To massage,
to accompany,
to breathe.
A massage training recently organised. A very small group. Ideal for settling in, daring, exchanging, questioning, testing. Explaining the universe of tantric massage and immediately defusing the presuppositions, the ready-made ideas, the « they say », « I’ve heard that ». The « it’s complicated ».
To massage.
To speak, in full trust. To explain the form and the substance. To speak of oneself, of one’s relationship with oneself, to explore the why behind this desire to learn. To connect from the outset the requirement of safety, to speak of the framework, to spend time on consent. To speak of the necessary resonance of the massage with one’s own life — what comes to interact, what resonates, what calls. To return again and again to the framework as an intangible cornerstone.
To speak of welcome, of kindness, to speak of this space of trust and love that is the space of the massage. To feel, to sense what slowness is — extreme slowness as a vector of resonance, of listening to oneself, of access to the other. As masseur and as the one being massaged. To observe what is reflected back by this hand that moves without intention, without expectation, without projection.
To listen to the infinite calm that flows from it, to watch those doors initially carefully closed as they begin to open — and all that light, behind them. Allowing vulnerability to be invited in. To be aware of the immense responsibility conferred by the presence of this person beneath these hands, who grants their trust. Who accepts to set down, to expose their body without arming it with barriers. Because they sense that here, precisely, they can. Because the moment, and above all the framework, authorises it. To observe what this granted trust generates within oneself.
To accompany.
To question one’s massage positions, what they generate in terms of pain or calm, how to manage and anticipate them during movement, so that the person being massaged remains in their inner journey. To remain attentive to the permanence of contact. To observe one’s relationship with one’s body, with Pavlovian performance, with demand. To observe one’s own projection onto the potential reception of the other, one’s fears, one’s judgement, one’s desire to do well. To observe one’s saboteurs. To watch one’s gestures, so that at no moment they become vectors of questioning or anxiety — triggering an alert beacon in the person’s mind. To observe, and observe again.
And to question the framework again and again. Its solidity, its grounding, where one is oneself in this massage. To question one’s letting go, one’s non-intentionality, to observe one’s ego at work, whispering in one’s ear. To observe one’s bewilderment when one does not know what to do, at first, because one returns to the mental. To come back again and again to the body that knows, to the hand that knows. To connect the abstraction. To return to the essential — that contact of hand to body, heart to body, heart to heart. To observe the ready-made ideas that must be combated, to welcome the deconstructions underway, the fears that take flight. To remain vigilant, always, to be conscious that nothing is trivial in this massage, in this connection. That it is a particular work — from self toward other, from self toward self, from other toward other.
To breathe.
To listen — to one’s life, to its dynamic, to one’s body. To listen to oneself. And to let go, with the dials anchored in safety, in the framework, to watch, astonished, admiring, the dance of life at work, the intuition that settles in, the play that arrives — calm, light, joyful.
When spirituality arrives, when emotions rise, when the dams begin to crack, when this immense inner questioning comes to the surface.
When light arrives within, and illuminates what is usually, deep down, hidden. To dare to express, to dare to open the window onto this luminous landscape before oneself, and freely, to fill one’s lungs and breathe.
Who we are questions us perpetually. We try to align ourselves with what surrounds us. To create a kind of common platform that would include us in the concert of the world…. But in doing so, we come up against our own timidity — a state that invites us, or imposes upon us, to protect ourselves. By excluding ourselves from this contact that is potentially too osmotic, and that frightens us.
In the absence of our intimacy, we find ourselves in a form of extimacy. That is, in a lived experience of that intimacy, disguised by a strategy of making contact. In the space of this extimacy, we construct from scratch a character — rather like Goldorak, built to interact within a given context.
And we interact.
Often in complete delusion about what we are. Imagining ourselves a guru, a thought leader, a leader of I don’t know what, aligned with what we profess, imagining ourselves strong, powerful, imagining ourselves as we would like to be — going so far as to be entirely deluded about oneself. We all know people like that.
But we are only facing the distorted reflection of what the other is, in the jumble of their construction. And not of what they are, deep down. Because in that depth, what is there but that frightened little girl or little boy who tries, through the controls of this avatar, to have some hold on their own life? In writing this, I see a kind of procession before my eyes. And I do not exclude myself from that procession, at certain periods of my life. Many men and women encountered, partially blinded by the construction they have put in place — because, quite simply, they are fragile. Having sometimes never dared to work on themselves, to step out of their own illusions and access their own security of connection.
When two children meet and co-opt each other in their extimacy, what is it but a dialogue of near-dupes, each legitimising the other in their illusion?
So what to do?
Perhaps simply to be aware that the person in front of us is not entirely within the understanding we project onto them. That they orbit a little around themselves, that our own trajectory in orbit around ourselves is not meant to see, in return, everyone else in their axis. And that it matters to identify our own axis. We are all timid stars gravitating in a more or less tight orbit around ourselves. And it might be enough to dare to slightly shift that orbit — to have the opportunity to truly meet.
« And everything unfolded differently — everything went in the opposite direction from those initial sensations or projections. Once in the present moment, once welcomed by you, everything seemed simple. As if another language was making itself heard, another part of me, coming from another space. »
— Testimonial from someone who was massagedThe massage as a vector for a different listening to oneself. The massage to step out of one’s extimacy. To move toward who one is…