Conditioned
Responses
The
bodies Americans live in have been sculpted, shaped, and conditioned
by beliefs particular to U.S. culture, many preceding even
the birth of the nation. Don Hanlon Johnson, one of the most
articulate writers to look at how they body is shaped by political
beliefs, relates his own experience. “Early in life I learned
to disconnect my philosophy, politics and spirituality from
my body”, wrote Johnson in Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom.
“In that weakened state of alienation, lacking a sense of
my own resources for making judgments and decisions, I had
to rely heavily on publicly recognized authorities. I spent
nearly half a century trying to find the right people with
the right prescriptions for successful living, ranging from
the most traditional to the avant- garde. I had to learn to
discount my own resources for finding my way through life
and for evaluating the advice of others. I finally realized
that a basic ingredient for healing fractures within our personal
experience is learning how to reconnect our more abstract
attitudes with our sensual experiences.”
The
reliance on external authority is what thwarts us most as
we try to come to a deeper understanding of human sexuality,
the healing power of touch and the difference between the
two. There is an internal war being waged in everyone between
the body “and its need to be touched, nurtured, accepted,
given sensory nourishment” and the mind, which thinks these
needs are somehow sinful and wrong. Popular wisdom in massage
circles suggests it is even more difficult for men to overcome
these feelings than for women to do so, since society has
been more accepting of women as needing to nurture the body.
Men’s bodies have been conditioned for hard labour and waging
war.
Disowning
the Body
The need to control human sexuality arises from particular
political and religious concerns that have existed since recorded
history. Closer to our day, French philosopher Michel Foucault
suggests that at the end of the 18th century, along with the
religious institutions compulsion to control human sexual
activity, sex became “a concern of the state as well; to be
more exact, sex became a matter that required the social body
as a whole, and virtually all its individuals, to place themselves
under surveillance”. The state’s public health concerns had
to do with population control and the spread of disease. One
hundred and fifty years later, Viennese physician Wilhelm
Reich, working in the United States, further elaborated on
the ways I which society educates a body to its own purposes.
“Bringing people up to assume a rigid, unnatural attitude
is one of the most essential means used by a dictatorial social
system to provide will-less, automatically functioning organisms,”
Reich wrote in his classic book, The Function Of The Orgasm.
Reich believed that “This kind of upbringing is not confined
to individuals; it is a problem which pertains to the core
of the structure and formation of modern man’s character.
It affects larger cultural circles, and destroys the joy of
life and capacity for happiness in millions upon millions
of men and women. Thus, we see a single thread stretching
from the childhood practice of holding the breath in order
not to have to masturbate, to the muscular blocks of our patients,
to the stiff posturing of militarists, and to the destructive
artificial techniques of self-control of entire cultural circles.
Dr.
Reich was jailed in the United States for sending his orgone
collecting boxes across state lines. Orgone boxes were designed
to collect what Reich believed was free floating sexual energy,
universal life force, and transmit it to rigid bodies seeking
healing. He died of a heart attack in prison in 1957, and
to this day has been maligned but mostly forgotten in psychological
and medical circles.
Schools
develop rigid, docile bodies by teaching children to sit still
and squelch their natural tendencies towards movement. Industry
benefits from this bodily control as they get workers trained
into the bodily patterns that most jobs require, with extreme
attention paid to finishing things on time. Bodywork philosopher
Johnson notes that. “The organic rhythms of the body are geared
to meet the needs of a standardized working day, beginning
an ending at certain hours, with carefully specified breaks
for food, toilet and rest. For both factory and office workers,
body movement takes place within carefully defined limits
set by industrial engineers to maximize efficiency.” ?
At
this beginning of the 21st century, we are still trying to
make our bodies meet the specifications of machines, instead
of freeing ourselves from the drudgery of repetitive motion,
which technology long ago promised. Furthermore, “during the
past 50 years, the marriage between corporate power and scientific
medicines has encouraged our passive relationship to our bodily
existence. Parents, teachers, coaches and nurses support the
biomedical ideology, training us that our self-perceptions
count for little. The doctor knows what is truly good for
my body.”5
Massage
therapists are relying on external authorities to tell us
what is right for our bodies instead of cultivating our own
powers of perception, enriching our own sensual expression
and our ability to make sound personal choices based on an
inner sense of what is right, rather than an externally imposed
idea.
Redeeming
Adam and Eve
Religious institutions and the powerful stories of the Bible
constitute the most powerful external influence on bodies
and feelings. American culture is shaped by Judeo- Christianity.
The most powerful myth still dominating our experience of
God, sexuality and the body is the story of Adam and Eve.
As interpreted by Christian clerics, the story continues to
be an unconscious template controlling our perceptions of
the body, sexuality and the relationship between men and women.
It so permeates Western Culture that even non-Christians are
subject to feelings of guilt, sexual shame and the strife
between men and women.
The
story of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace is the story of the
progressive disowning of their bodies. When God created Adam
and Eve, “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and
were not ashamed.” (Genesis, Chapter, Verse 25) 6 Being naked
was simply natural and carried no value judgment. But after
Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,
the relationship to their bodies and to each other dramatically
changed. “Unto Adam also and his wife did the Lord God make
coats of skins, and clothed them,” states the Bible (Genesis,
chapter 3 Verse 21). They begin to cover their bodies. Then
God declares, “And I will put enmity between the man and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” (Genesis, Chapter
3, Verse 15) Thus began the War of the Sexes, which is still
being played out – men and women vying for dominance over
one another’s’ bodies and minds rather then living together
in a comfortable inter-dependency. “And the eyes of them both
were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they
sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons” (Genesis
3 Verse 7.) The feeling of shame of the body is now complete,
and what Adam and Eve seek to cover is their genitalia, the
part of their bodies that gives them their primary sense of
identity. This is where disowning our sexuality and our bodies
began.
It
is indeed a great curse. Adam and Eve become divided against
each other. God further curses them so their bodies become
instruments of toil and suffering rather than joy and celebration.
Modern people still suffer from this spilt, embarrassed to
remove their clothes, confused about sexual responses, men
and women fighting over wages, child care, house work and
health care, bodies exhausted after long day’s work. Judeo-
Christian mythology has shaped the way we in Western Civilization
think and feel, and consequently, how we perceive our bodies.
It affects the way we walk, look at each other, touch each
other, and refrain from touching. It sculps the body’s tissues
by using the mind and its beliefs to control motor neuron
responses. It shapes the view of our sexuality, permeating
it with an overriding feeling of shame. We feel that something
is intrinsically wrong with maleness and femaleness, penises
and vaginas. If we reclaim our bodies and our sexuality we
redeem Adam and Eve, restore them to the Garden and to each
other.
Sex
and Language
From
a massage therapists perspective, the real social disease
is that our sexuality degrades us, makes us less worthy in
the eyes of God. We diminish each other and establish domination
over each other by calling attention to our wounded sexuality.
Consider: God created sexual differences, made biological
survival of the species dependent upon the meeting of man
and woman, and then reversed course and made sex the basis
for shame and conflict. When we use this language, we keep
reinforcing this intellectual and emotional bind. We hammer
home the idea that there is something wrong and sinful with
being human and having a body. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese,
Chinese and the many languages spoken to the Indian subcontinent
have many synonyms for genitalia that are playful, endearing,
passionate, reverent, loving, aggrandizing and even sacred.
But the words we use in American English to describe the genitalia
implicitly carry shame. Everyday American English basically
has two classes of words for genitalia: scientific or derogatory.
The most powerful putdowns and curses in American English
are sexual epithets. Women are “cunts” men are “dicks” and
everyone can “go fuck off”.
Perpetuating
this myth and this language carries toxic consequences for
individuals and society. This myth is at the core of difficulties
massage therapy has in gaining acceptance as a profession.
People’s relationships to their bodies are so confused, so
filled with guilt and shame that they cannot separate life-giving
touch from life- robbing touch. They know so little about
their sexuality that they cannot differentiate between sexual
touch, therapeutic touch or even friendly touch. The confusion
has led to sexual harassment lawsuits and underlies sexual
abuse problems. This is why female therapists are afraid of
male clients who get erections on the table. This is why many
men are afraid to go to openly homosexual therapists. Sexual
fear remains the white elephant in the middle of the party
everyone is choosing not to talk about.
Fear
of human sexuality has been reinforced by successive generations
of clergy, politicians and philosophers. A mixed message prevails
that sexuality “ the most basic human biological drive that
guarantees survival of the species” is somehow dirty, wrong
and sinful. This mixed message creates a house divided against
itself; a mind afraid of the body’s feelings, passions and
biological processes. It creates a body afraid to feel anger,
lust, joy, sadness, comfort, rest, solace and solitude. The
fear of feeling literally diminishes our nervous systems ability
to process sensory input, creating scrambled signals that
overpower potentially rich and clearly identifiable sensation.
This, in turn, generates behaviour problems, as the body literally
dies not know how to move.
The
inability to identify feelings and body sensations leads to
unconscious, reactive behaviour that contributes to social
turmoil. For example, the inability to identify sexual attraction,
and to express the attraction verbally before acting to consummate
it, has led to great heartaches and jealousy, as well as abortion
and unwanted babies. People who know their bodies well can
identify sexual attraction. They develop emotional intelligence
as a result of identifying body sensations so they can stop
and think about the consequences of following through on the
attraction. Many have discovered that the old fashioned verbal
declaration of love removes 50 percent of the physical charge
between two bodies. There is then enough emotional room to
stop and think if the encounter makes sense and what the consequences
might be.
Know
Thyself
It is the job of massage therapy to map the geography of touch,
to name the full range of embodied expressions humans are
capable of and, in the process, raise the level of discussion
around healthy human sexuality. Massage therapists can then
teach others to navigate this landscape. First, they have
to teach themselves. The taboo around sex and touch in our
culture is just one aspect of the lost connection between
physical reality and the spiritual dimension of life. Plato’s
admonition to his students holds true for student therapists
today: “Know thyself”.
Massage
therapists, body workers and somatic practitioners constitute
a giant wave of explorers uncovering the mysteries and splendours
of the body and inner space, going where few have gone before.
They are pilgrims on a path. The maps to these paths are sketchy
because so few people have been willing to leave a record
of their previous explorations. Society has not always treated
kindly the ones who have. Exploring the body, especially its
sexuality, has constituted a great threat to society. It seems
that people who know themselves and their bodies are less
available to be slaves of a time clock or ideologies that
deaden the senses and destroy spontaneity, creativity, and
personal initiative.
Two
influences, the fruit of globalisation of culture, have come
together to undo the notion that the body is inherently bad,
and have paved the way for a deeper knowing of the self. They
are the Buddhist ideas and Native American spiritual practices.
Both contain antidotes to Christian doctrine and Western philosophy
and have shaped virtually every massage practitioner. Even
in massage schools that do not teach Oriental modalities,
Eastern ideas have become so much a part of modern bodywork
culture that they seep in by osmosis. Every good massage practitioner
practices some form of meditation or centering practice, understands
the power of nature in healing, sees the interconnectedness
of all life forms, that humans are not dominant but are part
and parcel of the environment. A healthy body, the ability
to feel and move, depends on clean air, whole food and clear
water.
Personal
Revolutions
Fledgling therapists reclaim their own bodies one day at a
time as they proceed through massage school, and then care
every day for clients who bring new issues, pains and symptoms.
Becoming a massage therapist is, above all, a process of getting
real; peeling away the layers of conditioning and naming the
new feelings and sensations tat appear as one learns the techniques
of Swedish massage. Petrissage awakens a certain feeling in
the body, vibration awakens another. How to describe it? Give
it a name. The smell of another person’s hands on the body
creates another new sensation. How to react? Give the reaction
a name. Taking clothes off in a room full of people brings
out something altogether different. How to describe it?
If I cry on the table am I crazy? How can touch generate these
strong emotions? How do I accept that crying is OK? Am I uncomfortable
if an African or an Asian colleague wants to work on me, a
Caucasian? What if an openly homosexual colleague wants to
exchange? Can I accept my prejudices and still receive this
massage or must I demur because the inner prejudices are so
strong? What if I get an erection while on the table? Will
this cute, new female classmate think I’m coming on to her?
All fears and prejudices come out in the first few days of
class. Naming them and accepting them is the first step towards
personal freedom and excellence in massage.
This
is how a therapist becomes capable of distinguishing between
sexual and therapeutic touch. The revolution comes in owning
the good, the bad, and the ugly, accepting what is real and
working towards greater self-understanding. The only to become
a great body worker is to become an authentic person, because
the body never lies. Knowing oneself is key. The mind builds
fantasy worlds all the time, projecting its ideas onto others,
identifying with other peoples suffering. The body’s messages
are simple and straightforward. The mind has been so conditioned
by fear; it takes a while to remove the flotsam and jetsam
from the essential person. Professional development is a personal
growth experience for massage therapists.
Building
Coherency
What is inside a massage therapist’s heart and mind is expressed
through the hands. There is a coherency between the heart
and mind on one side and the therapists hand on the other.
Whatever is inside will be expressed through the hands on
the outside. This is why it is important for the therapist
to be able to clear the mind and rest the heart before each
session. Massage therapists can explore even deeper realms
of human experience when they acknowledge the social conditionings,
name them, accept them and then let them go or work with them
to unearth the nuggets of insight. By describing their feelings,
sensations and experiences to one another in an open and compassionate
atmosphere, they help each other to grow as humans, to expand
the repertoire of sensory experience, and to grow the concept
of what it means to be fully human. It then becomes easier
to give purpose and direction to life, because feelings and
sensation become easily identifiable. This is the process
where, among other things, they learn to separate touch from
therapeutic touch. Once one person has learned how to do it,
he or she can transmit this knowledge to other colleagues
and clients. It happens one body, one person at a time, guided
by compassion, a spirit of exploration, the conscious use
of language, and intention. The conscious use of intention
remains the massage therapist’s most significant factor in
learning to separate sexual touch from other forms of touch.
This is putting the mind inside the hands as they touch the
client’s tissues. This alignment of head and hands, surrounded
by an aura of compassion, allows the therapist to clearly
discriminate between sexual and nonsexual touch. When the
hands, hear and head are synchronized, stray thoughts of sexual
attraction or arousal either simply don’t show up because
there is no room for them, or they become visible, but emotionally
distant, and can be set aside in the therapists mind to de
dealt with latter in a more appropriate context.
The
conscious use of intention is the massage therapists fundamental
ally in helping clients differentiate between sexual and therapeutic
touch.
Self
Discovery
Therapists and clients, who exercise conscious freedom in
connecting with their bodies and describing these new feelings
and sensations, commonly describe this experience as liberating
and healing. They frequently uncover parts of themselves they
might not have even imagined were possible. This can be both
exhilarating and unsettling as these experiences frequently
question our notions of reality. This process of becoming
more embodied by exploring inner space has yet to be catalogued
for massage therapy. Humanistic psychologist Stan Grof offers
some direction in his classic The Adventure of Self Discovery,
and represents a great starting point for those who can see
massage therapy’s relationship to humanistic psychology. While
the massage profession organizes itself to look at these phenomena,
clinical observations, personal stories, and intimate revelations
suggest extraordinary experiences can arise from both massage
therapy and the very ordinary movement and touch activities
of human life?7
One
example of this the personal discovery of the divine dimensions
of sex. The idea that sex has a purpose beyond continuation
of the species has been around at least since ancient India
and China. People do not only engage in sexual intercourse
to have babies. They also long to meet another in a profound
way. The Indian mystic, Osho has suggested what many individuals
have discovered on their own, that “ The craving (in sex)
is not for the body of a woman or vice versa, the passion
is for something else: for egolessness, time-lessness…………………………………the
attraction for sex is essentially religious…………………….Man had
his first realization of samadhi in the experience of sex”.
8
Samadhi
is the direct experience of God, a glimpse of enlightenment,
the divine nature of the universe. People describe it as an
overflowing of love and compassion, an orgasmic wave moving
through the body, coming from everywhere and going nowhere.
It radically has broken the mold of what most Westerners believed
was possible in a sexual meeting. This state is also accessible
through meditation practice. The adventure of self-discovery
that comes with reconnecting to the body and the senses has
opened up many other vistas, as well.
Massage
therapists walk this edge of consciousness every single day.
They get to know it and their own bodies by holding each others
hands, reminding each other to breathe as the shape – shifters,
howling voices and menacing eyes emerge from the darkness,
elicited by touch. Some people find the courage to go into
the dark, then come back and guide others through. Still others
stand behind, calling to stay away from the edge, terrified
at what might be lost. Some disappear into the shadows of
consciousness, never to come out. As touch can bring forth
the spectres, it also can cast the light that dissolves them.
