Flesh & Feeling: Somatic Learnings & Stories from the Massage Table
Mobile Massage Services in Jupiter, Stuart & Palm Beach, Florida
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One of the most healing things I do isn't bodywork. It's reminding people they have a choice.
Because healing isn't about surrendering your power to an authority who thinks they know better about your body.
Healing is in reclaiming your power and body in real time connection with someone who honors both.
My clients ask me all the time - what do I do to not take on their energy?
Healers that are ready to give as their full time job become their own anchors in their lives. They discover their center, who they are and what their own energy feels like without any outside influences. They learn to inhabit their bodies so that other people’s energy has no where to live in their fields.
I tell them the foundation of it all is personal boundaries.
Knowing how to touch a body isn't the same as knowing how to hold a woman through healing.
Men have been at the forefront of many respected bodywork modalities —
John Barnes’ MFR, John Upleger’s Cranial Sacral work, Arthur Pauls’ Ortho-Bionomy, Jean-Pierre Barral’s Visceral Manipulation, Alexander Lowen’s Bioenergetics.
I have learned and experienced bodywork from highly skilled men who have dedicated their lives to perfecting their technique.
But something was always missing for me.
The felt sense and why it matters…
Most massage therapists are trained to work with the physical body — the muscles, fascia, posture, and nervous system.
And this work matters deeply.
But there’s another layer I’ve spent years studying — the felt sense of the body.
Your body isn’t fighting you—it’s protecting you.
So many clients come in and talk about their pain like they are at war with their bodies. They want to fight the pain away. They want to have the deepest pressure possible to force it out of their bodies. They think that more intensity = more results.
However, sometimes more pressure can actually just reinforce bracing patterns that the body has, keeping muscles contracted and tight and not achieve anything except keeping the nervous system in fight or flight.
I could care less about releasing the rhomboids in your shoulder.
Bodywork has the potential to work on the implicit memory, not just the explicit memory.
Explicit memory is the conscious things we remember and can recite as stories about our childhood and life to our therapist, our friends, and our loved ones.
Implicit memory is what our minds may have forgotten, but our bodies remember. It is the unconscious emotional memory that creates bracing, tension, and contraction in the body. We don’t fully have context or a verbal story for this type of memory.
When your hips don’t lie
"I wanted to tell you a crazy story... my right hip... I've been stretching it and it feels ways more open like something definitely released from it after you worked on me.
And tonight my boyfriend asked me for a massage and says his right hip feels broken... I'm not even kidding... it sounds like I'm making this up and I'm not!!"
I have worked with multiple clients that have had pain in their right hip.
You are your greatest healer.
She came to me high with anxiety and the mid to lower half of her back in agonizing pain.
I immediately felt her breath getting caught in her chest, and not entering her belly. I felt the anxiety but as I continued to work on her back, I could feel a deeper layer of sadness underneath it.
The goal isn’t to be in our bodies ALL the time.
She came to me with the intention to move this heaviness she felt in her chest.
As I started to work on her back, my mind started swirling around and around and it felt like this mental fog that was keeping me from being present with her body.
And I knew it wasn’t mine.
Healing from Addiction with Bodywork & Massage
He knew it was coming — the emotional release.
Under the frustration he was feeling, he knew there was so much grief buried that needed to come out of his body.
And when I asked what he was sensing as I held his stomach, he said he felt numb. It was a part protecting him from feeling the layer that was so obvious to me — this huge grief that wanted to be unleashed that made me want to cry.
Your problem isn’t chronic inflammation & body pain.
You think your problem is chronic pain and inflammation.
When actually, it's how you talk to yourself and what you do with your emotions.
Finding the Best Massage Modality that Works for You
I’ve met many practitioners and educators who whole heartedly believe that their modality is THE way and the healing cure to all body pain.
And sure, some modalities have hit harder for me at certain times AND I’ve had just as profound healing sessions with visceral manipulation as I have with a deep tissue massage.
If you are sitting there, trying to figure out what is the best modality for you and your body right now, here’s my answer…
Your body isn’t the problem.
“I don’t really feel anything, it’s like I’m numb.”
“I am constantly anxious and have a hard time sitting still.”
“I should make time for bodywork, but I’m too busy.”
“I was feeling so good, until I wasn’t, and then I went back into my addiction.”
All of these statements point to one thing:
Your body isn’t the problem.
Your disconnection to it is.
Western Medicine & Healing
Western medicine wants to cut you up into pieces. Fragment you by isolating the issue apart from the rest of the body and then give you a drug to ease the symptoms.
However, you are a whole person with fascia and blood and lymph that interconnects like a mycelial network and tells your unique story.
Removing Distraction to Connect to the Body
I once massaged a woman who was texting on her phone in between strokes.
It’s not my place to control or judge how my clients show up for their massage AND this speaks to a chronic issue in our technologically advanced world today — we are terrified to be with ourselves.
We will do anything not to feel our emotions, to let down the controlling walls, remove the distractions, and sit in the discomfort of our bodies.
A Story on Moving Grief
I could feel it just sitting next to her on the bus. It was this buzzy anxious repelling force that didn’t want to be touched.
She didn’t want it to spill out, she was the retreat facilitator for god’s sake.
She was holding it tight to her chest, quite literally.
Embodied Experiences of Pleasure & Pain: Mobile Massage in Jupiter, FL and Stuart, FL
My experience has been that pleasure and pain are so intertwined. They both take an immense amount of capacity and presence to hold. They are big gifts and lessons in receiving. Being with stabbing pain in your back or grieving a death is just as much of a practice to hold and breathe through as locking eyes with your lover and feeling your heart explode.