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In a Nigerian village, the women perform a special dance as they lay a floor in a new hut, but it would not be accurate to say that the purpose of the dance is to lay a floor. The purpose of the dance is to make the floor-laying a magical experience. — Constance Schrader, A Sense of Dance.
The Majority of the Message Is Not the Words
The importance of nonverbal communication is well known to those who give presentations as their profession. In their guide to giving such presentations, Brody and Kent (1993) remind us of this, “The verbal message—the content of the words—accounts for only seven percent of the impact on an audience. If you are visually congruent and vocally enthusiastic, you increase an audience's attention to your verbal message and enhance your credibility”. Often we forget, however, that massage therapists are both presenters to their clients and kinesthetic role models for them.
If we approach massage without awareness of our own bodies or lacking the congruence of being physically and emotionally comfortable working with another's body, we can little expect to evoke comfort and trust within our clients. When we take on the mantle of practicing massage, we also need to make within ourselves a commitment to learn the names and faces of the dragons within our own souls. Only when we ourselves are willing to be vulnerable in our embodied state of humanity will we be able to pace and ultimately lead our clients. For, thinking metaphorically, that is ultimately our goal—to meet our clients wherever they are and kinesthetically lead them towards a more functional way of inhabiting and appreciating their bodies.
Pacing and Leading
This concept of pacing and leading is extremely important. One of the recurring themes of Ericksonian Hypnosis and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) is that you have to be able to pace in order to lead. Kostere and Malatesta (1990) make the following summary.
The first step in the development of a therapeutic relationship is that of establishing rapport. Pacing refers to the process whereby the therapist enters into the world of the client. This is accomplished by accepting the client's model of the world and joining the client at that model. The process of pacing involves an openness to and acceptance of the world of the experiencing client. It is by entering into the client's world that the therapist can come to understand and know the client. Once having joined the client at his/her model of the world, the therapist can begin to assist the client in expanding his/her world view to include more options/choices. This process is known as leading.
While somatic therapies will use different techniques to pace and lead than will psychological therapies, the model remains valid and important. To move this concept of establishing rapport through pacing and leading into the body, we'll move onward into the realm of dance.
Space, Time, and Effort
Dance instructors Sandra Cerny Minton (1989) and Constance Schrader (1996) both look at the body and movement in terms of space, time, and energy/effort. Why is the understanding of these concepts vital and prerequisite for our massage work? Schrader explains,
The elements of dance are part of daily life because movement is part of daily life. When you think of time, space, and effort remember that these are not just dance elements, they are, in fact, elements we use to make our movements communicate the effect life has on us. What can you learn about yourself by considering the way that you deal with the elements of movement in daily life? You bring this awareness with you to your study of dance. Do you prefer slow, sustained movement? Do you always stand in the same place in class? Do you prefer to move by yourself or with another dancer? Do you prefer to move in straight lines or in curving pathways? Do you change levels easily (go down to the floor or up in the air), or are you most comfortable at one level? Do you move in spurts--moving very quickly and intensely, holding still, and moving very quickly and intensely again--or are you more comfortable with an even activity pace? Do you like to take risks when you move, or are you more comfortable moving with complete control at all times? Do you prefer to be watched or do you prefer to dance just for yourself?
From both of these authors we find a way of looking at how we use our bodies in occupying and moving through space, in choosing to move with a particular tempo and rhythm, and in expending a certain energy or effort in this accomplishment. Perhaps these elements of dance can be our guides in the process of developing rapport via pacing and leading. We'll access this guidance by asking more questions of ourselves.
Let's consider working with a partner on the table. What is her feeling, perception, awareness, and sense of the space she is in? (Ask her). How does that differ from what she might like to feel? How can you pace her current sense of space and how could you, via your touch and movements, lead her towards a new sense of body and space?
Now consider time. What is your partner feeling about time. What tempo and rhythm is he displaying in his breathing and small, unconscious movements. How smoothly does he transition from one movement to the next? How can you convey to him a sense of your understanding and pacing his current relationship to time? How might you then lead him to a better equilibrium? What tempo do you want to initially approach him with? In the continuum of movement, does his current relationship with time feel chaotic or coherent to you?
As your partner “rests on the table”, what is her feeling of energy and effort in lying there? What was the quality of effort in her movements before lying down? How would you communicate your awareness, understanding, and empathy for where she is in their relationship to effort? How might you then lead her, via your touch and nonverbal communication, towards a state of relaxed and focused ease?
As you work in these realms, what changes do you note in your partner? What can you detect via palpation? What can you hear? In observing their face and body, what changes do you see in color and shape? What changes can you perceive in frequency, tempo, and amplitude of small movements? What else might you sense if you were able to sense anything else?
Note that none of these questions has a “right” answer, yet they are important parts of how we interact with a client. By having my students do similar exercises at the beginning of a class, I focus them kinesthetically and interpersonally in their bodies and attempt to develop both their awareness and skills. It's a process of moving away from our verbal-visual minds into that kinesthetic world of vulnerability, empathy, and ultimately connection and humanity.
By observing others and ourselves as we ask such questions, we begin to understand the fundamental modes of body inhabitation and usage that we will need to facilitate others. How can we begin to know what change to facilitate before we begin to develop our abilities to see and understand the subtle non-verbal communications and use patterns. These must definitely be entry level skills in our massage system. We will also need the background to understand the training and efforts of our clients. From my perspective, it is as important to explicitly value and develop such skills and awareness as it is to teach that the subscapularis is a medial rotator of the humerus at the glenhumeral joint. Kinesthetic awareness and kinesiology need to walk together hand-in-hand. With this knowledge gleaned from dance, we next visit some concepts derived from the martial art of Aikido.
Surrendering into Yourself
As new massage therapists begin to consider pacing their clients, sometimes the fear of losing themselves in the process arises. Let's look at this through the eyes of several authors. Copying a quote encountered in Fields (1984):
Stella Resnick, a gestalt therapist, puts it this way, Surrender is not a defeat, nor a loss of power, but rather a skill that can improve with practice. To surrender is to let go, to give up control and just let it happen. Surrender is a physical experience: the control that you're letting go of is in the muscles, felt as a tightness and restraint. To surrender is to relax the muscle's grip and to simply let yourself be.
Aikido practitioner and author Wendy Palmer (1994) makes similar points in her chapter on Irimi (literally, entering).
Repeating this exercise many times, we can study how we respond during moments of incoming aggression or intimacy. We begin to discover what it feels like to be in an embodied state or a way of being that allows us to be calm and move directly into the attack. We may also notice that most of the time our bodies try to avoid the attack. The repetition of this exercise lets us experience what happens in both situations. If we have enough groundedness and focus, we can penetrate through our defensiveness and not be distracted by fear, confusion, or other emotions. She adds, We do not want to merge or get lost in the other person's energy. We want to be able to become like the other person, see the world from his or her point of view, while we retain our sense of self and our own sense of center.
Richard Strozzi-Heckler (1993), another practitioner of Aikido as well as a psychologist, reminds us that being centered is not a static position but the continued learning of how to return repeatedly to center amid the winds of chaos. We begin to appreciate that pacing and remaining centered are paradoxical. Simultaneously, we practice to be more attuned to the other while moment to moment re-enforcing our underlying attunement to what is intrinsically ourselves. Curiously, as we let go of control, we become more aligned with ourselves—an analogy that carries us forward to the next stop on our journey.
© Keith Eric Grant — The RamblemuseSM, November 1999. All rights reserved.
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