Intellectual Freedom

I’m grateful by how much of a good reputation massage has. Sometimes I’m surprised by this as it seems so many things today can be divisive. I try to meet people from different walks of life, and pass in and out of different tribes and the overwhelming consensus I come away with is that people really like massage no matter what other difference they have. I wanted to share some of my thoughts about why I think this is so.

If I had to pick just one reason why I think massage was, not so long ago, thought of as a fringe job that done by weirdos to being now recognized as a force of medical good, that reason would be the intellectual freedom we have. Massage is a serious profession and has been for a long time. There is a base level of science we have to know, accept, and practice to perform our craft. This science creates a shared language for us to communicate. We ( as in everyone not just L.M.T., or medical professionals) need to be fluid in scientific language and thought. On an individual level, we need this language to think more precisely about our ideas about how to best help people. On a collective level, we need to be fluid in science to pollinate ideas so others may help themselves and each other. Without this shared language the frontal cortex of our collective consciousness our ceases to develop.

Like everything though science has its price. Because the language of science is so precise, it can miss many truths, not because we can’t perceive these truths, but because we don’t have a proficient enough understanding of them as of yet. What would it be like if in our day to day life we were limited to what we could only understand scientifically? Do we know how to quantify whether a song is enjoyable, or if a movie is entertaining? Do we have a scientific formula that lets us know when someone is sketchy? Probably not I am assuming. These ideas and so many more are derived from a place of intuition.

As long we massage therapist are in line with scientific thought we are free to bring our intuition into healthcare. This separates us from so many health professionals who do not have this freedom. We are still allowed to be human and tap into our experiential and instinctual wisdom. We are permitted to have thoughts and hunches. We don’t have to believe these though, they can be wrong, but our care is not predetermined by some bureaucratic algorithm that we cannot deviate from.

There is no protocol to what a massage is. In addition to just having the language of science, we speak our own languages. We can talk about meridians and energies. We can talk of nadis or acupoints allowing us to discuss how emotions are stored in precise neural ganglia that are distributed over the body. And yes, this can become silly and cliche sometimes, but much of it (the good stuff) comes from deep authenticity. Many practitioners had to experience their own journey to find the knowledge to alleviate their own pain. They had to learn themselves to cultivate their own strength. The process of acquiring this knowledge is where the desire to facilitate communal healing in whatever capacity we can come from.

Sometimes though we forget how we heal ourselves and someone else will have to go on their own journey to bring back that knowledge for us. They will develop their own language to describe it but it will be a variable of an old healing formula that has been used many times by many people. I have no doubts that we will continue to learn how to converse scientifically about many "unscientific" practices we use to heal ourselves.

There is a certain prudent wisdom found in science. It can expose frauds. It can also make people look like fools for simply not having a certain vocabulary. It is my experience that people who wish only to capitalize on others misfortunes are really a small percent. I would at least say pretty much everyone at least believes in what they are doing. This does not mean we should not be skeptical, as we all can be misinformed. But we are all trying to make things better for people through various methods. Are we doing the absolute best thing at all times? No, but we are striving to get closer to that mark. We can nourish our intuition unlike so many of those in health care and for that I am grateful. Massage has developed a good reputation not because of any propaganda, we don’t have the money for that nonsense. Our reputation is the result of individual people having positive experiences with massage. Science deserves credit for this, but I also don't think this would have happened without creative freedom to follow our intuition.

Anthony Bruni