Dear Clients: When will you hear what I say?
Parents understand this concept perhaps most. Parents can say "don’t slam the door; hang up your clothes or look both ways before you cross" about 6,000 times and it may take anywhere from 5 to 18 years for a child to "hear" them.
It's not that they don't hear the sounds, it’s just that the matrix to make those things happen simply isn’t there. It takes a great journey from ear to brain to muscles to consciousness to automation to consistency and to all the continents in between.
I see clients this way, sometimes, when they start stepping on a path that starts with basics like breathing while exerting. Tempted as I am, to say “Breathe like a person, not a locomotive,” I know it will sound just as odd as when my teacher, senior year, suggested we all start using our heads for something besides hat racks.
So my bread and butter, those who cannot relax, are puzzling a lot over what where and how and when and how many times a day and why bother….It’s so much easier just to be fixed and back on track, no changes necessary or needed. Just come back when you can’t turn your head again...
Well, those habits create therapy junkies. They are totally dependent on their therapist and can’t miss an appointment or they are in trouble. Is something wrong with that? It’s a great head trip for the therapist. And it’s not a temporary condition. Wonderful place to hang out, the land where my clients can’t live without me, especially when they are rich, famous, big wheels who pay well. My, my I am G—‘s gift to massage and humanity. Pardon me while I bevel my nails.
Of course, it is a process. It takes a thousand steps starting with one basic: It doesn’t have to be this way forever.
I like to think of it like driving. When my Dad took me out to the mall (when it was closed) he wanted me to learn how to drive a stick. Well, between the stick, the clutch, the view, the mirrors the jumpy gas pedal and befuddling brake, I felt very overwhelmed.
Now I could handle any VW with a ‘tude that says let’s see how fast this baby can go. A little bit.
Where does this journey take us? It takes me back to my Tai Chi Ch’uan class, about 15 years ago, when my teacher said, for about the 600th time, “relax your shoulders.” Easy to say, very hard to do. What did he mean? I thought they were relaxed. How do you relax shoulders, anyway? Doesn’t everyone look like they are wearing football pads all the time?
3 comments:
I love your blogs: "bevel my nails" indeed :-)
I love your blog as well. And yours too, Lynna. Both of you use humor to strike deeply into core issues. Indeed, we truly are invested as therapists with the directive to grow, to raise our consciousness, to be the example. It is up to us to redirect the power back to our clients when it might go astray and aghast we find ourselves full of ego, instead of unconditional love. People are waking up and we possess magic smelling salts to assist them with this innate drive to become more. Perhaps massage therapists are quietly leading a health care revolution, one where the more we give, the more we receive...turning the current paradigm of "every man for himself" on its head...
From Sue P: Folks, Thank you both. I feel all the warm fuzzy things right now. Which is great because I decided to fix a threshhold in my house and did so without stretching, hydrating or remembering that my back does not do "prone in space" very well. Egads, human after all....
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