Memory lives in our muscles

Rereading my scholarship essay for massage school over two years ago, I love how relevant it reads today. The prompt reads, "How do you plan to use your massage education to benefit your community?"

I love working with my hands. I make beautiful earrings, build sets for theatre spectacles, garden, cook, massage. In contact with another human being, I show affection through touch; heal through touch. It brings me to my body in the present moment, where I can connect to another, be present with another. When I create a theatre piece, the first thing I think about is creating a space where people will feel safe so that they can enter a different world. That is the kind of space I want to create in my practice as a massage therapist; a place where there are no expectations, a place where there is room for more than just a patient, but a member of a community come to exchange energy with another.

From my years of experience as a theatre director, I have studied the movement of the human body as it relates to its deep inner character. From a lifetime of observation, practice, and reading, I’ve come to know that memory lives in our muscles more than just in our brains. We carry our pain in our bodies: some put it into the shoulders, some in the hips, others in the jaw. This pain gets stuck in these muscles and can be released through healing touch, physical movement, and drama therapy - a developing field of healing that I want to incorporate into my work as a therapist.

The world wants us to think of life linearly; we’re supposed to get a degree and find a high paying job, make money to eventually retire, and perhaps make it all meaningful by donating to a few charities. We’ve forgotten about the time when people lived in tribes, communities, when they depended on one another, not only in an abstract way, but tangibly; each person with something to contribute. I believe we can live this way now, in face of the world going the other way. I want to be an active member of the Hudson River Valley community where I live. I want be a healer and help people release their pain that is hindering their well being. I want to bring what I know as an artist and learn everything I can as a scientist and practitioner to create a way of healing that is complete and take the body not symptom by symptom, not ignoring the spiritual and the emotional, but as a whole being that I can help bring back to balance.