I Don’t Get It Either

ByElizabeth

My friend Reya blogs that she doesn’t get it–why people don’t get massages on a more regular basis.  Assuming one has enough money for the basic necessities of food and shelter, as Reya points out, I don’t get it either.  When I tell people that I have been getting massages at least twice a month for the last decade, I get all sorts of reactions, lack of money and time being high on the list.  I have had people, including those who claim to otherwise like touching and being touched, tell me that they don’t like getting massages.

What’s not to like about getting a massage from a qualified professional?  I think it can be for any number of reasons.  Sometimes it is about a deep-seated discomfort with pleasure (and especially the pleasure associated with touch), which is unfortunately all too common in this society (despite the preoccupation with sex).  Discomfort with the idea of massage also can be about control.

On the surface, getting a massage is all about being passive, about surrendering physically–albeit in a very benign way.   Allowing oneself to be in the role of pure recipient, though, is different than being passive or surrendering control.  The person receiving the massage, though not actually doing the touching, is the person in charge (So too, in yoga.  The person being assisted in a yoga pose  or receiving a therapeutic adjustment is in charge, not the person assisting or making the adjustment; it takes knowing how to be a recipient, though, to know how to offer the assist or adjustment).

Even the most sensitive and compatible of massage therapists will need to be advised how you are doing on any particular day, whether any areas are feeling particularly sensitive, whether you feel the need for healing or energetic shifting in a particular area of your body.  It takes a deep sensitivity  and listening to the body and the energy field to know not just whether a massage feels good, but what could make it better.  For example, because I tend to bruise easily, deep tissue massage generally is not the right type of massage for me.  There are times, however, that something really deep needs to be rearranged and deep tissue, or even myofascial release, is the only thing that is going to be able to get at what is knotted or tangled or needs to be released.  Sometimes, just about any touch would feel invasive, and then I seek out reiki or other treatment that is more in the energetic than the physical field.

I firmly believe that getting regular massages has truly enhanced my understanding of the physical and energetic body and has made me a far better yoga teacher–especially for students seeking therapeutic guidance from yoga.  As well as being a pleasure, receiving a massage is an opportunity to get to know the anatomy and connections of the body at the most sensitive of levels–if one is willing to and does pay attention.  And without deeply knowing one’s own body and its relationship to the outside world, including touch, how could one really be sensitive to what might be going on in another’s body?

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    “The mind and spirit become ripe…”

    ByElizabeth

    I have been indulging in reading the thriller Angelology (complete with stories of angels and the war between good and evil), which  I picked up at the Books for America shop in Dupont Circle a couple of weeks ago for the kind of night of reading that is the equivalent of a night of watching television if I had a television.  Relatively early in the book, a professor says to one of the brilliant students who is a central character to the plot:  “I have found that our texts will speak deeply to someone or they will say nothing whatsoever.  It depends upon your sensitivity toward the subject.  The mind and spirit become ripe in their own fashion and at their own pace.  Beautiful music plays, but not everyone with ears can hear it.”

    This statement encapsulated the ongoing thinking I do about my attraction to yoga and the tantric philosophy.  I was contemplating especially deeply this week on my return from California, with no particular insight arising, what has drawn me in to this world of meditation and yoga.  What am I doing, having been born in New York City and working as a civil servant in DC, coming from atheist Jewish grandparents and converted to Quakerism parents, finding such joy in learning Sankrit chants and working with energetic principles described in these ancient and medieval Indian texts?  I do not doubt that the practices resonate and the texts speak to me and that the attraction is energetic, just as we are drawn to certain tastes and colors and entertainment and people and no interest arises from others.  I just wonder why these practices and texts and not something else and why they hold me to such a degree that I am moved to teach them.

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    Kleshas (and the absence of helicopters)

    ByElizabeth

    Last night when we walked out of William Penn House from the Tuesday night yoga class onto East Capitol Street, we could see a convocation of police cars in front of the Capitol — presumably in preparation for the President’s speech.  Karen asked, “where are the helicopters?”  “Maybe, Obama doesn’t need them,” I replied, “maybe he is choosing not to live in fear.”  There weren’t any army or police helicopters all night.  This was the first Presidential speech in eight years where helicopters did not relentlessly drone overhead, calling people to be afraid and to act from a place of fear.

    Patanjali’s yoga sutra II.3, says:  avidyha asmita raga dvesa abhinivesah klesah.  BKS Iyengar translates this sutra as follows:  “The five afflictions which disturb the equilibrium of consciousness are:  ignorance or lack of wisdom, ego, pride of the ego or the sense of ‘I’, attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, fear of death and clinging to life.”

    The world is far scarier now than it has been for most of the past eight years.  In some ways, though, at least in my neighborhood, it feels less frightening because the signs of being afraid are not being emblazoned everywhere to call all to share in the fear.

    We can practice choosing to turn to a place of strength rather than fear on our yoga mats.  When we choose to do the difficult poses that are at our edge that bring up fear and aversion, we can notice the fear and aversion, but not become fully engaged in it.  By using the Anusara principle of opening to grace, we can accept fear and aversion as part of human being, but then soften and open to the full range of being, and not just cling to the fear.  Instead of avoiding the poses or beating ourselves up for being afraid, we can choose to use the yoga principles we know to invite a full experience of the moment and the possible poses.  Remaining open to witnessing the full range of our being through the pose, we next engage muscular energy (strengthening by embracing the muscles to the bone, hugging into our center [midline], and drawing from the periphery into our core).  Having found our strength, we expand more fully (expanding/inner spiral).  We then have space to draw more deeply into our core power (contracting/outer spiral).  With this balance of embrace and expansion of ourselves, we then can fully embody strength by reaching outward (organic energy) and making offering.  This pulsation of principles in poses has led me to discover physical and energetic abilities in my middle age I had not dreamed possible.

    Off the mat, the same principles can lead us to move from love and strength instead of fear and clinging.  As I got into bed with the peace of the night uninterrupted, I pondered how these principles can manifest and gave a profound thanks to whomever decided the harbingers of fear — the helicopters — were unnecessary.

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