The Therapy of Touch VII: Walking the Body

In my previous articles I have indicated that I ask my Massage clients to walk around the room after  they are dressed. This is to enable them to integrate their experience of Massage in their own words. I also do this with my psychotherapy clients at the end of a session. Very soon, I realised that to do this well, required three basic protocols:

1. GETTING OUT THE WAY

The first protocol is to 'get myself out of the way’, both physically and psychologically. Some clients are uncomfortable at first with the idea that they should know anything at all about their own bodies. The harder they find it to put words to their experience of walking, the more important it is to both therapist and client that they do this. If they want you to be the expert on their body or their life, you better plan on moving into their house and living with them, and to be around to help them get dressed in the morning. I step back against the wall, to allow them plenty of space to walk around the room and I say very little except “Tell me what you notice about this walk, and if it is any different from before the session?” I bite my tongue. Very hard. The more I think I ‘notice’ as such a great ‘expert’, the harder I bite…

2. LISTEN TO THE BODY

The second protocol is to encourage the client to feel how their body wants to walk. Most illness and tissue compression simply arises out of ‘the head’ dominating ‘the body’.  If people rested when they were tired and ate when they were hungry and stopped eating when they were full, we would have a much healthier nation. The key here, is to ‘follow the body’.

We encourage the client to feel ‘from the inside’ just how their body wants to walk. Some clients have had such massive structural shifts from the Massage, that they actually walk like babies learning for the first time. The cerebellum has not yet caught up with the changes in muscle, tendon and ligament configuration.  Some ‘wobble’ as they walk. Some notice that they are more than mere ‘structure’. Some will connect with their energy or their emotions. Others will feel their spirit or discover a new clarity of thought.

Above all, they are encouraged to feel how the body wants to walk, rather than imposing some previously established idea of walking upon themselves.

3. THE REST OF THE DAY

The third protocol is to ask “How will this walk affect the rest of your day, compared to when you came in?” If our therapy and our touch does not make a difference to people’s lives then we should probably do something else. Touch and therapy done well always make a massive difference - if only we let the clients have enough time to really feel it.

THE SOFT MAGICAL TISSUE…

Once clients start to “talk their body’s walk”, they start to describe how their body is actually feeling and moving. It is very different from “walking the talk”. This latter means we must force the body to walk according to our ideas and how we ‘wish to be’. ‘Talking the walk’ by contrast invites the client to feel just how they are right now. How it is. Now. Perhaps I have done such profound work that I am a bit shaky. That is how I am.

For Massage therapists this is very different from the rather ‘anal’ structural analysis that often goes on after sessions. It is a ‘feeling’ thing, a ‘now’ thing, not a mental thing. Nothing connects us with the truth of our deepest inner feelings better than feeling how our bodies want to actually walk. The movement of walking also sends out an array of nervous signals to the brain to help this ‘body mind’ connection. How we walk around this room is how we walk through life.

We are so much more than just ‘mechanical problems’ waiting to be fixed by ‘experts’. We are not cars. We are human beings made of the most incredible and magical soft tissue that will find its own balance, if treated with gentleness and respect. Giving me the space to “Talk my Walk” is one way to do this. This is why, for me and my clients, “the walk has it”.

I believe this is how we actually “sing the body electric” as Walt Whitman wrote.You don’t need a degree in psychotherapy or in bodywork to ask your clients to put words to their own experience of walking around the room. You just need to be human. And interested. Above all, you need to believe that the only expert in the room is...

the client.