A Face Massage

"Facial massage decreases anxiety and can improve a negative mood."

-- Patti Kelly, 

"Benefits of a Facial Massage," Livestrong.com

"Facial massage is like coffee for the skin.
Everything comes to life."

-- Gucci Westman, 

"Swap Needles for Kneading," The Wall Street Journal

I have touch issues.

Particularly on my face.

The intensity with which I hate having my face touched borders on phobia.

Correction.

It doesn't border.

That would suggest that my face-touch aversion teeters on the brink of fear.

There is no teetering. 

Facial touch is smack in the middle of my darkest fear landscape.

The experts say fear of touch, or haphephobia, usually results from a fear of abuse or sexual assault.

I'm pretty sure I know the reasons behind my fear, but that's a whole other subject.

Suffice it to say, I hate it when anyone touches my face.

My anxiety spikes and I feel panicky, tense, breathless, out of control.

I've reacted with vehement negativity to even the touch of my husband and my children.

You know those sweet moments in movies when lovers caress one another's faces.

Um. Hell no.

Touch my face and I will recoil. Either that or I'll smack you.

When I was in theater school one of my acting teachers jauntily instructed us to partner up, sit cross-legged on the floor knees-to-knees, and take turns "exploring" one another's faces with our hands for a full five minutes at a time. 

My blood ran cold.

My breathing grew faster, shallower.

This was not happening.

No fucking way was this happening.

I wanted to bolt. Run. Leap from the fourth story window. Do anything to get out of that room with its walls closing in.

But I didn't.

I stayed.

I sat there.

I took it.

I white-knuckled it for five minutes while I let this kid named T.J. feel up my face with his fingers.

Somehow, I got through it.

I didn't like it, but I did it.

Other than T.J., the only other person I'll let touch my face for any length of time is my massage therapist, Maria. 

And Maria can massage my face for as long as she wants to. 

She rubs all around my eyes, and along my jawline, and across my sinuses. 

She even massages my ear lobes.

And I don't hate it.

I actually like it.

For me, touch is scary.

But with Maria, touch is safe. It's not terrifying. I don't hyperventilate. 

I've grown to look forward to the face part of my massage.

It's relaxing. It's calming. It's enjoyable. It's pleasurable.

I think it might even be good.

Maria's Thumbs

"If you're feeling out of kilter,

don't know what or where,

find the sore spot and work it out."

-- Eunice D. Ingham

My footprints, with thumbprints 5-23-14

If you are lucky enough to have a good massage therapist, then you have a good thing.

If you are lucky enough to have a good massage therapist who is also skilled at Reflexology foot massage, well, then I don't even have to tell you what a good thing you have, because you already know it full well.

Maria, my massage therapist is all of the above.

I struggle periodically with some chronic health problems that nobody seems to know what to do with. But Maria can take one look at my face, and then get to work on my feet, and the problem at hand. 

She did it yesterday. She didn't fix the problems, but she was able to temporarily relieve my pain so that I could catch my breath for at least a little while, and that was all I could ask for.

Reflexology is more than just foot massage. It's the art of applying very specific types of pressure to very specific points on the feet that correspond to different parts of the body. So by working her thumbs across my soles, toes, ankles, etc., Maria can trigger a healing response in my stomach, my eyes, my liver, my intestines, my lungs, my shoulders, my hips, my sinuses ... pretty much anyplace.

And I don't even have to tell her where it hurts. Her deft little thumbs are like super-sleuths that search my feet for clues and apprehend the little culprits that are causing all the trouble.

There are nay-sayers out there who pooh-pooh Reflexology as hocus-pocus, or pseudoscience, or a psychosomatic placebo. Frankly, I don't give a fuck what they think. Science has failed me time and time again with its pills and potions and practices, which quite often have unpleasant side-effects that leave me feeling even worse than before. In fact, Maria's had to get me over reactions to medications that were supposed to "help."

Pooh-pooh if you want.

But I'm a believer -- in Maria's thumbs.

They're 2 good things.

Incentive

"What I need is someone who will make me do what I can."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Carrot and stick 4-23-14

"There is something very satisfying about being rewarded for something ...

We do very well with rewards, sometimes, it's tangible, like a free coffee

 and sometimes, its just our own sense of moving closer to something we value.

We benefit from encouragement as we work towards our goals."

-- Michael Kay, 

"The Reward of Rewards," Psychology Today

"We persevere because we believe rewards will come."

-- Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read

After a couple of days of perfect bike riding weather, the temperature dropped and a chill gusty wind blew in yesterday. 

I bundled up and ventured out anyway, but the changing weather definitely stole some of the fun out of it for me.

Leaning into a stout, harsh crosswind that stung my face as it gusted across the empty farm fields, I fought to stay upright, and motivated. I was cold. My eyes were watering. My legs burned. My shoulder ached. My nose ran.

But I kept pedaling. Because I had a secret weapon. I had motivation. There was a carrot on the end of the stick I was chasing that was going to be so worth it when I finally caught up to it.

I had a massage scheduled later in the day.

So the colder, sorer and tired-er I got, the more I focused on how good it was going to feel when I finally stretched out on the heated massage table under the soft warmth of  heated blankets, soothed by the dim lights, the quiet music, the aroma of scented oil and sandalwood. I thought of smooth, warm hands working smooth, warm oil into my aching muscles, untying my knots and kneading me out while I drifted away for an hour in La La Land.

I'd have had the massage whether I rode or not. It was already on the calendar. But somehow, a tough ride in tough conditions made the hard-earned prize at the end feel all the better. It felt like a reward.

I guess you do what you have to do to keep going. On your bike. At your job. In your life.

Because nobody likes doing something for nothing. It's why dogs get treats when they sit and stay. It's why little kids get candy or stickers when they poop on the potty. It's why people get paychecks for doing 40 hours of whatever people do.

We all like being rewarded for our hard work, even if we have to give ourselves our own incentives and rewards and hang our own carrot on our own stick. It's how we're wired.

It's a good thing I like carrots. And massages.

Having My Tummy Rubbed

"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

"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.

Working Out My Kinks

"O time, thou must untangle this, not I.

It is too hard a knot for me t'untie."

-- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Kinked Slinky 1-29-14

"I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand.

When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away."

-- Hedy Lamarr

dis-en-tan-gle

:   to separate (things that are twisted together or caught on one another)
:   to remove the twists or knots in (something) 

... particularly the twists and knots in my shoulders and back after an hour in the strong, soft, warm, oiled, magical hands of my massage therapist, Maria.

Somehow, she can even untie the kinks in my brain and in my guts. How she gets there through my feet is a mystery I'll never understand.

I don't ask questions. I just lay there and let the untangling happen.

In my wildest fantasies, I'd be keeping a massage-a-day blog.