*Enters the room.* “Go and fill up the car with fuel, now.” *Leaves the room.*
The person on the couch sits there thinking “what the heck” just happened. Also, they’re probably not going to do it. Almost all of us don’t like being told what to do – let alone without any context or conversation about it.
What if instead, the interaction had gone like this:
*Enters the room* “Hey, do you have a minute to help me with something?”
“Hey, yeah sure. What’s up?”
“I was wondering if you could help me by filling up the car with fuel?”
“No problem. Do you need it done now or in a little bit?”
“If you could do it now, that would be awesome – I’ve got that appointment to get to at 3pm and I think I’m going to need it to make it there.”
“Sounds good. I’ll be back soon then!” *wanders off to go do the thing*
This [made up] conversation is how I’d like you to conceptualize massage pressure. I’ve been thinking about this analogy for ages now and I think that even though it’s a bit cheesy it encapsulates a few ideas I’d like to share with you about how you approach your massage pressure.
- 1. Going in and demanding change from the tissue is abrupt and likely won’t produce the results you want. No one likes being told what to do, point-blank, and neither do your muscles/nervous system. This is why we approach our work as a facilitator instead of a healer.
- 2. The sweeter you approach the conversation, the more likely you are to get a conversation. This part of the analogy speaks to the state of the nervous system and its willingness to even entertain your massage pressure. If you don’t open with a gentle question, the response will likely be “no”. You want a foot in the door to be able to ask more questions.
- 3. The more details you can give, the more conversation you have, the more back-and-forth there is in the dialogue, the closer you get to the desired outcome. If you ask questions in an order (apply pressure in an order), from peripheral to deep with incremental pauses for a response – you’re more likely to get space from the body (get the car filled up with fuel).
The same way you feel about the first scenario, is how your clients’ muscles feel if you jump in abruptly and without any conversation. If instead, you approach your pressure as a continuously changing conversation, where in order to get the desired outcome (for everyone), you need to be asking soft questions, incrementally AND you need to be waiting for the response before you make your next addition or subtraction of pressure – you’ll most likely get the response you’re looking for.
Responsiveness is key. Just like in a verbal conversation.
If your therapist doesn’t approach it this way, send ’em on over to Navina to feel the difference.
Drew.
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Bloody love this…
Cheesy or not – it sums it up & helps with the whole understanding shamoooo…
Also, love the facilitator not healer… Ego thing…
Makes me wonder if we need to change the Finding Wellness page… 🤣
I love this thought process Drew. So far in my practice hours when approaching new clients I think I was initially timid to be to light on pressure and that they’d feel uncomfortable if they needed to ask for more. So my initial thought with this is that I would make sure to increase pressure each time until I could tell that we were reaching end point. With this continuous conversation approach, I feel it helps to shift the awareness back onto the body itself and not the expectations or anticipation of the client. I think this can really help both parties work with the developing relationship between them, and know that as each session happens, there is room for change and adjustment as the conversation grows.
Thank you!