Your mind naturally wanders, but, as it says in the Lord of the Rings, “Not all who wander are lost.”
When we do Deep Massage, we cultivate healthy “psycho-mechanics,” We attend as much to the movement of awareness as to the movement of our body. So to facilitate the client’s clear experience of our touch, we keep returning our awareness to the place we are working on – we pay attention.
And then we keep noting our awareness wandering off again! Sometimes to useful thoughts or feelings relevant to understanding the client better, yet perhaps equally often wandering off to irrelevant thoughts – what’s for lunch today, needless self-criticisms, our own troubles, or random mental bubble-ups.
We can’t stop the mind from wandering! And sometimes graceful wandering finds something of great value. We then return to the place we are touching with some treasure – a deep insight or deep feeling that adds much more valuable clarity or compassion to our touch.
More and more research is pointing us to changes in the client’s nervous system (a.k.a. mind or energy) as what produce positive effects. Equally what we therapists do with our minds can make all the difference in the world.
Sometimes mind wanders and we get troubled. But sometimes our mind wanders and we find hidden treasures. Sometimes the ring of truth.
