"Our sorrows and wounds are healed
only when we touch them with compassion."
-- Buddha
 |
| Tummy rub 2-26-14 |
"Well, maybe I could help. Can I scratch your ears? I could rub your tummy."
-- Stuart Little
-- Carol Connelly, As Good As It Gets
"So now that your ... soft underbelly is all exposed ..."
-- Carol Connelly, As Good As It Gets
I had a massage yesterday, which is always a good thing.
But this time was different.
I had a tummy ache, which is nothing new. But this one was bad. Real bad. For about a week it's felt like I've had a nest of trapped, angry pit vipers wrestling around in my abdomen.
I've had stress-related tummy aches since I was a little kid. My mom would just curtly send me to my room to lie down.
But my massage therapist Leah listened to me very concernedly and then asked if, during my usual massage, it would be alright for her to massage my belly.
Typically a massage includes everything except the front side of the torso. Everything gets touched except the area from armpits to groin.
It's a vulnerable area, the belly. It is not an area where I particularly like being touched. By anyone. So when Leah got to that part of the massage, I tensed up. And even though she did a deft job of keeping everything else covered up with blankets and towels, I couldn't help feeling exposed.
But then she drizzled on warm healing oil and began gently pressing my tummy in clockwise circles. She whispered soothing things in soft tones. I melted. I was completely unprepared for how powerful it would be.
I couldn't speak.
I'm never super chatty during a massage anyway, but this particular touch in this particular place on my body stole away my defenses, my words. A hush fell over the room. It felt sacred somehow.
The whole thing lasted about five minutes, but in those five minutes Leah charmed the snakes. The vipers quieted down and stopped fighting.
I felt such deep gratitude. My eyes released little tears that ran down into my ears. I took full breaths for the first time in days, it seemed.
The rest of my massage proceeded as usual, and it was all good. But those five minutes were the soft, gooey center.
Leah sent me home with a little bottle of the healing oil so I could massage it into my belly myself. Later in the evening, when the snakes started stirring again, I rubbed it in the way she told me to. It wasn't even close to feeling the same. But it helped a little.
There are all kinds of touch. The good, the bad, the incidental.
This was definitely the good kind.
Thank you, Leah. You did a good thing.
It's a vulnerable area, the belly. It is not an area where I particularly like being touched. By anyone. So when Leah got to that part of the massage, I tensed up. And even though she did a deft job of keeping everything else covered up with blankets and towels, I couldn't help feeling exposed.
But then she drizzled on warm healing oil and began gently pressing my tummy in clockwise circles. She whispered soothing things in soft tones. I melted. I was completely unprepared for how powerful it would be.
I couldn't speak.
I'm never super chatty during a massage anyway, but this particular touch in this particular place on my body stole away my defenses, my words. A hush fell over the room. It felt sacred somehow.
The whole thing lasted about five minutes, but in those five minutes Leah charmed the snakes. The vipers quieted down and stopped fighting.
I felt such deep gratitude. My eyes released little tears that ran down into my ears. I took full breaths for the first time in days, it seemed.
The rest of my massage proceeded as usual, and it was all good. But those five minutes were the soft, gooey center.
Leah sent me home with a little bottle of the healing oil so I could massage it into my belly myself. Later in the evening, when the snakes started stirring again, I rubbed it in the way she told me to. It wasn't even close to feeling the same. But it helped a little.
There are all kinds of touch. The good, the bad, the incidental.
This was definitely the good kind.
Thank you, Leah. You did a good thing.
