Massage therapists are not immune to such confusion, misgiving and mistrust of their own bodies. They must put their own house in order before expecting the public to embrace their services. The massage therapist is always responsible for maintaining the nonsexual atmosphere of a massage. She can do that only by being radically honest, finding the courage to meet the taboos within, and explore the dimensions of sexuality that creates confusion and discomfort. Excellent massage training includes awareness skills, practice in acceptance and training in using verbal skills that support embodiment, the ability to fully express who one is through ones body, owning all ones feelings and sensations. This includes accepting ones sexual nature, and doing the inner work of plowing through unhealthy social conditionings to find out who one really is, both as a sexual being and as a personality. For the massage therapist, this process is ultimately both professional development and spiritual growth.

A massage therapists ability to distinguish between sexual and compassionate touch and to own the full range of human sensual expression that is possible, makes massage therapy a powerfully transformative force in American society. As individuals reclaim their bodies, return to their senses, and awaken deeper powers of feeling and perception, small revolutions take place. These persons begin to have direct experiences of the interconnectedness of their bodies and the rest of the natural world. They find the courage to give direction and purpose to their lives where it is most fulfilling, instead of working jobs they hate or staying in unhappy relationships. Massage therapy accomplishes this in very small increments, by helping people to become real, one body at a time. This is no small task, given the long Western history of sexual and sensual repression.

The reliance on external authority is what thwarts us most as we try to come to a deeper understanding of human sexuality, the healing power of touch and the difference between the two. There is an internal war being waged in everyone between the body and its need to be touched, nurtured, accepted, given sensory nourishment and the mind, which thinks these needs are somehow sinful and wrong. Popular wisdom in massage circles suggests it is even more difficult for men to overcome these feelings than for women to do so, since society has been more accepting of women as needing to nurture the body. Mens bodies have been conditioned for hard labor and waging war.

One hundred and fifty years later, Viennese physician Wilhelm Reich, working in the United States, further elaborated on the ways in which society educates a body to its own purposes. Bringing people up to assume a rigid, unnatural attitude is one of the most essential means used by a dictatorial social system to produce will-less, automatically functioning organisms, Reich wrote in his classic book, The Function Of The Orgasm. Reich believed that This kind of upbringing is not confined to individuals; it is a problem which pertains to the core of the structure and formation of modern mans character. It affects larger cultural circles, and destroys the joy of life and capacity for happiness in millions upon millions of men and women. Thus, we see a single thread stretching from the childhood practice of holding the breath in order not to have to masturbate, to the muscular blocks of our patients, to the stiff posturing of militarists, and to the destructive artificial techniques of self-control of entire cultural circles.3

Dr. Reich was jailed in the United States for sending his orgone collecting boxes across state lines. Orgone boxes were designed to collect what Reich believed was free-floating sexual energy, universal life force, and transmit it to rigid bodies seeking healing. He died of a heart attack in prison in 1957, and to this day has been maligned but mostly forgotten in psychological and medical circles.

Schools develop rigid, docile bodies by teaching children to sit still and squelch their natural tendencies towards movement. Industry benefits from this bodily control as they get workers trained into the bodily patterns that most jobs require, with extreme attention paid to finishing things on time.

Bodywork philosopher Johnson notes that. The organic rhythms of the body are geared to meet the needs of a standardized working day, beginning and ending at certain hours, with carefully specified breaks for food, toilet and rest. For both factory and office workers, body movement takes place within carefully defined limits set by industrial engineers to maximize efficiency.4

At this beginning of the 21st century, we are still trying to make our bodies meet the specifications of machines, instead of freeing ourselves from the drudgery of repetitive motion, which technology long ago promised. Furthermore, During the past 50 years, the marriage between corporate power and scientific medicine has encouraged our passive relationship to our bodily existence. Parents, teachers, coaches and nurses support the biomedical ideology, training us that our self-perception counts for little. The doctor knows what is truly good for my body.5

Massage therapists are relying on external authorities to tell us what is right for our bodies instead of cultivating our own powers of perception, enriching our own sensual expression and our ability to make sound personal choices based on an inner sense of what is right, rather than an externally imposed idea.

The story of Adam and Eves fall from grace is the story of the progressive disowning of their bodies. When God created Adam and Eve, they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 25)6 Being naked was simply natural and carried no value judgment. But after Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the relationship to their bodies and to each other dramatically changed. Unto Adam also and his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them, states the Bible (Genesis, Chapter 3, Verse 21). They begin to cover their bodies. Then God declares, And I will put enmity between the man and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Genesis, Chapter 3, Verse 15) Thus began the War of the Sexes, which is still being played outmen and women vying for dominance over one anothers bodies and minds rather then living together in a comfortable interdependency. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons (Genesis, Chapter 3, Verse 7.) The feeling of shame of the body is now complete, and what Adam and Eve seek to cover is their genitalia, the part of their bodies that gives them their primary sense of identity. This is where disowning our sexuality and our bodies began.

It is indeed a great curse. Adam and Eve become divided against each other. God further curses them so their bodies become instruments of toil and suffering rather than joy and celebration. Modern people still suffer from this split, embarrassed to remove their clothes, confused about sexual responses, men and women fighting over wages, child care, house work and health care, bodies exhausted after a long days work.

Judeo-Christian mythology has shaped the way we in Western Civilization think and feel, and, consequently, how we perceive our bodies. It affects the way we walk, look at each other, touch each other, and refrain from touching. It sculpts the bodys tissues by using the mind and its beliefs to control motor neuron responses. It shapes the view of our sexuality, permeating it with an overriding feeling of shame. We feel that something is intrinsically wrong with maleness and femaleness, penises and vaginas. If we reclaim our bodies and our sexuality we redeem Adam and Eve, restore them to the Garden and to each other.

Perpetuating this myth and this language carries toxic consequences for individuals and American society. This myth is at the core of difficulties massage therapy has in gaining acceptance as a profession. Peoples relationships to their bodies are so confused, so filled with guilt and shame that they cannot separate life-giving touch from life-robbing touch. They know so little about their sexuality that they cannot differentiate between sexual touch, therapeutic touch or even friendly touch. The confusion has led to sexual harassment lawsuits and underlies sexual abuse problems. This is why female therapists are afraid of male clients who get erections on the table. This is why many men are afraid to go to openly homosexual therapists. Sexual fear remains the white elephant in the middle of the party everyone is choosing not to talk about.

Fear of human sexuality has been reinforced by successive generations of clergy, politicians and philosophers. A mixed message prevails that sexuality the most basic human biological drive that guarantees survival of the species is somehow dirty, wrong and sinful. This mixed message creates a house divided against itself: a mind afraid of the bodys feelings, passions and biological processes. It creates a body afraid to feel anger, lust, joy, sadness, comfort, rest, solace and solitude. The fear of feeling literally diminishes our nervous systems ability to process sensory input, creating scrambled signals that overpower potentially rich and clearly identifiable sensation. This, in turn, generates behavior problems, as the body literally does not know how to move.

The inability to identify feelings and body sensations leads to unconscious, reactive behavior that contributes to social turmoil. For example, the inability to identify sexual attraction, and to express the attraction verbally before acting to consummate it, has led to great heartaches and jealousy, as well as abortion and unwanted babies. People who know their bodies well can identify sexual attraction. They develop emotional intelligence as a result of identifying body sensations so they can stop and think about the consequences of following through on the attraction. Many have discovered that the old-fashioned verbal declaration of love removes 50 percent of the physical charge between two bodies. There is then enough emotional room to stop and think if the encounter makes sense and what the consequences might be.

It is the job of massage therapy to map the geography of touch, to name the full range of embodied expressions humans are capable of and, in the process, raise the level of discussion around healthy human sexuality. Massage therapists can then teach others to navigate this landscape. First, they have to teach themselves.

The taboo around sex and touch in our culture is just one aspect of the lost connection between physical reality and the spiritual dimension of life. Plato's admonition to his students holds true for student therapists today: Know thyself.

Massage therapists, body workers and somatic practitioners constitute a giant wave of explorers uncovering the mysteries and splendors of the body and inner space, going where few have gone before. They are pilgrims on a path. The maps to these paths are sketchy because so few people have been willing to leave a record of their previous explorations. Society has not always treated kindly the ones who have. Exploring the body, especially its sexuality, has constituted a great threat to society. It seems that people who know themselves and their bodies are less available to be slaves of a time clock or ideologies that deaden the senses and destroy spontaneity, creativity, and personal initiative.

Two influences, the fruit of globalization of culture, have come together to undo the notion that the body is inherently bad, and have paved the way for a deeper knowing of the self. They are Buddhist ideas and Native American spiritual practices. Both contain antidotes to Christian doctrine and Western philosophy and have shaped virtually every massage practitioner. Even in massage schools that do not teach Oriental modalities, Eastern ideas have become so much a part of modern bodywork culture that they seep in by osmosis. Every good massage practitioner practices some form of meditation or centering practice, understands the power of nature in healing, sees the interconnectedness of all life forms, that humans are not dominant but are part and parcel of the environment. A healthy body, the ability to feel and move, depends on clean air, whole food, and clear water.

If I cry on the table am I crazy? How can touch generate these strong emotions? How do I accept that crying is OK? Am I uncomfortable if an African- or an Asian-American colleague wants to work on me, a Caucasian? What if an openly homosexual colleague wants to exchange? Can I accept my prejudices and still receive this massage or must I demur because the inner prejudices are so strong? What if I get an erection while on the table? Will this cute, new female classmate think I'm coming on to her?

All fears and prejudices come out in the first few days of class. Naming them and accepting them is the first step towards personal freedom and excellence in massage. This is how a therapist becomes capable of distinguishing between sexual and therapeutic touch. The revolution comes in owning the good, the bad, and the ugly, accepting what is real and working towards greater self-understanding.

The only way to become a great body worker is to become an authentic person, because the body never lies. Knowing oneself is key. The mind builds fantasy worlds all the time, projecting its ideas onto others, identifying with other peoples suffering. The body's messages are simple and straightforward. The mind has been so conditioned by fear, it takes a while to remove the flotsam and jetsam from the essential person. Professional development is a personal growth experience for massage therapists.

It then becomes easier to give purpose and direction to life, because feelings and sensation become easily identifiable. This is the process where, among other things, they learn to separate sexual touch from therapeutic touch. Once one person has learned how to do it, he or she can transmit this knowledge to other colleagues and clients. It happens one body, one person at a time, guided by compassion, a spirit of exploration, the conscious use of language, and intention. The conscious use of intention remains the massage therapists most significant factor in learning to separate sexual touch from other forms of touch. This is putting the mind inside the hands as they touch the clients tissues. This alignment of head and hands, surrounded by an aura of compassion, allows the therapist to clearly discriminate between sexual and nonsexual touch. When the hands, heart

and head are synchronized, stray thoughts of sexual attraction or arousal either simply don"t show up because there is no room for them, or, they become visible, but emotionally distant, and can be set aside in the therapists mind, to be dealt with later in a more appropriate context. The conscious use of intention is the massage therapists fundamental ally in helping clients differentiate between sexual and therapeutic touch.

One example of this is the personal discovery of the divine dimensions of sex. The idea that sex has a purpose beyond continuation of the species has been around at least since ancient India and China. People do not only engage in sexual intercourse to have babies. They also long to meet one another in a profound way. The Indian mystic, Osho, has suggested what many individuals have discovered on their own, that The craving [in sex] is not for the body of a woman or vice versa, the passion is for something else: for egolessness, timelessness É the attraction for sex is essentially religious É Man had his first realization of samadhi in the experience of sex.8

Samadhi is the direct experience of God, a glimpse of enlightenment, the divine nature of the universe. People describe it as an overflowing of love and compassion, an orgasmic wave moving through the body, coming from everywhere and going nowhere. It radically has broken the mold of what most Westerners believed was possible in a sexual meeting. This state is also accessible through meditation practice.

The adventure of self-discovery that comes with reconnecting to the body and the senses has opened up many other vistas, as well. As Diane Ackerman writes in A Natural History Of The Senses, There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses. We can extend our senses with the help of the microscope, stethoscope, robot, satellite, hearing aid, eyeglasses, and such, but what is beyond our senses we cannot know. Our senses define the edge of consciousness, and because we are born explorers and questors after the unknown, we spend a lot of our lives pacing that windswept perimeter. (See page 74.)9

Massage therapists walk this edge of consciousness every single day. They get to know it and their own bodies by holding each others hands, reminding each other to breathe as the shape-shifters, howling voices and menacing eyes emerge from the darkness, elicited by touch. Some people find courage to go into the dark, then come back out and guide others through. Still others stand behind, calling to stay away from the edge, terrified at what might be lost. Some disappear into the shadows of consciousness, never to come out. As touch can bring forth the specters, it also can cast the light that dissolves them.

References

1. Johnson, Don Hanlon, Body: Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom. Berkeley: NorthAtlantic Books, 1999, p. 2.

2. Foucault, Michel, The History Of Sexuality. (An Introduction,

Vol. 1.) New York: Vintage Books, 1990, p. 116.

3. Reich, Wilhelm, The Function Of The Orgasm. (Translation

by Vincent Carfagno.) New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973

p. 360.

4. op cit., Johnson, p. 37.

5. Ibid., p. 32.

6. The Holy Bible. Authorized King James Version. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960, Book of Genesis.

7. Grof, Stan, The Adventure Of Self Discovery. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988.

8. Osho Rajneesh, From Sex To Superconsciousness. Poona, India: Rebel Publishing, 1979, Chapter 2. [www.osho.com/talks/super02.htm]

9. Ackerman, Diane, A Natural History Of The Senses. New York: Vintage Books, 1991, p. xv. m.