I’m six years old. One of my hands is
swollen, black and blue. One of the fingers is all crooked and
hurting badly. I’m in an examination room, being, from my
perspective, tortured by a young physician and his assisting nurse.
I feel lonely and afraid. They’re in a hurry, caught in
their own world of anonymous patients coming and going. There
is no compassion, no presence. The doctor says it’s only
a sprain.
I’m out in the corridor now, waiting to get X-rayed. An
older physician who is passing by stops and asks me if he can
have a look at my hand. His hands are warm and gentle and I can
feel the compassion radiating from his heart. He tells me my finger
is broken, the joint is displaced. Whether my finger is broken
or not doesn’t feel important -- it’s the gentle and
respectful touch from his heart and from his hands that I will
always remember, how I felt in his presence.
I think this is one of the most important events when it comes
to shaping my perspective on touch - to experience the difference
between a good touch and an uncomfortable one and how much more
there’s involved in touch than our hands.
My introduction as a body worker was through Swedish massage.
(That’s what you "foreigners" call it; in Sweden
we call it classical massage. Most Swedish people don’t
know what Swedish massage is. If you ask, they’d probably
think there’s something erotic about it, like some kind
of Scandinavian style of French massage.) As I was working with
health promotion at a spa, I mostly dealt with people who were
tired or worn-out. To begin with I was giving deep tissue massage
to loosen up their tension, but by doing that I was being tense
and getting drained, not feeling satisfied with my sessions. As
time past I stopped caring about the technique and felt much more
present and connected with my clients and I noticed that I was
ending up giving massage that put the clients in a deeper state
of relaxation. The difference had to do with my state of mind,
with my intent, with me being there with a feeling of compassion
for the person on the table. My feeling of being drained turned
into a very pleasant feeling of tranquillity.
There are a lot of different techniques and methods for body work
and healing. Some people find it confusing -- what is to be trusted
or not, what is effective or not, what is "hocus-pocus"
and what is "proved" by science. I think that every
technique serves it’s purpose and wouldn’t exist if
therewasn’t someone who would benefit from it. The client
benefits by having the appropriate session at that time, and the
body worker by adding one more tool to integrate, getting yet
another experience of touch. The originator benefits by having
the experience of creating a new technique.
The more techniques available, the bigger the chance for everyone
to find a method and a touch that suites them -- both as a client
and as a body worker. Whatever we choose, there’s always
room for the heart, for compassion and respect. To use our hands
as an extension of our heart… that’s healing!
Cristel Eden is currently visiting Philadelphia
from her homeland, Sweden. Cristel holds a B.E. in Preventative
Health Care and has studied Classsical massage, Body Harmony and
Collard Method Bodywork.
