Superstition

I wanted to start to explore the practice of shaking. Currently there is quite a lot of thought being put into this seemingly simple act. I hoped I was able to touch upon some of different perspectives concerning shaking as well as go into some of my own resistance I had when I first leaned of it. I do intend to delve further into this topic as I feel there is so much more to write about it.

One of the occupational hazards of providing massage is the tendency of becoming superstitious. I was a clear-headed rationalist who had little tolerance for any sort of mysticism prior to my life as a massage therapist. I’m still very much a rationalist. I spend a good amount of time and effort breaking down my thought process, trying to understand the logic behind my ideas. However, now I’m am more willing to look for logic and reasons in ideas I would have dismissed as gullible earlier in my life.

All profession have certain ways of thinking that become accentuated, as those in them develop their talents. A lawyer may become more adept at seeing vulnerability in someone's argument, an editor more skilled in seeing grammatical mistakes, a painter may develop sensitivities to subtle variations of color etc. Massage deals with patterns. By its nature, massage is a holistic art. To move one muscle optimally every muscle in our bodies have to be aligned properly. This rule applies to every muscle in the body. Pain and resistance in the body are seldom where they present themselves. There is a bit of detective work that goes into every message. After so much time engaging in this mode of thinking, there is a tendency to process information as interconnected which can look somewhat superstitions from an outside perspective. Hence the stereotypical eccentric massage therapist. To be fair to the skeptics we as a group are not the most skilled at articulating our ideas. We often gloss over much of the logic that led us to our conclusions. To be fair to fellow L.M.T. we are tasked with injecting science into the language of felt experience. This is quite the undertaking.

Taking to extremes this thinking can become a form of paranoia but I do see value in this method of thinking. Many Ideas that were once woo are now backed by science. Many ideas that are fringe today may be scientifically validated in time. Of course, some ideas are nuttier than squirrel farts. These last two groups are harder to separate than one might think though. It's easy to cringe at past practices that seem absurd now but we must remember that most people were doing what they thought was right according to the logic of their day. How many of our ideas will stand up to the rigors of time? Also, how many ideas we take for granted were ignitionally laughed at. Rocket science was once an idea only scientists who were reputationally reckless would entertain. Now we are living in a world that is influenced in all sort of ways by humanity's ability to put satellites space.

One superstition I’ve developed is the practice of shaking. When I was learning massage, teachers would often have us students shake off bad energy. This usually meant flicking our hands after we were done with a massage. I did not understand or have faith in this practice but I did it anyway. I tried to inquire what bad energy or just energy was, and how does shaking cleanse it from us. I never got what I considered a satisfactory answer for this question. To be fair I think it's a question that I had to be with for a while. When I vigorously shock my forearms, I did notice that they were less stress after a session though so I incorporated this ritual in my massage practice. As time went on I found shaking more intuitive. I did not have to think about it rather it was something my body just did.

I still don’t always know what people mean when they use the word energy. There is a scientific understanding of this word. We can talk about kinetic energy, chemical energy, or thermal energy. All these explain a transfer of force from one object to another by various means. Then their the less technical more colloquial version of this world. Some otherworldly veneer that covers all objects that only a few people are sensitive to, or something like that. I have learned these seemingly different definitions describe the same phenomenon. One definition is too narrow and leaves out too much while the other lack precision and is fuzzy. If we are able to put these ideas together we get a clearer idea of what energy actually is. Energy is a non-physical property that effects the physical world. I don't want to ignore all the ways we have quantified how energy function, but I don't know how to really understand energy without wadding into the mystical to some extent. Our thoughts require we have oxygenated blood to feed the brain. Maybe our consciousness is just combinations of biochemical energy but I suspect it is something a bit more metaphysical.

Shaking is a peculiar thing to do. We have to give up a certain amount of control to shake. If shaking is not a universal trait among mammals it is certainly an extremely common one. There is a school of thought that says after mammals are attacked they need to shake to awaken their nervous system in order to survive the trauma. Lets us really explore this uncomfortable reality for a minute. Lets us visualize being a deer, mouse, zebra or any animal that faces all to regular threats of predation. One minute we are going about our day when out of nowhere we see a flash of colors we evolved to associate with death. Before we process this we smell the breath of a creature that has eaten the flesh of our kind. As its claws grab and tear our flesh we check out. Does this give us shivers up our spine? Does it invoke a deep dread that we want to shake off? Sometimes a predator will lose interest or become confused by the fainting reaction, allowing the would-be prey to escape. It's been observed that the animal will shake in what is thought to be a way to revive its nervous system. Let's further think about many animals who find themselves in this situation. Can they talk about their trauma? Can they tell their tale only to have their fellow heard the member say something like “ Yeah I get it, I was almost eating last month. Let me buy you a drink”? No. They have limited means of therapy. What they do has to work, and what we observe them do is shaking. Currently, there are treatments for PTSD that are based off this observation, that incorporate shaking into its therapy. This is not an endorsement of such therapies as I have no personal experience with them and they lay outside my professional knowledge. But I do find it reassuring when the same practices are utilized by people who come to it from different methodologies.

Another way to look at this is to think about our mind-body interface. When we shake our body is acting as if trying to get something off of it, like a dog trying to dry itself after a much-unwanted bath. We consciously know there nothing on our skin to shake off, but parts of our nervous system just feel us shake. Sometimes our thoughts influence what emotions we are feeling, but other times our emotions will summon certain thoughts. Are we angry because we are having unpleasant thoughts, or are we having unpleasant thoughts because we are angry? Which is to say maybe we are hungry and tired and therefore will be in a cranky mood, and because we are in a cranky mood we become fixated with an argument we had with the neighbors. If we are shaking our minds can be easily trained in providing us with thoughts of us shedding something unwanted. At the end of a good shake, we expended a certain amount of biochemical energy that we may have associated with subjectively unpleasant thoughts. Which is to say we just shook off negative energy.

Anthony Bruni