Saturday I went to see the best massage therapist ever. He is blind and works at a spa downtown that has an expensive address. But Michael is a regular guy who is very gifted and experienced at his profession. His wife used to work in the circulation department of a newspaper where I used to work. I went to him for a massage for the first time maybe 15 years ago. It's hard to believe it's been that long.
When he took me to the treatment room yesterday and showed me the table it was apparent that he was not ready for a pregnant lady. So I told him I was pregnant. He adjusted the table and then hopped onto it himself to test it and make sure it was right. Then he feigned taking a nap, and we both laughed.
He showed me the place on the inside of the ankle that can have the effect of inducing labor, in case I wanted to try it later.
He managed to do most of the massage, covering nearly my entire back, while I was lying on my back.
There are lots of parts of me that are achy right now. But perhaps the best part of the whole thing was when he did my forearms. When you are typing all day and often also at night, there's a lot of pent up stuff in your forearms. Like an athlete's legs. And it made me think of all the people now who type so much more than they used to since the rise of the Internet. Chatting, message boards, blogs, email, etc. Not to mention the people who have web or data cell phones and send text messages, emails, etc. that way all day long.
Made me think how EVERYONES forearms must be full of stress right now. If you get someone to do a deep massage stroke on both sides of your forearm (top and bottom) your fingers move involuntarily, especially if you spend a lot of time typing or blackberrying or Treoing or whatever.
I wonder if there is a business in just massaging forearms and hands these days. You could go around to all the starbucks or other wifi hotspots where bloggers and other typists sit all day and massage forearms for little more than the cost of a Mocha Latte and chocolate croissant.
I can remember working at a job in the late 90s where, whenever I got a break from my desk, usually because I was at some kind of meeting, I would spend the time massaging my forearms and hands.
That was a stressful job, and when I got laid off from it, one of the things that I eventually ended up doing was going to massage school myself. One reason for this: I thought it would be better to help alleviate some of the stress in Silicon Valley rather than continuing to perpetuate it (as we all did by working at 900 miles per hour). Another reason for this: I didn't have a job, which was stressful, and by going to massage school two nights a week I was guaranteed to get at least two massages a week to help mitigate the effect that stress had on my body.
Part of me wishes I could have made a go of that as a business myself, but I didn't get a ton of support there. Everyone thought I was nuts for going to massage school at all.
There is no way after the 100 hours of training in basic Swedish massage and then the 125 hours I did in Shiatsu I could come close to any of the really good massage therapists that I had been to. That would take years of experience. And I did not feel confident about my ability. I guess the whole being laid off thing and the stressors that go with that had affected my confidence. And I was offered another job that took up a lot of time, caused a lot of stress, and turned out to be the worst place I ever worked. Getting fired from that one after 3.5 months also hit my confidence and soon after I took a comparatively low-paying job that I knew I could succeed at by just applying 20 percent of the brain power that my other jobs had required. Indeed, the deal I struck with David was that if I took that job we could resume our attempts to get pregnant.
So massage fell by the wayside. But I still think about it sometimes. I still have my own table. There is a connection it gives you to humanity, one person at a time. It is non-verbal, which is a break from my usual kind of work. And in these ways it is very satisfying and also aids in self renewal at the very same time.
