ARE YOU AFRAID OF SEX?

Got your attention now?

Ok.  Now pain also gets a lot of attention these days. Science-oriented therapists are excited that they are comprehending it better. This should help us more effectively understand and help relieve people’s pain.

Ironically, many clients these days come to massage therapists with the expectation that, if the massage is not painful, it will not be effective. Now even a cursory glance at the nervous system reveals something fundamental. The nervous system is quite involved in avoiding pain and in seeking pleasure.

Massage therapy done well is generally pleasurable, rather than necessarily painful. Or it may “hurt so good” in which case the touch quality is understood by the nervous system as not something to avoid - it feels intense. Nonetheless, we do not hear much discussion about pleasure. Part of the reason may be that linking up massage and pleasure may seem to too closely associate massage and sexuality and massage therapists are naturally allergic to the cultural association of massage and sex.

Sex, we sometimes forget, in our attempts to dislodge the association, is in general a good thing! Freud is still notorious for saying that sexual desires are at the very root of our lives. Like Einstein who proposed truths that still don’t make sense to most people, people are still largely in denial of the truths that Freud unearthed. The idea that we are perhaps more determined by unconscious desires than by our conscious minds, that sexuality plays a fundamental role in our being – these truths are largely rejected or ignored by most people.

Now Freud also talked about the pleasure principle. And it is that principle, as well as the species’ procreative necessity, which underlies sex. So, if we have a problem with saying sexuality is fundamental, perhaps we have the deeper problem of not fully embracing the pleasure principle.

Pleasure, the autonomic system reveals, is the essential antipode to pain. Accordingly, any form of healthcare that wants to address pain may do so most directly by welcoming and helping to provide pleasure. Don’t be afraid! Pleasure is, by definition, a good thing (in moderation and occasionally in excess – (“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” – William Blake).

It is significant and important that massage is perhaps the most pleasant form of medicine. When I think of other pleasures provided by the health care system, there are certainly others, mostly under-acknowledged. There is the pleasure in hospitals and other medical settings when we receive kind treatment and the occasional consoling touch of the nurses, aides, and other medical professionals. Deep pleasure accompanies the relief from one’s disease or injury – the pleasure of being “cured” (which interestingly has the same etymology root word as “care”.)

But the goal of most of the healthcare industry is not pleasure – who would dream of going to a hospital primarily for pleasure?

However, the goal of massage therapy needs to include the obvious and neurologically significant fact that it feels GOOD! This is a great part of what gives us the neurological leverage to deeply relieve pain and tension. Moshe Feldenkrais said people cannot change unless they have a new experience. The massage experience ideally gives the person a new experience of pleasure that then takes the place of pain or at least diminishes the sensation of pain. Ideally this new pleasurable experience overrides the painful one such that we begin to enjoy ourselves again.

Fritz Perls noted that the Victorians particularly were phobic about pleasure. But he touched on a yet deeper truth. Most people do not yet have a full acceptance of the healthy need for pleasure. Most people, when push comes to shove, are still afraid or unaware that sex, feeling good, is nothing to be ashamed of. That the pleasure of the company of the people we love is something that is not just nice, it is biologically significant!

So underneath the anxiety and ambivalence regarding sexuality is anxiety and ambivalence about pleasure itself. And until we find more and more ways to welcome and experience healthy pleasure we will be a society that cultivates repression of desire, in which most people are, to some extent, chronically frustrated, and that produces, as a by-product, an excess of psychological and physical tension, depression, pain, injury and disease.

Massage therapists need to see that the pleasure that is a concomitant part of our work is not something to be avoided. And that the excessive sexual characterization of massage is a direct reflection of people’s ambivalence about pleasure. On the contrary, every one of us needs to honor, respect and cultivate the pleasure of life. Without this, we lack an existential compass. Without being healthily drawn to accept pleasure as fundamental for a healthy life, we perpetuate dis-ease. To the extent that we do not accept pleasure, we perpetuate human misery. And we are now so influential that our misery affects life generally on earth.

With the acceptance, on the other hand, we have this compass. We can see pleasure in the context of a life full of meaning, fulfillment, and happiness. This may indeed be the liberty we need. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” With pleasure we have an enhanced life. With a liberated attitude toward it, we can be more wholeheartedly engaged in the pursuit of happiness - not just for ourselves but for everyone. It is important to slow down and really feel the depth in Jefferson’s original wording for the Declaration of Independence – “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.”

This is one of the cultural and evolutionary goals and treasures that massage therapy, by being the most pleasurable form of healthcare, is carrying for us. How essential it is that massage facilitates individual and social prioritizing of life, of liberty, and the unafraid, caring, and thoughtful pursuit of happiness.

Alex Grey painting