Psychological Massage and Script

Many of you share with me a conviction that Deep and powerful Massage can have a profound PSYCHOLOGICAL effect on both us and our clients. I was particularly struck by this yesterday in my clinic....

I saw three clients and what struck me most about each of them was how they used their work with me as a new PERMISSION in their lives. Those of you who have learned how to use my Fairy Tale Process™ to change things in your life will know all about the power of PERMISSION. For those who have not attended, let me explain it.

INJUNCTIONS

Deep down in the psyche - in the murky world of our UNCONSCIOUS in fact - lies our SCRIPT and this is the reason why we find ourselves in situations we really don’t want to be in over and over again. Perhaps it is something to do with our relationships, or our health, or our work and money situation.

At the roots of our SCRIPT lie our INJUNCTIONS, which generally begin with the word “Don’t”. Some examples would be:

• Don’t Be
• Don’t Feel
• Don’t Make it
• Don’t Be Close

Towards the end of his life, Eric Berne became obsessed with the connection between his clients’ lives and how much they resembled Fairy Tales. He called these INJUNCTIONS “Witch Curses” to express the venom and damage they can do. These INJUNCTIONS fuel our beliefs and actions even though we are not aware of them. And they are very deeply rooted in the Psyche.

THE ANTITDOTE

The antidote to the poison of our INJUNCTIONS is in fact PERMISSION. This means that we begin the sentence “It’s OK to:  “Be” or “Feel” or “Make it” or “Be Close”. However the great myth of psychotherapy is that by becoming AWARE of our INJUNCTIONS and giving ourselves new permissions as grown ups, we will be ‘sorted out’.

Not a bit of it! Awareness is but the first step. SCRIPT lives and thrives deep in the sea of our UNCONSCIOUS so the odd word or thought is but a drop in this vast ocean. What needs to happen for a person’s life to be healed of this toxic belief is to reconfigure the SCRIPT itself right in the place where it lives.

Trying to change this script in a grown up way is simply fiddling with the icing on a cake - no wonder so many of our resolutions to make changes only last a short while. How many New Year’s resolutions are dead and buried by lunch the next day?

The analogy would be to be sitting in a boat out in the deep ocean and being rather confused as to why my control of a goldfish in its goldfish bowl was making no difference to the great big whale swimming a mile underneath!

LOCATING SCRIPT

Which brings us to the question, where exactly in the UNCONSCIOUS does our script actually live? If you really want to get an idea of the immensity of the UNCONSCIOUS then watch the film INCEPTION. In this film Leonardo Di Caprio is trying to find his colleague in the vast ocean of a person’s mind and it certainly conveys how like a “needle in a haystack” finding SCRIPT could be.

Except that Eric Berne did that! He located the script deep in the CHILD EGO STATE and positioned it in the very early formation of that part of our Psyche - right in the part where we would ‘somatise’ our thoughts and feelings directly through the body. This is the part where we would have a tummy ache because we were experiencing difficulty in leaving home for school. It comes from that golden age when thoughts and feelings were utterly inseparable from the body. We felt happy, we thought happy and we just danced. There was no need to explain to either ourselves or to others that “I feel happy”, we just laughed and giggled and danced. Instant holistic living!

THE SOMATIC CHILD

This is why BERNE named this part as THE SOMATIC CHILD because of the unified physicality of this stage of our life. Now this has some serious implications for those of us involved in Massage therapy....

Now you are probably beginning to see the connection between our psychological state and MASSAGE. My own view is simple. If psychotherapists actually understood what script really was and where it lived, then they would all become MASSAGE THERAPISTS!

Here is the place where we soothe anxiety with the reassuring touch of THE OCTOPUS. Here is the place where we offer release from the trauma of “DON’T EXIST”. With our touch we give endless PERMISSION solidly for a whole hour.

What could be more healing?

And we don’t even have to know that we are doing it!

So back to my three clients. Although anonymous, you should know that each client has discussed this article with me and has given their consent to me writing about their session in this way.

CLIENT ONE:

My first client shared with me how she needed to ‘Speak out’ in her life and speak her truth.

If her life was a Fairy tale it looked to me a bit like SNOW WHITE, hiding away deep in the forest, keeping her life a secret. Living a small life with small people.

It was clear to me that if this client started to speak her truth she would have a MASSIVE HEALING IMPACT on the world. What injunction might have been lurking around deep in her UNCONSCIOUS? Well, if you don’t believe it is OK to speak your truth then you are probably running a “DON’T BE YOU” - what do you think?

So this client was seeking a new permission, one that she wanted to anchor deep in her SOMATIC CHILD. Do you think Massage is an effective way to say:

“It’s OK to be You. You are you and there is only one of you. You are brilliant, eternal, a child of God and UTTERLY UNIQUE. It is safe to let your light shine.”

I am amazed at the number of my clients and students who do just that after their experience of the power of NO HANDS - they go out and let their light shine in the world.

CLIENT TWO:

My second client complained of a tight neck and shoulder and when I asked what might have caused this, she had no answer. For me there was a sense of the answer lying hidden in the room but now was not the time to probe. So I got on with the (structural) Massage and it was a privilege to work with her as she was such an awesome client. Each breath was an opening and a release. If God got on the table, I do not believe he would do a better job. Which of course he was... on the table I mean.

Anyway, after I had given God a Massage, my client came back at the end and said “You know the reason I am so tight is because I haven’t had a Massage in four months - since I last saw you, in fact. That’s really silly isn’t it?”

I have to say I agreed with her.

“It’s like I need your permission to go and see another Massage therapist.”

BINGO!

If this client were in a Fairy Tale she sounded rather like RAPUNZEL who was not allowed out of the witch’s tower and would get punished for forming attachments to other people.

The injunction that may be going on here is possibly a variant of “Don’t Be Close” - in this case “Don’t Be Close to anyone else except me”. I also had a sense that it was “OK” for this client to be sad - even when so much in her life was actually going really well. After all, if you are imprisoned in a tower it is very hard to be happy so I suspect this client also had a “Don’t be Happy” injunction.

Can you see how MASSAGE provides an awesome PERMISSION to “Be Happy” with all those ENDORPHINS flooding the body from the smorgasbord of touch that a NO HANDS Massage provides?

Because the issue of her feeling ‘disloyal’ (to the witch and me) only emerged at the end of the session I asked her if she would actually like my permission to see someone else (bear in mind this is a part of her that is probably only 3 years old) and she nodded (non verbal, somatic) so I told her that she MUST see other Massage therapists and I ANCHORED this by pressing her leg as I said it - to make sure it went into the SOMATIC CHILD.

Most important of all, however, was the fact that the treatment had given her permission to be Happy so she could talk about what made her unhappy. How many of our clients really open up AFTER the treatment? This is because of the power of PERMISSION.

CLIENT THREE

My last client of the day arrived having overcome phenomenal obstacles to travelling from London to Morecambe - all the west coast Virgin trains were cancelled for the day! When she arrived after this Herculean journey she said quite simply “I want to be connected to  my body and to the human race”. Now this particular client has had an incredible history of illness - which clearly stopped her being fully alive and a part of society. She was forever having to ‘retire’ from life due to her illness. After a lot of personal work over many years she reported that she was ‘well’ and so she wanted to really let herself ‘get stuck in’ to life.

If this client was in a Fairy Tale we both thought this sounded a bit like CINDERELLA finally getting out the house and GOING TO THE BALL!

I am not sure what INJUNCTION she was running - it could have been any one of a thousand! The major feeling was of her ‘rejoining the human race”. Berne called this “taking out your subscription to the human race”. It really was about getting connected. Connected to her body, connected to the Earth and connected with another human being. My gut feeling was that she had a “Don’t be Here” injunction which is about as much of a “Don’t Be” as you can get. There were also strong indications for a “Don’t Belong”.

So this was a lovely slow and deep Massage in the connecting style that I teach on Mastery. At the end of the Massage she was surprised at how open she felt in her upper body and how much taller she was walking. It was as if she was taking her space in the world physically. She also talked about feeling wider and bigger and she looked amazing. She also described how feminine she felt in her hips which made me wonder about a “Don’t be a Woman” injunction as well.

Whatever the injunction, this client walked out demonstrating in her body movements that she had taken PERMISSION to be alive to be herself and to take her place in the human race. She looked like she really was going to the ball - instead of to the train station for an uncertain journey back!!!

SUMMARY
Three clients, three permissions, three life scripts all undergoing fantastic cure.

All through the powerful permissions given to THE SOMATIC CHILD through the immense healing power of touch.

If you want to learn more about this - and its enormous relevance to Massage - you can attend my PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGE weekend which is where I now teach all of this ‘script’ this material. If you want to find out more before committing to a full weekend, I am also running POWER OF THE UNCONSCIOUS evenings around the UK - click here for more information.