How often do we look at pain and try to get rid of it. Most of our lives we spend trying to get away from pain.

In our work as massage therapists we are faced with so many people in pain - back pain, neck pain, injuries, car accidents, foot pain, hip pain, pain from inflamed muscles and joints, pain from arthritis, headaches…we don’t usually think of the gift of pain.

Insurance companies make the client focus on the pain by making them report it constantly to us and other health care providers.

We try to deal with the pain by fixing it for the client when maybe fixing it isn’t really the best answer. Do we try to fix the pain because we can’t bear the pain that it brings up in us to see someone in pain? Do we keep the client focused on getting rid of the pain by chasing it around the body? If we ‘fix’ the pain do we miss the message?

What if pain were just the messenger. Like the old saying - “Don’t shoot the messenger”.

Pain is different from suffering. You can have pain and live with pain but it is the suffering from the pain - wanting or expecting things to be different causes the suffering. We keep focusing on the pain and getting rid of it causing suffering. We can get easily hooked into fixing pain and trying to ease other pains instead of looking at what is coming up for us in relation to seeing others in pain.

How can we accompany clients in turning toward their pain?
Learning to address our own pain first before being able to go there with others is needed to be able to be present with others in pain.

I actually think this is one of the main reasons for massage therapists having such a hard time building a massage practice. They want to leave when the work becomes to difficult or demanding and can’t bear the pain of others. They end up always trying to fix clients which leaves people feeling like massage is not valuable to them. We look for new techniques or research that will make us better fixers when we already have all of the tools needed to witness others healing process. Our hands are what help the client connect or reconnect with their bodies which are the messengers. Our hands help people interpret what the pain is to them. Our hands support the client in seeing themselves clearer. The best massage therapists see themselves as guides and fellow travelers- not experts on another’s situation.

When we are reacting emotionally to a client in pain with giving advice, trying to rationalize and explain, we are usually trying to provide solutions that are really for us and not the client -not physically for us necessarily - but what makes us feel the best- like we did everything we could do to help this person in pain. It is often confusing to decipher whose needs are whose.

This role of fixing is really the shadow side of helping. The thing is that when we help others it reveals the parts of ourselves that really need healing (or help.) We hide behind masks as our role of a massage therapist - the healer, the pain fixer, the one who the client can’t live without, the one who can give the client relief when no one else or no medication could - the all knowing “Oz”. A mask actually produces the exact opposite that it is intended to create. As we tend to our own pain and dis-ease, we can begin to be present for others and witness their pain. Much of presence is about listening. We listen with our hands, our heart and our ears.
The more we can become aware of our own pain and attend to our own suffering, we become more available at deeper levels and we are less likely to project suffering on others.

Part of the problem is that we are taught to ‘fix’ pain in massage school. We keep seeking more knowledge and training and diplomas and it makes it harder to keep things in perspective. With our new knowledge we often develop a vested interest in being right. It takes us farther away from our precious essence or true self. We create more separateness with our institutions and will find ourself in ‘prison’.
We seek to get our own needs for acceptance and acknowledgment from our clients when they are not really in a position to give it or we lose patience or get bored and move farther away from our own pain and end up burned out or leaving the massage profession for something more exciting.

It is pain that allows one to change and grow. I can’t say I ever really grew or expanded from feeling joy or happiness. So why do we work so hard to get rid of pain? What if pain could be eliminated by facing it and going through it? How can we be more present for those who come to us in pain? How can we learn about our own pain from working with clients in pain?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Ethics, Massage Schools/Students, The Code of the Caretaker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.