Greg Morling
Several years ago I was at dinner in the United States with the Benny Vaughn, the great American sports massage therapist. I reminded him that we had both been speaking at a massage conference in Melbourne in 1998 and he had explained to me that we (massage therapists) all do basically the same thing. Around our table were James Waslaski, Erik Dalton and my friend, Whitney Lowe. They all agreed with Benny’s assessment.
I have reflected on Benny’s words from that time to this article. What do we do as massage therapists and what are the common elements in all our work?
As massage therapists we all touch. This statement may not seem so earth-shattering but the quality of the tactile experience we create for our client may well be the reason why they return to your practice. The communications we transmit through touch constitute the most powerful means of establishing human connection and it is the mother of the senses; the first to come into being and the parent of our eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
We would do well to remember that despite the sometimes myopic focus on the study of musculature in our massage schools and colleges we never touch muscle directly in our careers as therapists.
We affect only superficial muscle but we touch skin.
The more time I spend in the dissection laboratories at the University studying the iliopsoas in situ, the closer I come to understanding the significance of the skin and the role it plays in our success as therapists.
Ashley Montagu wrote in his masterful bestseller, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin that, ‘on our skin, as on a screen, the gamut of life’s experiences is projected: emotions surge, sorrows penetrate, and beauty finds its depth.’
The surface area of the skin has an enormous number of sensory receptors receiving stimuli to heat, cold, touch, texture, pressure and pain. A piece of skin the size of a thumb nail contains more than 3 million cells, 100 to 400 sweat glands, 50 nerve endings and a metre of blood vessels. It is estimated that there are some 50 receptors per 100 millimetres, a total of 640,000 sensory receptors. Tactile points vary from 7 to 135 per square centimetre. The number of sensory fibres from the skin entering the spinal cord by the posterior roots is well over half a million. This amazing sensory pad, this skin, is what you influence with massaging hands before influencing any muscle.
I would argue that the messages you provide through your touch is as therapeutically important as any friction, stretch or muscle manipulation. We spend lots of our time focused on the biomechanical paradigm but the quality, style and intent of our touch is the thing that matters most and matters first.
Compared to the other senses, touch is very hard to isolate because tactile sensory information enters the nervous system from every single part of the body. As a result, very little research has been done on touch. However, recent studies have attempted to map how the sense of touch works and how a simple stroke of the skin can alter an individual’s health and behaviour.
I am an advocate for both positive intent and quality of touch when you massage.
The function of the skin includes protection, thermoregulation (10% of our blood supply is contained in the skin’s dermis layer), excretion and absorption.
There is not scope in this article to explore in detail the function of the skin but as tactile therapists we need to be aware of the significance of touch and how our intent in therapy and our quality of touch in clinic may well be the thing that leads to more rapid and lasting positive results for our clients.
Benny Vaughn pointed out to me that we all do the same thing. Perhaps he was talking about the issue of touch and not the myriad of techniques and styles we see today. We will certainly explore some of these issues during my workshops in the UK this year.