Why We Need a Massage...

So easy, so obvious, yeah? Most folks thinking goes as far as "I'm so sore," or "I've had this injury that just won't heal," or"healed but it still hurts," or the biggest, "I've got so much stress in my life." Now while all of these are very valid reasons, they are just the tip of the iceberg... an iceberg which I might say that we are stranded on, floating away from our best selves every day we continue to ignore, or try to cope with these things in ways that don't directly address them. "Is it really that serious or important?" you might ask. Most definitely.

In the process of a massage as I have come to know it, being able to let go and let someone work out every bit of soreness and stagnation not only allows your physical structure to refresh itself, but it allows for reintegration on a much deeper level. Before I go spouting off about that "body, mind, soul" connection let me break it down in a very practical way for the very Western medicine-oriented folks out there who would tune me out before I started. (Forgive me, please for writing like I know something, when really this is just a humble hunch, backed up by sciences of various cultures I suppose. There are obviously many people with conditions for whom this writing won't apply.) I will put forth that in many of the cases that I have seen, which I would approximate in the low hundreds, the soreness, the slow to heal injuries, and the stress are symptomatic of a greater problem, our forgetfulness.

While some people refer to it as disconnection, usually following that with a rant about the woes of this modern world, I chose to call it forgetfulness, because of how easily we remember things once reminded. Every touch of massage, when we relax and breath enough to allow it in, applies a pressure to some soft tissue, nerve, bones, what have you, directly or indirectly from angles we can't apply to ourselves while staying relaxed. This allows for a feedback that reorients us to the full spectrum of what is happening, and that new attention, that new full attention to our whole body, riding on the back of that freshly oxygenated blood. We have an internal physician that can do everything we can ever need it to do, however if we chose to operate at less than our best, than we are withholding pertinent info which our physician needs to heal us. Think of how often you have gone to the doctor and forgotten to mention something, or you remember once they start looking at something else.

Sometimes I put off getting a massage myself, thinking that my yoga will relieve my stress, or the gym workout will balance my posture, or a few hours of dancing my ʻōkole off & a good nights rest is all I need. All of those are partly true, but unlike exercise, or other activities that allow us to chose which parts of which muscles we are using, thus programing the muscle memory. During a massage however, the receiver is not the doer, thus the physical must surrender, allowing the mind, and the soul to get back to your whole body.

Simply put, the most mindful that we can be about the most of our bodies, the more of ourselves we can be. Massage helps us remember those parts of ourselves that when remembered will communicate what we need to know to stay whole and balanced. Whole and balanced means no stress that can't be handled, and the life we live will be perceived through the full capacity of our senses and achieve our full potential. Aloha, namaste, and cheers!