a contentious moment in my country's political discourse (how is that for PC?) where I was actually compelled to end a session because I was not able to care for my client deeply enough to work out a better solution. So I wrote my client a letter which he has graciously allowed me to share here.,,,,
My client asked me how I would describe our Primal Unwinding session and I replied, "Like a celestial dance." Later, I unpacked that a bit more....
I took my daughter to the zoo the other day. We waited with the other people to see the cheetah walk out and stood in amazement as the cheetah did, well, nothing really. She just walked around, looked at us and then laid down. I imagined the cheetah wondering why there were people here to see her again, She didn’t feel that special. She had no idea what she was really made for, how fast she could run, what it felt like to be free, what a fierce predator she could be. She just had some sense that this crowd of spectators was interested in her so she should show up again, like she does every other day.
I want to share something I wrote trying to say thank you to a group of people that were a major part of my becoming a better bodyworker, toucher, connector and human being. It was in a five month training program with the Institute for Phenomenal Touch. It absolutely changed my life!
I love body rolling and think it is far superior to the many popular “foam rolling” strategies that I see a lot of people utilizing. My basic premise is that using different sized balls with different densities to strategically roll on, under and around your unique, 3-dimensional body will allow you to apply just the right amount of pressure in the specific places that you need it as well as helping you do some amazing stretches. Plus you can take your body rolling equipment with you wherever you go. If you are a proverbial road warrior, just deflate to miniature soccer balls, pack a small air pump and throw them in your carry on.....
It is 2021 and it is time for me to start sharing more of my thoughts about massage, bodywork and life with anyone who is interested. I do a lot of writing to process my thoughts about touch as well as my massage and bodywork experiences. Most of the time these writings end up living only in my journal or on my computer and I would like to give them a little more life, see how they blossom...or wither.