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It’s not really the thought that counts.

July 22, 2024 By: Drew Hume2 Comments

attention not intention

Image source: linkedin.com/.

There’s a lot of emphasis placed on the idea that “it’s the thought that counts”, and I often hear this show up in the context of massage as reinforcement for the idea “that all we need is intention”.

When actually, what serves everyone best is not INtention, but instead ATtention.

Attention = currency

Even though I’m specifically referring to massage here, this definitely also works in other areas of life.

In massage, the more attention you can pay to the work you’re doing, the more your work is worth. Both financially and also in all the other realms of worth.

Because attention is the currency of care. And the quality of massage is directly connected to how much care you can successfully impart on your client.

Even more specific than that is that your attention needs to be focused on SENSING & RESPONDING to the work you’re doing.

Firstly, how is this person showing up today? What’s their baseline? How are they holding themselves – and how do they move?

Then in the session that continues into questions/reflection of: How is the pressure being received by the body? How long is that response taking? What is that telling me about the time I need to spend there? Or which nearby areas do you need to work? How is their breath and expression responding? How does that inform your next touch or posture selection? (And so on)

Of course, your attention and the answers to those questions need to be linked intimately with your skill of technique and execution of the massage tool in order to drive real change, but the key to the door is attention.

In this way, intention is much less important, since it requires little to no attention. (And since any outcome can be supported with “but that wasn’t my intention”). You can have wonderful intentions, but if you’re distracted the entire treatment, it directly shows in the quality of your work.

Work on your direction of attention, and the results will be vastly better. You’ll also never get bored in this practice if you’re continuously searching for responses and trying to sense the requests of the tissues.

If you’re not a practitioner of massage but you’re reading this – search for someone who places more emphasis on their attention than their intention. Your sessions will feel much better and the results will follow suit.

Drew.

Comments

  1. Dayna Clancey says

    September 30, 2024 at 4:15 pm

    HI Drew! I agree with this 100%. When I was teaching in the massage therapy program I continually reminded my students to focus on their work and give their undivided attention to what they were doing/feeling/sensing both within themselves and their clients. I paired students up and told 1/2 of the givers to think about anything other than the massage….. what they had for breakfast, their plans for the weekend etc….. anything to be distracted from their work. The other 1/2 of the givers were told to pay full attention to what they were feeling/seeing/clients breath etc. The receivers were not told if their therapist was an attentive giver or a distracted one. At the end of the exercise, every receiver guessed correctly which therapist they had working on them and all agreed that the ones paying full attention gave a much more enjoyable and therapeutic treatment.

    Reply
    • Drew Hume says

      October 1, 2024 at 6:59 pm

      Hey Dayna!
      Oh what a brilliant experiment to do and a great representation of the power of attention.
      Thank you for sharing this! 🙂

      Reply

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