The Intention of Touch

zbear20 asks:

Just a follow up to this answer, since you practice massage therapy for a profession, how do you in your personal sexual encounters (as opposed to unpersonal? What a stupid choice of words,thought it may sound it in this question I’m not intimating that massage therapy = sex.)keep from having the touching and foreplay from getting old and too much like work?

Well, as you say in your question, massage therapy is not sex. At least, it isn’t for me. That’s not to say that I do not appreciate the beauty of my clients’ bodies. My clients are beautiful. But my work isn’t about having sex with my clients. My work is just that: work.

On the surface, massage therapy is physical labor. If you could see how sweaty I am at the end of a session, you’d understand that. But it’s much more. Massage therapy is healing touch. The broad flat strokes of effleurage calm the body’s peripheral nervous system. The calming touch of effleurage tells the client on both a conscious and unconscious level that they are in a safe, sacred space. That message allows a client’s breathing to slow, their heartrate to slow, their blood pressure to lower. Pettrisage, or the kneading and squeezing strokes of Swedish Massage, further that slowing, and stimulate deeper healing responses. That work is also more physically intense, and during the kneading of the client’s gluteals is usually when the first beads of sweat escape from my headband, flow down through my beard, and fall off my body, sometimes landing on my client.

But you ask how I keep from finding foreplay and touch in my sexual life from seeming too much like work. It’s pretty simple, really. It’s all about intention. In my work life, I do not open the part of my heart and mind that contains my sexual “energy.” I will sometimes use the sexual energy of my client and channel it back into the healing, but I will not give that part of myself in return. If a client becomes aroused, I will take that arousal and use it to take the client down a path that even more deeply connects them to themself. The client will go more deeply down, beyond sexual arousal, into a relaxed state of body and mind.

It’s important that my clients trust me, because through that trust they let themselves be both physically and emotionally vulnerable to the work, and through the work, to healing. I tell all my clients at the beginning of a session that “this time is all about you, and your comfort, relaxation and healing.” If a client doesn’t trust me, then their body will not relax, and they will not derive the full benefit of the session. Intense pressure on contracted muscles is painful, and not in the “hurts so good” way that the best massage sessions are supposed to feel. The body remembers, too. Sometimes a particular touch will trigger a memory, and this will allow for a cathartis. It’s not uncommon for clients to sob, moan, or all-out cry when on the table. A safe and trusting atmosphere is crucially important for that sort of healing to emerge. Trust between client and therapist is paramount.

Touch communicates so much. It’s not just mere sensation, but actually transmits information back and forth. After all, touch is the most primal sense: all other senses evolved from touch. At the most basic level what is hearing, other than the touch of vibrating air on the eardrum? The same is true of the other senses as well. Smell and taste are the touch of chemicals against the receptors in the nose and mouth. Sight is the touch of photons upon the retina. Yes, that’s a simplistic explanation, but true at its heart. Touch can communicate an array of emotions and ideas, and the giver of touch can shape what is conveyed through their touch to the recipient of that touch. What I try to convey through my touch to my clients is that they are loved, that they are safe, that they have inherent honor, dignity, beauty and respect, and that they are in control of their own lives and can allow their bodies to heal.