Twice a week for a couple of months he worked for about 15 minutes on my neck and shoulders, doing deep tissue massage. I’d breath into it, trying to open to the strong pressure that would release my muscles. He asked me to tell him if it was ever too painful, and I did sometimes, but mostly I tried to open to the pain because I’ve always believed that deep tissue massage was the best way to get muscles to release.
When my neck pain hadn’t gotten better after two months, Dr. Rees thought I should mix things up and go to a physical therapist. He felt that I should be improving faster than I was, and I agreed.
So, I made an appointment at a physical therapy place whose owner had a great reputation as a PT. I wanted to get in quickly, and I ended up taking a first appointment with another therapist there, a guy named Mike.
After assessing my range of motion, and scribbling some notes, he had me lie down on my back, and began working on my neck. His touch was extremely light, so light, I could hardly feel it. It was pleasant, but it was difficult to believe that it could be having any therapeutic effect at all. He is a cool, gentle guy — a light presence — and the things he says are amusing and filled with compassionate observations and wonder. I told him that Dr. Rees had done very deep massage on me. He didn’t criticize Dr. Rees, but said that he found that with injuries (as opposed to tightness from over use) it was affective to be gentler.
At my last appointment with the doctor, I told him I’d gone to Mike and was going to try working with him for a while now. He thought that was a good idea. I didn’t tell him that Mike believed that being gentle with injuries was the most effective way to go. But I did tell him that Mike had been very gentle. I asked him if he would go lightly this last session. And, although he said he would, he really couldn’t: He kept defaulting back to deep pressure. I could tell that he believes, just as I always have, that deep tissue massage is the only affective way to go: If he doesn’t go deep, I think he feels that he isn’t doing his job.
After two sessions with Mike, I was able to get an appointment with the owner of the place, Peter. He assessed my neck, and worked on my neck with his hands in a way that was much deeper than Mike, but much less deep than Dr. Rees. It felt like something was happening when he worked on me.
Meanwhile, I had four upcoming appointments booked with Mike. And, even though I thought Peter was probably the better therapist, I liked how relaxed I felt on Mike’s table, so I kept the appointments.
On my third visit with Mike, I asked him why he thought such very light massage could be therapeutic.
“Because I’ve found it to be effective,” he said.
I got to thinking then of my experience once having a cranial sacral treatment from an excellent practitioner. She worked on me for 90 minutes, and all she did, that I could feel, was lightly touch places on my head, and various spots on my body, and hold them for a long time, before moving on to other spots.
Of course, me being me, I kept thinking, ‘Shit. When is she going to do something?’
Meanwhile, I was getting more and more relaxed on her table. And, then, about an hour into the session, a thought came into my mind as though it was a direct message to my muscles from the therapist’s touch, and what it said was this: “I’m here for you. I can wait as long as it takes for you to release. Take your time. I’ll wait for as long as you need me. I’m here. I’m here for you. Relax. Everything’s fine.”
I felt very, very moved by this experience.
I left the session feeling deeply cared for, supported, relaxed, and physically better.
I asked Mike if he knew anything about cranial sacral work. He did: He’d heard of it from a client who could never get any relief from her headaches until she found a cranial sacral therapist in Boston.
“She complained about how far of a drive it was for her, but I said, just go,” said Mike. “If you find someone who works for you, you should stick with them. Some people have a good touch.”
“Like you, maybe,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe. I have it a little,” he said.
Mike talks a lot while he works. I told him I liked hearing him, but I was going to be pretty quiet so I could just focus on relaxing. His touch was getting less tentative as the session went on, and once I said, ‘Oh, that spot…’ as I felt something release.
“Yeah,” he said. “My client Rosie started crying when I was working on her back the other day. Sometimes things come up.”
“Yeah, your issues are in your tissues,” I said.
“Hmmm. Yes, you know,” said Mike.
He told me then about this guy who’d cried, too, when he was working on his shoulder. He’d lost his wife in the past year and his sister. Mike thought he was lonely. I said that maybe he cried because it was emotionally moving to be touched.
“Yeah,” said Mike. “Where else do people have this kind of experience? Sometimes we just need someone to say it’s all right. That’s it’s all going to be all right.”
I’m going back to Mike tomorrow. I’m going two times a week. I’ll see how it works for me. I’ve also got an appointment with Peter next week. Both these guys are good, but I feel compelled to stick with Mike and see what happens. I like the relaxed feeling I have on his table.
It’s such a commonplace mistake to think that gentleness – in people, massage, or personal interactions – is weakness. But that’s not the truth.
Sometimes gentleness is the strongest way.
