breathing into it

Last weekend my friend Elyse drove up for a visit. On Saturday we worked out at the gym, went to coffee, and went to church. On Sunday, we were very intentional about observing the injunction to rest on the Sabbath: we got 90-minute Swedish massages at my favorite local spa.

And yes, it was as every bit as blissful as it sounds.

After allowing our pores to drink in the gauzy warmth of the eucalyptus steam room, we went out to the waiting area where our massage therapists would meet us. Wrapped in thick and heavy white spa robes, we each sat in the waiting area with windows overlooking the cold and quiet bay, fingers wrapped tightly around our steaming mugs of herbal tea, a fire crackling at our backs.

My massage began with me face down on the heated table in a barely lit room, my arms relaxed and resting on the table against my body. A pan flute’s hollow notes were playing softly through speakers I could not see. It wasn’t long before I felt myself melt into the table.

The therapist began working at my legs and feet, rotating my ankles and using her hands to encourage looseness in my tight calves. She rubbed out each toe, pulling gently on each one. My stiff neck gave way under her persistent manipulations and finally consented to unclenching. Arms and hands received special attention as she rotated each of my arms from the shoulder and my hands from the wrists. I felt myself teeter on the edge of oblivion when my scalp and face were the focus of her attention.

Every cell in my body tingled with delight. I pulled in breaths through my nostrils that reached down to the ends of my toes and finger tips. I was limp like a well-cooked noodle, feeling heady and light, suspended and floating in thick fluid.

I first started receiving massages as part of my therapy following a car accident in 1996. My soft tissue injuries were extensive enough that multiple doctors told me I would have had an easier recovery had I broken my back. Those sessions with Julie were helpful, but hardly enjoyable in the way most people think massages should be. My muscles were constantly clenched and pulsating, throbbing, clinging to pockets of lactic acid. This went on for several months.

Julie went away to Chicago for a few weeks to get married, but referred me to another LMP to provide my treatment in her absence. As I lay on the table on my back eyes wide open and staring intently at the ceiling, the new therapist observed, “Yeah, Julie said you had a hard time letting go.”

It was the first time I had heard that. It was the first time I began to understand that I was hanging onto my injury every bit as much as it was hanging onto me. I would stare at that ceiling above me and disconnect; I would count its dots, study its texture, get lost in a deep white sea of blankness. I would do anything but focus on my clenching muscles, those pained and injured soft tissues. This new therapist encouraged me to close my eyes, to breathe deeply, to feel everything in my body, and to let it go.

It was in yoga that I first learned about how to bring the mind and the body together. This, my instructor often repeated, was primarily about focusing on your breath: being deliberate about drawing each breath in, pulling it down to your heels and up through your scalp; drawing the breath in deeply so every cell is infused with its life. It was about letting it go slowly, being intentional in its release, pushing out waste from every cell.

I always think of this when I get a massage: about the injunction to breathe deeply, to be intentional and aware, mindfully engaged. I can choose to stare at the ceiling and make an expert study of its texture, or I can surrender to the touch of the professional: let her rub out the knots and coax the sore spots to release. I can feel those points that wince when touched, trusting that the future benefits of letting go and breathing into those places exceed the present pain as she pokes, pushes, pulls. I can resist the movement she imposes on my arms, legs, and joints, or I can surrender: allow her to be the one dictating the motion of my limbs. I can clench, hang on, resist. This is what comes naturally. Or I can release and surrender, participate in the work she is doing: feel each manipulation and invite it in with each inhale. Giving over this control is not natural to me and requires consistent and conscious effort.

I am thinking of this these often days as memory reaches into my present, as God simultaneously puts his finger on sore and tender places, pressing and digging deeply with His fingers. I wince at His touch and my first inclination is to resist, to stare at the ceiling and disconnect, to bide my time until it is over. To be intentional only in forgetting. But I am especially mindful now that I must feel where He presses, trusting the work He does is good, knowing that He is working on rubbing out those toxic and tender things to which I unconsciously cling.

So I am doing my best to breathe into it, taking capacious and deliberate gulps of clear air and holding them in. And then slowly, slowly, I let them go, feeling each sinew and fiber relax its grip a little more with each cycle of breath. He continues to press and rub and pull, coaxing release from tissues accustomed to holding tight. He is doing most of the work, but it is I who am sore and light-headed and tired. I might stay here for awhile yet, resting and breathing and surrendering until I no longer feel that I might topple should I rise and walk.