Massage Therapists are Planetary Healers
by Thomas W. Myers
Despite good news in some quarters and hard work in others, the sad truth is that our planetary ecosystem continues to get sicker and weaker, more polluted and less diverse.
As humanity’s meddling in the delicate web of life veers farther and farther off course and more out of touch, the need for excellent massage therapy and somatic education becomes increasingly important.
From therapists who feel the calling to heal only on special occasions to those who show up day after day in their session rooms, all hands-on therapists deserve a renewed sense of mission about how completely relevant their work is to planetary healing at the highest level. As we go about fixing a frozen shoulder or other muscular problem, massage therapists are engaging in ecological activism of the first order.
The two huge dilemmas that threaten the continued existence of human beings on our planet can be summarized as suicide by war and suicide by greed. For humans to perpetrate either of these disasters on the earth requires a certain numbness to the feelings of everything that surrounds us.
Theories abound concerning how we got so numb and off course in the first place. One aspect of getting back on course is clear. Our educational system, indeed our whole industrial society, is totally dominated by visual and auditory information. This dominance is detrimental to that third and major mode of learning and perceiving, the kinesthetic sense. We overstimulate the eyes and ears of both our children and ourselves, while the richness inherent in the felt sense of the body is largely ignored. Except for the repetition and competition of sports, and the runaround relief of recess, the subtle responses—the gut reactions and hunches that tune us in to the changing currents of the earth—grow dim and eventually waste away.
The flood of messages from the muscle spindles and stretch receptors that invest all our tissues from the skin on down are just as essential to an understanding of our inner and outer world as are TV and newspapers perhaps even more so. Regular integrative bodywork actually changes the way people hear and respond to situations and people around them. Boldly stated, massage therapists are working on a unique aspect of the environmental cause, literally reforming the inner environment through which we perceive ourselves, others and our relation to the world.
The great strength of hands-on therapists, and our unique ability, is in creating a grounded and connected populace ready to face, overcome and transform our inner addictive feelings of lack and need with an alert receptivity to what is. We have yet to disprove author and workshop leader Bernard Gunther’s old saw that, “If everyone got a massage every day, there would be no more war”. Perhaps we could even expand it: If everyone got satisfying touch, would they run so hard to try to fill their world with more things? Would the greedy train slow down?
The more society’s members are convinced through our words and our work to stay in touch with their bodies, their gut feelings and their right minds, the better chance humanity has to make the sane decisions that will lead to our emergence as a fully mature species performing diligent stewardship of Spaceship Earth.
The Earth seems so big compared to our tiny individuality that it is easy to forget just how delicate our position on it is. For one thing, except for the possibility of some pretty primitive protobionic cells that may have been on Mars some millions of years ago, we know of no other living planet in our galaxy. For the moment, the fate of the very finely balanced, gossamer-delicate living skin of the earth lies in our ignorant hands. We are the current holders of what may be a very rare trust.
So as we go about our job as therapists, let us not forget our role as educators. Our work as therapists is essential to help humanity grow through adolescence and thrive into adulthood. During bodywork, we are therapists of the larger body of life.
Thomas W Myers was trained by Ida B. Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais, and has practiced structural integration for over 20 years in a variety of clinical and cultural settings. He currently practices in Boston and Portland, Maine.
This article was originally published as the Guest editorial for Massage Magazine, March/April 1997. It is used with the permission of Thomas W. Myers.
