It’s been too long: too long since I’ve greeted you at my office and asked what it’s like being you these days… too long since I’ve worked with your body… too long since we’ve scheduled your time to come back… too long. I miss you!

As much as I wish we could work together in person, I have decided not to reopen my massage therapy practice at this time. As I said in my open letter last week, I cannot confidently conclude, based on what we know (and don’t know) about COVID-19, that I can safely do my work right now. I write this to you with sadness and grief, even while I know that it’s the right decision.

Please know that I will let you know as soon as anything changes. 

I wonder how you are, what your days are like these days. I hope you have stayed healthy and well. And let’s not forget sane! I wonder how your body is feeling, where it hurts. I wonder how you are sleeping. I wonder how your mood is, and if you’re being friendly with your dear self. I wonder what’s been hard for you, what you miss, whom you miss, where you miss being or going…

That pretty much sums up the reason for this letter to you, except for also wanting to let you know that I am doing OK. Hanging in there, like I think we all are doing our best to do. There are even some ways in which this odd time has agreed with me. It’s good to notice those things, too: 

• My scrappy, oddball little garden gives me so much joy. I love watching things grow! Also, I think composting is sexy. I love “making dirt” from food waste.
• I’m writing a book. It’s a memoir called “Home(sick)” — it’s all about my journey from homesickness, eating disorder, and suicidal depression and anxiety to health and finding a home right inside my own, now dear-to-me, body. (Does that ring a bell? Yeah. It’s my own personal version of my business’ tagline: “At home in your body, at home in the world.”)
• The online drop-in meditation class that I’ve been teaching/facilitating every weekday since March 17. I offer the class for others, but boy has it been good for me as well. Maybe you’ll pop in one of these days! I guide you in tuning in and cultivating friendliness toward your own dear self (a.k.a. “Focusing”) and then we meditate, and then we have time for questions and reflection. Boom! 45 minutes. Every weekday.
• Good, as well as sometimes quite crappy, TV (Netflix, Prime and Hulu)!  I really liked Dead to Me (irreverent, dark, funny). Last Tango in Halifax (funny, heartfelt, smart, British.) Gentefied (Latinx community in LA). An excellent and moving documentary on PBS, College Behind Bars. And, I’m embarrassed to say, but hey, I’ve had lots of open evenings, okay? Married at First Sight. That’s right. Horribly addictive. (Mr. Heidi’s Table calls it, “OPP: Other People’s Problems.”) And, oh yeah, a much better, masterfully edited show about people getting together called Dating Around. What else? Oh yes! All the cooking and baking shows. All!
• Well my dear, I’m going to sign off for now. I’d love to hear from you, how you are, what you miss, what crappy TV shows you’re addicted to… you get the idea! Write a comment here, drop me an email, and if you are an in-person client of mine, please feel free to book yourself a 15-minute check-in Zoom call. (It’s $1 — only because my booking system requires me to charge more than $0 to register it as a service).*

Be so well, wear your mask when you go out, and stay safe! I send you the warmest hug.

Heidi

*Other remote services –Bodywork & Focusing sessions– are also available. Read more.

The post A letter to my clients… appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Dear Jim and Margery,

I love you guys. Huge fan! Listen whenever I can, live, and also subscribe to your show on Stitcher so that I can hear it when I miss it live. By listening to you I get to keep my finger on the community and political pulse. Also, you make me laugh, which I’ve especially appreciated during these last few months. I was sorry to have missed the beginning segment of your show yesterday regarding Part 2 of Phase 2 reopening the state. I would have called in, or at least tried!

I am a nationally certified and Massachusetts-licensed massage therapist. (I would be remiss not to take the opportunity to emphasize that my title is “massage therapist” not, as many folks call us, “masseuse.” Also, where I work is not a “parlor.” The connotation of the word “masseuse” and “parlor” is back rooms, secrecy, under-the-table and possibly illicit interactions and transactions. That is not what massage therapists do. Language matters!) I am a massage therapist with a private practice in an office. I love my work and would like to continue doing it for decades to come. But on March 17 I temporarily closed my doors and stayed home to do my part in stopping the spread of this novel SARS-COV2 corona virus — my part to keep my clients, myself and my community safe. Which brings me to the reason I am writing:

Re: re-opening massage therapy

No matter how therapeutic and healing it is, no matter how much we love it, massage therapy is not essential. More importantly, many massage therapists believe that massage therapy is a high risk profession when it comes to transmission of COVID-19. There is too much we don’t know or understand to be able to practice safely or confidently yet.

Although Governor Baker and state officials have said that it is okay for us to reopen as of yesterday, I —and many of us— would like for this matter to be reconsidered.

According to the CDC*:

COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact (within about 6 feet) for a prolonged period.

There are aspects of the practice of massage therapy which fundamentally violate these CDC recommendations:

• We typically spend 60-90 minutes with each client*
• Much of that time, we are in direct physical contact. Social distance is impossible.* (Measures like contactless payment and asking clients to wait in their cars rather than the waiting room are laughable precautions when we are about to touch them — skin on skin— for 60 – 90 minutes.)
• Many of our treatment rooms are small, enclosed, and poorly ventilated spaces.* (Further, massage therapists who are employees or independent contractors in a spa or other clinic or wellness establishment may not have ultimate say in where/how they practice.)

Other extremely relevant concerns include:

• We cannot screen clients who are asymptomatic.* (Up to 45% of COVID-19 infections may be asymptomatic)
• Blood clotting: COVID-19-related blood clots occur even in “asymptomatic” cases. Clots are an extreme contraindication for massage therapy. We may not know if a client comes in with a clot. Early symptoms of clot may include “sore leg muscles,” which is often a reason someone seeks out massage therapy in the first place. Movement of a clot induced by massage can be deadly.*
• Best practice guidelines for the massage therapy profession require full PPE — not just masks — but full PPE among other strict and arduous sanitation practices. Proper use of PPE requires training. Proper use of N95 mask alone requires an hour long training. There are currently no trainings for this in place for our profession. Furthermore, availability of PPE is of concern, and considering the shortage, supply MUST go to essential medical providers, which massage therapy/bodywork is not.*

Most professions in the “personal services category” (in which we massage therapists in in Massachusetts have been included for part 2 of phase 2) do not share all of these risks.*

It is worth mentioning the reason I suspect some massage therapists have been pushing for reopening: financial concern and livelihood. Massage therapy is not a lucrative profession. For many it is a month-to-month kind of livelihood. Many massage therapists, especially therapists working in establishments like spas, work as independent contractors with no benefits by their employer. Or we are self-employed (like me). As such we are not eligible for regular unemployment benefits. Pandemic Unemployment assistance, which has been a life saver financially for many of us during the last 2 months, is slated to end in July. It is understandable then, though very unfortunate, that a number of people in our profession who, concerned for their financial security, may be pushing to overlook COVID-19 red and yellow flags related to safety.

If there is anything you can do in relation to this matter, even if it is giving voice to my/our concern, I’d appreciate it.

I’d also like to get word out about a great resource for other massage therapists who are feeling uncertainty and doubt about re-opening:  The Facebook group,“Massage, Health Practitioners and COVID-19,” is filled with scientifically-based research and discussion, as well as support and community.

Lastly, if you ever wanted to do a segment related to this, I –and many in my profession– would applaud you and be very grateful for the airtime.

Experts in the field include local long-time oncology massage therapy practitioner and teacher Tracy Walton (see https://www.tracywalton.com/our-blog/) and Ruth Werner, who literally has written the textbook on pathology (now in its 7th edition) as it relates to practicing massage therapy (see http://ruthwerner.com/).

Jim and Margery, thank you for listening/reading. I appreciate your time! And please, don’t ever go off the air.

Warmly,
Heidi Fischbach

P.S. I will likely post this letter to you on my blog. More eyes!

An enormous thank you to Ellen Mossman, Beth Baron, and Francesca Genco for their research, advocacy and concise wording in the CDC quote and bullet point sections of my letter. The bulk of the starred wording(*) comes from letters they wrote to their governing bodies and representatives, and generously shared with the massage therapy community.

————–
Heidi Fischbach, LMT, Ed.M.
Do you feel at home in your body?
www.HeidisTable.com

The post An Open Letter to Jim Braude & Margery Egan of Boston Public Radio Voicing Concerns Over Re-Opening Massage Therapy During Phase 2/Part 2 in Massachusetts appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Also upcoming: Therapeutic Self-Massage Class on Wednesday, 22 April 2020 at 7 PM. If you’re missing seeing me (or your massage therapist) in person, or are feeling a lot of tension and having a hard time relaxing, I hope you’ll register. (The class will be recorded — everyone registered will be sent a recording within a week of the class.)

The post Time Sensitive: This Saturday (18 April) 1 – 3 PM EDT (10 – 12 PDT) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

I ask this of people who come to Heidi’s Table for the first time. Probably, they and I have just met. They have made an appointment so I know their name and phone number and email address, and by now they’ve taken off their shoes and coat, but more than that? Not much

“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

I didn’t used to ask this. I used to dive right into the nitty and the gritty of allergies and injuries, of accidents and surgeries, of illnesses and medications… It’s not that these things aren’t important (and I will still ask about them before I work with someone’s body) but now I have those questions wait. First things first.

“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

People seem surprised when they hear this. There is no automatic answer. I’ve not asked them where they are from. I’ve not asked them what they do. What I have done is made a space for them to stop and notice themselves.

What’s it like to be me in the world…

Oftentimes I watch them pause. And wonder. The question mark has turned into an elipsis… This delights me. They are checking in with the ultimate (if still just potential) expert and friend of themselves: them! (Or he! Or she! Or whatever pronoun they use to refer to their dear own self).

The benefits of their session have certainly begun. I allow for a beat or two after my question and then I might say a bit more: “help me understand what your body does a lot of, what happens when you’re ‘stressed out’… Sometimes people tell me what they do for work, for play, but please answer however you think will help me understand what it’s like to be you.” And then they do. And invariably I feel honored to have been allowed to hear what it’s like to be them.

Sometimes, later in the day, maybe as I’m falling asleep, something a first time-client has said will come back into my awareness. Maybe I’ll remember that thing they said first. Or the way they held their shoulder. Or the way they finally sighed on the table when their mind slowed down. Sometimes I have the sense that everything I hear and observe during my interaction with clients and their bodies lives in a kind of pocket somewhere in the vicinity of my heart. It’s warm and it’s soft and it hums, this pocket… something about intimacy, something about connection, something about the privilege of having gotten to be there, and all of it something to do with this being human, in a body, in this our crazy and amazing world.

What’s it like to be you in the world?

The post What’s it like to be you in the world? appeared first on Heidi's Table.

“After a massage I feel very connected with my body. Is there anything I can do in between massages to maintain that connection?”

Dear Keeping the Peace,

I love that there are people like you in the world, people who want to feel connected to their bodies.

Connection is about relationship, and since it’s hard to relate to something or someone we don’t notice, that’s where I’ll invite you to start: by noticing.

Practice, whenever and however you can, turning toward, listening, and paying attention to your body.

“But Heidi,” you might be saying, “it’s easy to notice my body when I’m getting a massage, but things are stressful and life is busy off the massage table… Also, I am very easily distracted… And my body often is a source of stress…”

I hear you, Keeping the Peace, and it is exactly there, where you are, that I invite you to start:

Let stress, let discomfort, let disharmony and all the ways those express as tightness and pain in your body be what taps you on the shoulder to notice.

Practically speaking, how to connect with your body

In real life, in the real world, it might play out like this:

The next time you feel that knot creep into your shoulder, that pain settle into your butt, or that ache into your foot, use it as the reminder to turn toward your body and wonder:

How am I?

Let those words hang there for a few beats. Give them a breath, or two, or four.

How am I?

Notice. Don’t hurry to answer. Let the words linger around you like a cartoon bubble.

How am I?

Let your words (or whatever words or way you choose to come in contact with your body) be a soft invitation. You aren’t demanding an answer, you are inviting contact, and waiting and noticing what comes.

How am I?

Notice. There are so many ways to answer that question. The first answer that comes may be wordy, like a kid telling a convoluted story.

How am I?

Notice. Allow your body to answer. Maybe at first it seems like nothing comes or maybe what comes is something very very shy. Notice. And from a place of calm curiosity, watch.

How am I?

Sense down your middle. Invite your throat area, your chest area, your belly area to answer.

How am I?

Keep wondering, keep sensing, keep listening.

Remember your heartfelt intention to connect. You want to know this thing, this collection of cells, this mystery of being — however *you* think of it — that you call “your body.”

Be the space in(to) which your body can answer

Allow your body to tell you whatever, however it is. And keep listening.

The more you listen, the more you will hear. The more you hear, the more you will connect. I promise.

Channel your massage therapist’s table or your massage therapist’s office, if that helps. Channel your very own dear self while receiving a massage. Recall how your breathing, when you are receiving a massage, settles into calm. Be the calm into which anything your body wants to tell you can speak or in some other way be known. Be that calm.

Notice and listen. I think you will be amazed. I always am.

Several years ago I went through a bout of insomnia. Ugh. I kept waking up way before the rest of the world and, try as I might, just couldn’t fall back asleep. Finally it came to me to practice doing onto myself what I do for my clients: to listen, to be with, exactly as it is, whatever might be going on. Those sleepless wee hours of the morning became the tap on my shoulder to stop and listen to my body. I wrote this list-poem during one of those nights:

It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to smooth things out.
It’s hard to listen, to let discomfort be.
It’s hard to listen, to pull up a chair and keep company.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to have an agenda.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to steer things back to before.
It’s hard to listen, to feel it just like it is.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to pretty it up. Or make it worse than it is.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to tell you what to do.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to assume I know what you mean.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easy to jump to conclusions.
It’s hard to listen, it’s hard to realize I don’t know shit.
It’s hard to listen, to feel fragility.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to grip.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to interrupt.
It’s hard to listen, to realize the rain could wash it all away.
It’s hard to listen, and not tell things where to go.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to argue.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to explain.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to pretend.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to justify.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to advocate for the devil.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to defend.
It’s hard to listen, to know that things aren’t mine.
It’s hard to listen, to see people as capable.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to interfere.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to be hard.
It’s hard to listen I’m afraid.

Keep the Peace, thank you for being the very first person to “Ask Heidi.” I love your question and I love that you asked.

Heidi

The post How discomfort can help you (feel connected to your body) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Ready? Here, I saved a spot for you on the bench… Make yourself comfy.

Once upon a time there was a Titan named Atlas. The Titans were giants and Atlas, for sure, was gi-normous. Anyway, the Titans had lost a battle with the Greek gods and so, as punishment, the gods made Atlas hold up the sky, and some say, the whole world.

What’s that you say? … Oh yes. That would get tiring on the shoulders even for a giant, for sure!

Anyway… Atlas, poor guy, held up the sky for years and years until one day Hercules came along looking for some golden apples. (Let’s save the story of the golden apples and why Hercules was so desperate to find them for another rainy day, OK?).

Atlas said, “Herc, what’s up? You look distraught.”

“I’m looking for some golden apples.”

“Finding those apples seems very important to you–“

“You have no idea! I’d do anything to get them. Anything.”

“Um, as it turns out, I happen to know where they are.”

“You do?!”

“Yes. If you hold up the world for me, I’ll go get them for you.”

Hercules happened to also be very strong, not quite as strong as Atlas the giant, but very strong nonetheless and he reeeeally wanted those apples. In fact, you could say that getting those apples was more important to him than pretty much anything else in the world. And so it was that Hercules agreed.

Soon Atlas came back and, sure enough, he had the golden apples. As he got closer he noticed Hercules sweating and grunting from holding up all that weight and he thought to himself, “Know what? That there is actually not a job I want to take back.”

Now Hercules could see what Atlas was thinking and he did not like it one bit. So he thought up a trick.

“Wow, thanks, Atlas!” he said.

“No problem, man. I’ll leave them right here for you. Actually, I’ll even tuck them in your pockets… OK then, goodbye. It’s been nice doing business with you.”

“Oh uh, say, before you go… I wonder if you could help me with something.”

“Possibly…”

“As you know, this is some heavy heavy weight to hold and I’d like to get myself more comfortable in this position here… Could you hold the sky up for me for just a minute while I go get myself some padding for my shoulders?”

“Um… OK but just for a minute.”

So Atlas took back the sky from Hercules, and Hercules, of course, did not come back. [Insert expletive!] And that’s the story of how Atlas ended up with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

What’s that?… You’re wondering what happened to him?

Well, no one really knows, of course, but eventually, it is believed, he turned into a mountain. In fact, the Atlas mountains in Northwestern Africa, are named for him. As is a bone in your body! No kidding. Can you guess which one?

Yes, exactly! The very first vertebra (C1) in your spine, the one at the tippy top where your neck meets your head, is also named after Atlas.

Go ahead, check it out. Reach your hand behind you and find your spine at about shoulder level. You’ll know you’re on your spine by its bumpy ridgy stick-y-out-y bits. Each one of those bumps corresponds to a vertebra.

Now inch your fingers up the spine, over the bumps, until you reach the base of your skull/head… Right there, yes. Good.

Now go ahead and say hi to Atlas and his band of supporting tissues (made of muscles, ligaments and fascia).

Hiiiiiii!

Good. Since you’re there, why not give Atlas and Company a good squeeze. I call it the mama cat squeeze, with your hand being the cat and the fascia and connective tissue in your neck being the kitten:

Cup one hand into a C shape and reach it around to hold onto the back (scruff) of your neck. Now pretend you’re a mama cat picking up her kitten by the neck: squeeze and pull until your palm (area closest to wrist) and finger tips come together… Ahhhhh…

After doing the mama cat squeeze a few times, go ahead and roll your head around in slow, small little circles. Slowwwww… Take the opportunity to breathe while you’re at it!

If you’ve been sitting for awhile staring at a screen (ahem!) you may well hear little crackly sounds when you do this… that is the sound of your joints saying, “Thankyouthankyouthankyou! FI-nally someone is moving us!”

Movement is what keeps your joints nice and lubricated… Lubricated joints are happy joints. Dry and sticky joints that have not gotten movement, are not happy. (And the lubrication, called “synovial fluid,” is already right there in your joints. You do not even have to get your squirt gun.)

“Ahhhhhh”… I swear I just heard your Atlas moan. “Ahhhh…”

That there is the sound of one very appreciative wee bone that has the equivalent of a bowling ball sitting on top of it day in and day out. Yes, your head weighs somewhere between 8 – 12 lbs. Not counting hair!

That is all for today. Thank you for taking these moments with me and with Atlas.

If you live in the Boston area and would like me to work on your Atlas and Company, please give me a call or email me. I’d love to help.

There are even a few openings left this week: two today(!), Friday. And one tomorrow, Saturday, afternoon.

Until soon, I hope–
Heidi

The post That pain in your neck (feat. Hercules and Atlas!) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Muscular Therapy Institute / Cambridge, Massachusetts
Sunday, 26 June 2005 (RJUN05) Graduation

I am often amazed by the number of people who’ve never experienced massage. I was thinking about this as I was gathering my thoughts for today and so I decided to have a talk with my friend Juliette, who might be 5 but is a wise old soul who puts things that we adults can get all complicated about in the simplest of terms. Juliette’s mom, Cécile, also happens to be graduating today, hence Juliette knows a thing or two about this thing we are becoming: massage therapists.

Over chocolate milk and stories our conversation went something like this:

Me: Who is your mom?

J: She is a French person. She is nice.

Me: What does your mom do?

J: She gives people massage.

Me: What is that, massage?

J: She does this thing where she heals people… there’s this special kind of rubbing, with your hands, and people are lying down on a table with a cover over you and you do different hand moves that are supposed to heal. It’s kind of like magic and hands and it feels like a ball rolling around but it’s really just hands.

Me: Why would someone want to heal?

J: Some part of their body is hurting and you try to heal the sore-ing part.

A bit later, while coloring and telling fairy stories, Juliette brought up the subject of being scared, and since fear has been much on my mind —heck! when is it not!— my ears perked up. I asked her what a person should do when they are afraid to do something and she told me,

“It’s OK to be scared but then you can do it anyway – if you just try it you might like it – it’s hard to just think about something and not try it.”

When I woke up at 5:30 this morning, nervous about giving this talk and panicking about taking this leap of a career into an as-of-yet completely empty appointment book I remembered her words:

“It’s OK to be scared but then you can do it anyway.”

Thanks, Juliette!

A few years ago, at another time of fear, indecision and instability, I was trying really hard to figure out and “fix” my life, impatient to attain the things I thought I needed for security and happiness. You know when you keep trying to make something happen but try as you might the pieces just won’t fit? It was like that. At the time, and now, I take courage in the words of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet:

“…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday… you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” (Translation by Stephen Mitchell)

So I tried as best I could to love the questions and not search for answers at a time when my mind was so muddied by fear. And at some point I started getting a stirring inside to become a massage therapist. It’s amazing what can happen when one becomes still. (Or at least, stiller).

When I fist started mentioning out loud the possibility of becoming a massage therapist, people asked me why. Probably these were people who knew I’d been to graduate school not so long ago and would be repaying those loans for many a year to come. The best answer I could give them at the time was a sheepish, “because I love getting massages–” and my voice would swing up a bit at the end, making it seem much more a question than an answer, even though it was utterly true. Some people smiled politely. Others raised an eyebrow as if to say, “Who doesn’t!” And, being a doubter who’d been taught to give much more credence to my intellect than to my gut, I doubted my intuition. You can ask Joleen Barren, MTI’s director of admissions, how many intro workshops I came to… not one, not two, but three… My head kept clamoring for sureness, some guarantee that this was the right thing to do.  I was only just beginning to learn what creative genius and filmmaker Stanley Cubric knew: “The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the think of it.” Coming to massage school has been all about listening for the feel of things and living forward from that.

Often, way before we know something consciously, we know it in our bodies. Our bodies don’t lie. They say it like it is. Pain—physical or emotional or whatever kind—is a great motivator and when I was in enough of it, I began to look more deeply inside myself. But it can be hard to look inside when you’re in a lot of fear and pain—I think most of us keep running away (we all have our ways) until by some grace we stop and turn around and have a look inside at what’s actually there. Looking anywhere else really doesn’t work in the long term. Usually what’s there, what we were afraid of, when simply looked at and felt as it is, isn’t so bad after all. In the light of day we can see that the snake in the corner, the one we stayed up all night chattering our teeth over, was really just a curled up rope. The rope didn’t scare us, our thoughts did.

But anyhow, back to our bodies, it can be painful in our bodies not to be who we are, not to live our truth. In the words of Jungian analyst and writer, Marion Woodman:

“This is your body, your greatest gift, pregnant with wisdom you do not hear, grief you thought was forgotten, and joy you have never known.”

It is no coincidence that I wanted to help people by working with their bodies. My body has been my most direct path to feeling better. And my body not feeling good has been a lighthouse telling me I’m getting too close to the rocks. My body signals me in different ways that something is off in my thinking or in my actions and it tells me through things like stiff necks or a contracted piriformis (more commonly referred to as a pain in the ass!) that maybe, just maybe, I am being a bit unyielding in my beliefs about the ways things “should” be rather than accepting them the way they are. Or a sense of unease might let me know that it might be helpful to stop scurrying about and simply sit still and listen, to be and experience what is there to be felt.

Our bodies are like the canaries miners used to carry with them as they descended deep into the earth: when the canary stopped singing—or worse, died—they knew that Oxygen was getting too scarce and that it was unsafe to proceed. But we don’t need to let any canaries die to tune into our bodies — the more we listen the more we can learn the very distinct language of the body’s wisdom.

While each of us is different and each of our bodies speaks its own language, with its own expressions, dialects and accents, there is one way that is my favorite way of living the truth of who we are. It’s so simple, as truth usually is. Kids, before they’ve been schooled and conditioned too much in the ways of adults, are naturals at this way of being.

There is a poem by Mary Oliver called “Wild Geese” which says it beautifully:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

It is probably the most simple and yet the most courageous thing you can ever do: Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

My wish for every one of my stellar classmates today is that we may love what we love with no apologies or regrets. That we know in our very bones our place in the family of things. And that we feel empowered to live our lives from our place of integrity, being true to who we are first and foremost.

As people who, in Juliette’s words, “heal the sore-ing parts,” most of us have a high degree of compassion for suffering, for pain. As we have learned over and over in these two years: it is a well-nourished self that can best nourish others –nourishing others when we haven’t taken care of ourselves doesn’t hold up for very long. Putting the life preserver on yourself before helping your child, as we are reminded to do on airplanes, can just as well be applied to our work with clients.  May we make taking care of ourselves a daily practice. Here are some ideas:

Get curious about what the soft animal of your body loves.

Let it play. Let it work. Let it move. Let it rest.

Help it stay grounded, whatever grounding might look like for you.

Listen to music.

Watch and listen to a thunder storm.

Get drenched in the rain.

Go skinny dipping.

Spend time with people who feel like family.

Watch kids run through the fountain at the park.

Sleep under the stars.

Dance.

Sing out loud.

Sculpt.

Bake.

Cry.

Sit downwind of flowers. (Thanks to Tara Brach for that image!)

Sit under the trees and watch them: Notice how they change. Notice how they stay the same.

Trust the tides of your breathing.

Take comfort in the change of seasons.

Come back to your breath again and yet again.

And, in a panic or when you get lost, as Tamar Myers, our beloved Technique teacher always said, “go back to ‘basic back’ and ‘heart'”—the names of those techniques say it all.

——–

My practice, Heidi’s Table, is located in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Come see me! I am open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

The post On becoming a massage therapist. My story! appeared first on Heidi's Table.

And then you proceed, pretty much every time, to blow me away.

You are so insightful.

You tell me you want to experience the quality of fortitude. I ask what that would be like, how you’d know that you have it, and you tell me that fortitude means feeling flexible, yet strong.

Sometimes you tell me you want to feel centered. And then you point to the place in your body where “centered” lives, when it’s there. You even show me, with your arms, the motion that becoming centered involves.

Other times you tell me you want to feel relaxed, that your mind has been crowded. And then, 15 minutes into your session you tell me you’re doing what I taught you. “What’s that?” I ask, not remembering. And you tell me that you are simply watching the screen of your mind, letting the thoughts ticker tape across the bottom, neither trying to stop them, nor grabbing onto them, but just letting them scroll on by.

You want soothing. The last couple weeks have been hard, you say, and your stomach has been knotted up. You want to feel calm.

You’d like to be able to turn your head with ease again. You just recently became a new dad and how lucky are you that your baby pretty much sleeps through the night, but oh my, you’d like to be doing the same but you’ve been waking up at 4 in the morning.

Your body teaches me what trust looks like. And that trust can never be forced or hurried along, and that everything changes when it’s ready. And then I get to observe, again and again, that readiness is much more likely to happen when a thing, a person, a shoulder, neck or back has been heard, understood, and met exactly as it is. Sometimes I can almost hear your shoulder saying, “Ahhh, you get it, yes. You really get it! Thank you.” And then, more times than not, it changes. Because now it’s ready. Its need to be knotted up is no longer.

Every time I hold your head, I remember that support is always there for you, for me, for everyone, whether we notice or not. And I notice the kindness of gravity, always pulling us back toward ground, and yes, darkness and rest.

I look forward to every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the days I get to see you. I can’t tell you how often, at the end of one of those days, I think, “Wow! How lucky am I to do something I love and get to help people like you. “

I suppose the short version of all the above would be, simply, “thank you.”

So much love,

Heidi

P.S. Oh and too? You may not know this but yesterday you helped me play mood detective with my insomnia! And last night I slept much better. Thanks!

Do you know someone that would love my work? My practice is open for several more clients. I’d love it if you forwarded this letter to people you love. [And, mwah!]

The post Dear Client, Thank you. Love, Heidi appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Hard to ignore. Certainly hard to sleep through. When I finally “cried Uncle” and got up, I was tapped ever so lovingly on the shoulder by this line:

tending as all things do, toward silence…

Ahhh. And then I remembered (with a little help from above Google) the poem by Mary Oliver from whence my love-line came:

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades;

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
I look on time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence.

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ * ~

Oh my dear body, I have been full of argument. And oh but I have been feeling frightened. Something to do with time and how it keeps passing at warp speed measured in days, even hours, when it used to be years. (Um, what year are we again?)

Something about how I’m doing too much of the wrong thing, and not enough of the love thing. And how the two are all tangled up and I can’t tease them apart. And in all this I need to support myself.

That last thought is so heavy it could crush rocks.

Playing Mood Detective

Sweet pea, shall we play? Want to invite your old pal and superhero Curiosity to play Mood Detective with you?

Yesss!

OK. What happens when you believe this thought? How do you live your life when you believe: “I need to support myself” ?

I worry. And then what I do is motivated by fear.
I feel alone. And I jump into the future and worry about dying alone.

Yikes!

And I wake up early and can’t sleep.
And I spin. Not like in a Sufi dance of joy, no. More like a piece that has sprung loose from a powerful moving machine… it’s still spinning like mad but on its own.

Oof! So hard!

And how does it feel in your body when you’re thinking that thought?

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.
It feels like there’s static on the screen of my mind.
Nothing is clear.
Sometimes my neck hurts.
And sometimes I feel it in my butt.

Ow! OK. Could something else be as true or truer than this pain-in-the-butt thought “I need to support myself”?

What do you mean?

Well, as I see it you are an adult and you are running a business and you need to pay bills and keep things moving. But when you are crushed with this thought you are usually only looking at things from one perspective, and, not to put too fine a point on it, that would be the perspective of doom.

Oh yes.

The thought “I need to support myself” really doesn’t seem to be serving you, does it?

Nah.

Because I know for a fact that you’d still work and do the things you love, even without that thought.

Yes, probably you’re right.

Can you tell me about those?

Those?

Those things that you love to do?

Read and write poems and essays and stories.
Connect with people… people I’ve met and people I’ve never met and people I’ve not yet met.
Sing and dance. Pretend I am Leonard Cohen’s female backup.
Be a Massage Therapist.
Play Mood Detective. Teach my clients to be mood detectives so their bodies don’t have to express their stress as pain.

Wow. That’s a lot of things to love! So, what else could be as true or truer than your original pain-in-the-ass thought: “I need to support myself” ?

I need to allow myself to be supported.

Can you tell me about that?

Well, truth is, I am not alone. Not really. I often think I am, but I’m not. Yesterday morning I called my friend at 6:30 a.m., crying. I woke him up and he listened and was there. It was 5:30 for him!

Oh yes. That is support. Not to mention love.

And I have other dears that love me. All over the world.

Yes, you do.

And I have clients whom I adore and by all accounts, they seem pretty much to like me too. They pay me and I get to help them.

Wow, yes.

You know, come to think, how I help them is all about this.

How so?

Sometimes I will hold parts of my clients’ bodies. Like their head, for example. I make a fulcrum with my fingers and place my finger pads and tips right where their head meets their neck, atlas on axis, at the crux of so much of the pressure in their neck and jaw… And I wait. And listen. And hold. All the while their head is resting in my hands.

I can tell how much their neck tension is easing by how fully they let me hold their head. Sometimes, for whatever reason, a client will keep holding the weight of their head. Mostly it’s not conscious at all. Maybe they are trying to help me. They simply can’t, for whatever reason, in that moment allow the full weight of her head to rest in my hands.

Often, just showing up and bringing awareness to how it all is is enough to change it. I can tell when a client rests because I feel the weight of their head–ironically heavier and lighter at once–in my hands. Often their jaw and face softens at the same time. It moves me in a way I can’t explain, to get to be there when that happens.

Oh my, Heidi! Do you have any openings today? I want you to hold my head! OK. Where were we?

We were playing with the thought “I need to support myself.” And I was noticing that when I believe that thought I am not allowing Life–by way of the ground, the bed, the pillow, the figurative or actual hands under my head–to support me.

Gravity comes to mind, too. That fantastic force of this our earth, not letting me up and float away into the la-la-land. When I am worrying, I have usually forgotten about the loving force of gravity pulling me ever back to the ground, back toward darkness, “tending as all music does, toward silence.”

~ * ~

Dear Mary Oliver, dear poetry, dear life, dear Byron Katie, dear ground, dear gravity, and oh dear client-of-mine,

Thank you.

Love,

Your Heidi

The post Entertaining today’s guest: Insomnia (feat. Mary Oliver) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Like most things, when all is well and at ease we don’t even think about our jaws. But when things get tight? Or when we have what is commonly referred to as “TMJ”? Ow!

Jaw tension can make it hard to chew, to laugh, to talk, to drink, to yawn, to sing… oh my. (Aww, dear jaw, thank you for helping me do so many things!)

I remember a 2 week stretch of jaw tension I had last year. I felt like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz, and all I wanted was for someone to come and squeeze some oil into my jaw joint.

We can certainly focus on your jaw the next time you come for a massage session, but in the meantime (or if you are a far-away reader), here’s a quick and quite possibly fun(ny) thing you can do to get some relief:

1. Get yourself a cork. A wine cork will do just fine.
2. Put the cork between your front teeth and bite down on it. It can be the short way or the long way, no matter. Just be sure not to overstretch your jaw to get the cork in there for goodness sake. Also, you don’t need a death grip on that cork. Just a bite that will hold it there. Remember, we’re aiming for ease.
3. If there is someone around, grab them and give them a cork too. If you do this exercise with someone else, you’ll probably laugh, and laughing–especially while biting down on a cork– can be verrrrry helpful for tightness of jaw.
4. With the cork held between your teeth, proceed to have a conversation. Or sing. Or laugh. Or tell on all the things that are bugging you. But do make noise, or some kind of sound. Go ahead. For 5 – 10 minutes.
5. If no one is around or you’d rather do this alone, you will still need to talk or make vocal noise. Maybe grab your hairbrush and sing yourself a song. Do some karaoke or garage band. Read yourself a poem or a story. Shout and laugh. Anything, but make sounds.
6. After 5 – 10 minutes take out the cork and then take another minute to massage your jaw like this:
   • Use both hands. Put the pad of your 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers on your mandible (just under and forward of your earlobe) — you’ll know you’re in the right place if you open your mouth a bit and feel the hinge joint of the jaw moving.
   • Once your fingers are in place, firmly (but again, not ow!) make repeated, small circular movements, about the size of the diameter of a nickle or quarter… Your fingers will stay touching the same skin (i.e. not traveling across it), but you will feel your fascia (the connective tissue under the skin) moving in circles with your fingers. (If you’ve had a massage from me, you may remember me doing this).

You can do this exercise a couple times a day, every day, while things are tight.

Wishing you ease. And fun!

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