Here's a message I'd like every massage client in the world to hear: You can love your body now. Even if it hurts? Especially if it hurts. Even if it's not the shape you want it to be? Especially then!
You never hear this said out loud, but a lot of our health-focused behavior implies that "I'll love my body when..." I'll love my body when my back stops aching every night. I'll love my body when my skin clears up. I'll love my body when this weight is gone.
A lot of this self-rejection seems to come from a sense of urgency. When something hurts, we'll look up articles and videos on how to stretch it out, we'll see massage therapists and chiropractors to "break up knots" or realign our spines. When we want to lose weight, we'll buy books and read endless articles, and turn to "cleanses" and crash diets.
Sometimes quick fixes work, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. For most people, each failed "fix" results in more and more frustration. Frustration with healthcare, and frustration with ourselves. This leads to further creep of self-rejection into our mindset and our language. This is when we start talking about "my bad knee." This is when clients apologise about their body when they're on the table.
I'd love for clients to see what we see. You are that knee. You are that body. Your pain is real, your frustration with your body is valid, AND you are still amazing. Your body is powerful and capable of endless adaptation. Your body is a work of art, because it is you.
One of my goals as a massage therapist is to help my clients be comfortable now, to accept themselves now. A good way to do this is to remove that sense of urgency. That idea that "I need fixing" is an unrealistic standard for how healing usually works.
The body isn't a rusty hinge or a broken down engine. For most cases of chronic pain, it's not a matter of breaking something up or putting something back in place. We are alive. Our scars are comprised of living tissue. Our fat is living tissue. That "bad knee" is living tissue—bone, ligament, tendon, cartilage and all. Living tissue needs TIME to heal. Our fibroclasts and fibroblasts need time and stimulus to remodel scar tissue in a functional way. Our nervous system needs time to dial down the sensitivity that follows trauma or years of overuse. The brain needs time to start forming new habits and to extinguish old conditioning.
This is why I tell my clients, "you might get some relief from this session, but chronic pain takes time to develop, and it takes time to resolve. Massage is like exercise—it's not about one session, but about a regular regimen over the course of months." I let them know that we're trying to slowly convince their body and mind that they don't need all that tension or hypersensitivity, and that this isn't something we should try to force. I emphasise the fact that change is possible, and that their body and mind are powerful and capable.
I also do everything in my power to create an atmosphere of acceptance. With every contact, with every stroke, I try to nonverbally convey the idea that "this part is just how it should be." As I connect that part with the rest of the body, I try to say, "you are a whole person. This is all you."
I can't be sure that my message of nonverbal acceptance gets across, but I like to think that it's also something that happens over time. Yet again, it's not about the session, it's about the regimen.