problem Area
anthony bruni
We all have problems but our bodies should not be one.
There are many datapoint ones receive when giving a massage. After a while, many bodyworkers, form a certain perspective as to how bodies work and sometimes don’t work. Some of the most telling bits of information are exchanged before a person gets on the table. Listening to people's language, the word they chose, to describe what they want a massage to focus on can reveal so much.
Language is utilitarian. it's easy to overlook how we are expressing our ideas when we are so concerned with what we are trying to express. How we phrase our ideas will influences how we attend to those ideas through. We can dress our ideas in fancy linguistic fabric, or we can shud our ideas in simple plain-spoken words. Whatever our decision is will carry a certain amount of baggage. Some of our word choices allow us greater freedom, while other word choices can bind us like a straitjacket.
One particular word choice that I find grinding into my ear lately is the term “problem area”. Somebody will usually say my neck or my low back is my problem area. Every time I hear somebody repeat this pain mantra I find myself questioning what exactly is someone trying to get at. The word problem implies something we want to rid ourselves of. But surely they don’t want me or anyone else to attempt to amputate their so-called problem area. So, giving scalpel solutions are off the table, what can we do with so-called problem areas.
Well, when I hear someone utter this self-flagellation incantation my first thoughts is not that that's an area that needs to be further removed from the self. Rather, think its an area of the body we need to reacquaint ourselves to. We can ask what is going on in this region of the body. What am I doing that makes it hurt? What can I do to make it healthy? Is there an old injury here? Is the pain coming from a compensation pattern? Do we still need that compensation pattern? All these questions bring us closer, letting us connect to a part of ourselves that we have been trying to push away. These types of questions give us the knowledge we need to put whatever pain we are experiencing into a smaller container.
Just by re-phrasing how we communicate our pain to others can give us more and better options as to how to mitigate it. We no longer have to task ourselves with the futile attempt of avoiding our own body.
Anthony Bruni