"I absolve you, mediocrities everywhere!"

I went to my first faculty meeting.  Besides the usual talking-too-much-about-nothing which plagues every meeting, this one had an extra level of despair.  The campus director was talking to us about student retention -- quite a challenge with our student body lately.  She berated us for saying sometimes that we thought this or that student did not have what it takes to be a massage therapist.

She told us, in all seriousness, that employers needed graduates at all levels.  They needed superstars to come in and be amazing.  They needed skilled journeyman-level workers who could come in and knock out some solid relaxation services.  And (she hesitated) they needed less skilled people who they could train how they want.

Pardon? I looked at my colleague to my left.  She looked like she was going to turn green and Hulk it out all over the room.  I looked at my colleague to my right.   She was rubbing her ears as if something was messing with her hearing.  Did our campus director really just say that employers WANTED mediocre, unknowledgeable therapists?

I started teaching because I love this profession and I want to make it better.  I have met and received massages from some pretty mediocre therapists, and rather than complain about them, I wanted to be part of the vanguard that made them better.  My vision is massage therapy as a 2- or 4-year program, depending one whether one wants to be a generalist or specialist.  I see myself, and my students as part of the health care continuum which includes physicians, nurses, napropaths, and a whole range of highly trained professionals. There is no room for mediocrity in my vision.

I do understand that students who struggle often become therapists who do amazing work.  I am willing to work with these students to get there.  I am not willing to push along a student who will not take anatomy or kinesiology seriously.

One of the two colleagues sitting next to me put in her resignation after the meeting.  She was that disillusioned.  Sometimes I wish I had the financial wherewithal to do the same.  But then, I remember the woman from Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Noble Bachelor," dismantling the walls that held her from inside, brick by brick.  Subversion takes years, sometimes.  It takes patience, always.  I tell myself that this is what I am doing.

They Got It!

Last night I gave one of the lectures I both like and dread the most -- the lecture about working with geriatric and terminally ill clients.  At some point during the lecture, I can guarantee that I will see a room full of "lemon face," which means my students are actively trying to protect themselves from the icky ideas of aging and death.  

Last night, however, I got through the whole lecture with no lemon face.  This very small group of students are just as young as any other class, and just as oblivious to the concept of aging as something even they are doing.  They skipped lemon face, though, and went right to compassion.  

There is a posture students get when they get truly excited about a topic, and start to yearn for more.  They lean forward.  Their eyes get bigger.  They open their hands and unconsciously reach out towards me.  Everyone in the room last night had that posture.  I could almost feel their curiosity pulling information out of me.  When we started doing hands on practice, they went immediately into their focused place and committed.  To everything.  

What a joy for my barely-functioning shell to see this next generation of massage therapists get excited about working with people who are transitioning out of life.  I may make it through summer after all.

A Burnt Out Case

While I am not quite ready to go find a leper colony in the jungle, it is clear that I am becoming a Burnt Out Case.  There are cracks in the facade, and plaster is starting to rain down.  Work and school used to be my sanctuaries.  I could go and teach or do a massage and be so fully in the moment that I literally forgot everything else.  Even if the train ride in was a sea of screaming babies, seat stealing suburban tourists and surly conductors, by the time I walked into my classroom, I was the picture of calm, professional control.  When I went in to give a massage, I could disconnect from everything else and draw fulfillment from the simple act of doing something I love.

This week, though, it's coming apart.  I try to tap into those endless reserves of grounding, calming strength, and I find that the connection is lost.  Somebody unplugged my grounding circuits.  I try to fill myself up with breath, and I can almost literally hear the echo of wind in a hollowed-out soul.  This week, I got a new client.  A friend referred her to me.  I almost didn't take the appointment, although I desperately need it.  I barely mustered the energy to do my best massage.  Afterwards, I had only enough energy to pick up the crappiest food I could find and sit on my sofa trying to hypnotize myself with computer games.

Just in time, I think, I realized what this is.  This is what burnt out feels like.  This is the thing I spent all those hours in Ethics lectures warning students against, and making sure they knew the signs and the dangers of ignoring those signs.  Well, crap.  Now it looks like I need to take my own advice.

I used to think that knowledge was the answer.  The more I learned, the more energetic I felt, and the more I wanted to do.  More classes.  More challenges.  More studying.  It turns out I was just pushing myself further into my head, where the gasoline and matches live.  Whoosh.  Burnt out.

I find myself looking longingly at pictures of mountains and streams -- truly quiet places with no trains or cars in the background.  I have just enough left to get through the summer, then I think it is time for this Burnt Out Case to seek a brief sanctuary in the mountains.  Massage sabbatical planning is under way.

There Are More Things on Heaven and Earth

Last time I wrote about Christina, and I talked a little bit about True, as in, "what happens on the table is True." (quote by Tracey Walton.) "True" is the word that stuck with me after our session, and the word that keeps coming into my mind at unattended moments.  It came to me again in the form of Gina*, my client.

Like many of my clients, Gina has cancer.  She has a difficult cancer that most places would call end stage.  As in terminal.  As in: don't waste your time with chemo, Gina, just enjoy the time you have left.  Gina isn't having it.  Last time I saw her, she spoke for a long time about her quest for the next level of treatment, and about how the massages brought her to a calm place after living every day in anxiety. She asked me, in all sincerity, what kind of energy work I was doing with her.

I told her I wasn't trained in energy work. I didn't have that knowledge or skill, so I couldn't possibly claim to be doing energy work on her.

Smiling, Gina said, "Bullshit!"

She climbed on the table for her session.  I focused and grounded myself, like I always do.  I massaged her gently, cautiously, and slowly, like I always do.  I silently wished her peace as I did so, like any human being would do.

Gina's breathing slowed, her shoulders dropped.  After the session, she told me she felt a light and calm presence surrounding and infusing her body.  I thanked her, and hugged her, and decided not to wonder where that came from.

True.

*-- name and all identifying details have been changed

The Question of True

"The bear is chasing you," she said, "You need to get out of that sympathetic state."  She twisted my ankle back and forth directing me to move my eyes.  Eyes open.  Eyes closed.  Eyes open.  Eyes closed looking up.  Eyes closed looking to the left.  She gave me words to focus on.  True.  Grudge.  Moral.  Joy.  Each one unremarkable in itself, but somehow every time she said a new word, a new wave of tears broke over my face.  I was the ocean, finally breaking through the futile walls built to control and contain.

I went to massage school with Christina, and I am ashamed to say I don't think I treated her as well as I should have.  She was deep into energy work, fields, auras, chakras and all that.  I was deep into science.  The evidence-based path that I knew was the only way to build respect for our profession.  We left school, parted ways, stayed tangentially in touch.  I went to see her because I was buying a room divider from her before she moved out West.

I couldn't help it -- she asked me how I was and I told her the truth through tears.  Not good.  Not fine.  Generous, lovely Christina -- she would not let me leave without doing some work for me.  She gave me her gift of time, attention, and, yes, energy.  I don't pretend to understand the systems she used.  I never studied energy work.  But I decided in my broke-openness to accept.  Just accept the gifts being offered to me.  I don't understand what happened, but I know I left feeling stronger, lighter, and better able to breathe.

I am reminded of something Tracey Walton said in a workshop about massage therapy research: "What happens on the table is true."  I couldn't find any evidence to support what I was felt except that I felt it.  I used to say, in my arrogance, that I didn't "believe in" energy work.  That I preferred to focus on the known and proven/provable physiological effects of massage.  I thought the woo-woo ness of some energy-based bodywork cheapened our profession.

After some years doing oncology massage, I was coming around a little bit, but still maintained a healthy skepticism.  But now I must admit that the work Christina does is, in the fullest sense of the word, True.

Can I talk about this? I mean, it's right there . . .

I am teaching a course now where we explore massage considerations and adaptions for various groups : pregnant women, the elderly, people who have chronic illnesses, etc.  On our first day of class, we were having a discussion about how and why we might need to classify certain groups as "special populations" and what that label might mean.  One student raised her hand and asked me to silently read her written-out question because she "didn't want to be rude."

The question was: "Is obesity a special population?"

This was not an abstract question.  One of the students in that class is clearly obese.  The stress of her weight on her body shows in the way she moves, and in the way she tolerates work from her classmates.  The first time I saw her, I wondered if she would even make it through the first quarter.  Massage is a physical job.  It's not ultra running, true, but you still work standing up (usually,) and rely on your body to do the work.  The first quarter, she could barely make it through a half hour practice without stopping because she was "tired."

She is now in her third quarter, just barely scraping by.  This has more to do with missing classes and failing tests than with her physique.  Her endurance has improved, but she still tires easily.  I wonder if and when it would ever be appropriate to discuss her weight with her.  I have talked to several other teachers, and we all agree that it is outside our scope of practice to discuss this with her directly.  We are not physicians or dietitians.  We don't know her actual health details.  We know the physical demands of massage therapy, but we also know that you don't have to have a healthy BMI to do great massage.

It is still a dilemma to me, though.  I firmly believe it is not my place to initiate a specific conversation about anyone's weight.  I can speak realistically about the physical demands of the job,
though, and hope students make their own choices to support themselves.  Meanwhile, I realize there are more prevalent barriers to her success, which have to do with responsibility and time management.  In that she is hardly unique, unfortunately.

C Word

Yesterday I behaved in a way that makes me ashamed of myself.  Someone reached out to me for a nonjudgmental, caring touch, and I pulled away.  I don't want to make excuses, but here's the story:

Once a month, my friend and I work in the memory care wing of a nursing home. One of the residents, "Agnes," has. Been there since we started two years ago.  She never wants a massage, but she does want to say hello.  She regularly peppers her language with cursing and insults.  Example:

"Hello Agnes.  How are you today?"
"Shaddup ya c***."

Recently, she has taken to spitting at people to get their attention.  She does this with a noisy warm up, so most of the time we can cut her off with a simple, "Agnes, please don't spit on me right now."

Every time we see her, we ask her if she wants a massage.  She always says no.  We try to sneak in a little bit of caring touch.  She will let us hold her hand for a few seconds, and sometimes even lets us rub her shoulder.  Agnes has surprisingly strong and sharp nails for a woman her age, though, and after a few seconds of hand-holding, she will rake one against our fingers -- hard.  I am ashamed to say that I am always cautious when holding her hand.  She has nearly drawn blood a couple of times.

Yesterday, she was letting me hold her hand, and even put both her hands around mine.  Quite suddenly, she pulled down on my hand, and by instinct I pulled away.  When I looked int her eyes, she looked devastated.

I immediately bent down and gently hugged her and laid my head on top of hers.  She has never
accepted so much touch from me.  Still, I knew that I had rejected her when she was most vulnerable.  She tried to pull me closer, and I pulled away. I tell myself that I am on a mission to bring human touch to those who need it, to show people that age and infirmity should not exclude you from the world of warmth and connection.  In that moment, though, I failed myself.  Every time I see Agnes, I will try to make it up to her.