“Full-time massage school will be like drinking out of a firehose,” they told us. “Pace yourselves. Know that it will take a long time to integrate what we are teaching.”

Now, four months into this six-month journey, I can say: they were right. It’s both wonderful and stressful.

I’ve been trying to drink out of the firehose like my life depends on it. Or perhaps trying to drink the entirety of a raging river! I’m not just learning one curriculum; I’ve stepped into the entire living universe of bodywork.

My nervous system feels the enormity of that. I am floored by the pace at which we are blowing through the intro-layer level of a lot of infinitely deep material.

Though having an introduction is enough to get started, I’m constantly feeling overwhelmed about how much I’m not “catching”. Part of me wants to take the whole river home in one go, but I’m only actually able to fill one cup at a time. It feels like I’ll have limited time with each part of this river, so I feel some sense of urgency to drink as much as I can from it… but my body is actually only capable of absorbing and integrating a certain amount of liquid at one time.

So I find myself balancing my school experience with my boat-tending practices – which is taking care of my mind-body-spirit and my home ecosystem. A past spiritual mentor used to tell me, “chop wood, carry water.” In matters that require patience and persistence, we can rest in simple forward action: Do the basic tasks that sustain our life, and trust the process.

What does massage school actually look like?

I fell in love with my school the first time I visited. I loved everything about it, from its location on Valencia Street on the same block as Manny’s Coffee Shop, to its unpretentious vibe, to its well-established rapport in the local bodywork scene. I loved that shoes and cell phones weren’t allowed in the classroom. (I’m an avid believer in taking notes by hand and being in social phone-free spaces as often as possible.) I was impressed by the team of teachers on paper, who all have full-time practices and clear passion for bodywork. In my interactions with Gary, the owner, I felt that he and the school both embodied a balance of obviously genuine passion for bodywork, with the rigor and efficiency of a satisfyingly well-oiled machine.

Now I’m in a cohort of 15 people. We’ve been meeting for class three days a week, 8 hours a day. After the first of four modules, we started doing shifts in the student clinic about a day a week as well.

There’s been a LOT of information to learn, in both head and body. Some of that information is about the human body itself and a shared language around anatomy and kinesiology. Then there are the different approaches to bodywork, different styles and techniques. And with every piece of information that comes into our heads, we need to go through a whole embodied process of learning to perform these styles of bodywork inside our own bodies, without compromising our own posture and structure (physically, mentally, or spiritually).

We have four different teachers who are able to share from different schools of thought and practice. Our material has been rooted in a very thorough education in Swedish Massage fundamentals. We’ve expanded on that foundation to learn how to move into deeper layers of tissue using Deep Tissue techniques, as well as deeper into “shallow” levels of tissue, as with Myofascial Release work, which deeply captivates me. We’ll spend the rest of our time together refining our personal styles, deepening our practice of Deep Tissue work and touching on a number of advanced modalities, including Lymphatic Massage, Pregnancy Massage, Sports Massage, Trigger Point Therapy, and Ortho-Bionomy.

Unexpected Challenges & What’s Helping Me

Here are some of the challenges I am facing now. Some of these challenges I knew I’d face, and others have surprised me.

1. The utter impossibility of integrating all the information

I’ve already spoken to this in the intro — the “drinking out of a firehose” or “bringing the whole river home” metaphor. It really does feel overwhelming at times. And I think the main thing that has helped me with that is a combination of faith and community. I have to actively practice faith that it’s going to be okay, even if I can only scoop one cup of water at a time. I don’t know what the future holds, but I don’t need to hoard resources. Instead I need to tend well to my sense of balance and posture, and to trust that I’m held with love inside this new ecosystem. I’m held by my teachers, I’m held by my fellow students and bodyworkers, I’m held by my family and community… and most of all I’m held by some force greater than me that guided me here in the first place. When I lose touch with faith that the Universe has my back, I overwork and override my own limits—and that’s when things start to unravel.

This kind of trust actually points me towards the reality that I’m entering a collaborative and friendly ecosystem. One thing I love about the bodywork world is the field of loving consciousness that is embodied here. It’s not a cutthroat environment at all. It’s an ecosystem of mutual support and rapport, with infinitely many paths to walk and room for everyone. Remembering this also takes some of the heat out of my anxiety — I don’t need to learn every single bit of information that’s presented to me. I can choose to only work in the space I feel called to – to follow the threads that really light me up and bring me joy. I don’t have to sign up to do work that feels too heavy to me, or like too much of a reach. I can do the work that’s mine to do, which will be whatever I can do with love in my heart and easefulness in my mind-body-spirit. This is an intention I want to keep bringing myself back to, because I do have a habit of working harder than I need to, being a perfectionist, and compromising myself via over-giving — which actually doesn’t serve anyone.

2. The awkwardness and deep humility of being a beginner again

Some of my overwhelm has come from this simple humbling experience of being a beginner and not knowing what I’m doing.

How did I forget what the learning process feels like? It’s not like I haven’t continued learning and being a beginner in various parts of my life… but I somehow easily forget how raw it feels to vulnerably be in the learning process. Being at the creative edge of myself, where my intuition, experience, and head-knowledge meets the terrain in front of me. Whenever I approach a new person… I’m approaching a whole universe that I don’t really know the least bit about. If I’m going to be a helpful force in that space, I have to be a pretty open channel. I have to listen. But… how do I know what I’m hearing, while I’m trying to learn how to interpret those signals? It’s this iterative process of try, and try-again… and be okay with “failing” because on some level I will always be failing. There will always be more there than I know what to do with.

But that doesn’t mean give up. That just means show up, and show up again. I will be chiseled by my successes and failures into something useful, if I can keep true to my own highest intention to use my gifts well in service to others and to Life herself.

People are forgiving. And I’m blessed to be in an environment dedicated to learning, for now. I’m allowed to make mistakes when I’m practicing on my classmates or on people in the student clinic. I’m so grateful to have this space where failure is allowed, and where I’m learning how to avoid making truly detrimental errors when working with a person. It’s a big responsibility, to be a professional in the space of touch. I’m only beginning to understand all the possibilities of what can happen there, and how to be a professional.

3. Energy boundaries & blurry vision

Something I remembered pretty quickly after starting school is that bodywork doesn’t start at the point of physical contact. There’s a whole field of touch that we are ALL already plugged into via our energy bodies. We are all already connected to each other in some deep way that is visually invisible but spiritually profound. And to hold my own as a bodyworker, one essential skill I vitally need to develop and refine continually is energy hygiene: how do I hold myself in relation to others? What are my boundaries? How do I sense what is someone else, what is me, and what is happening in the communication space between us?

I’ve had an odd and intriguing recurring experience in some of my bodywork sessions that points me back towards growing my own energy hygiene. Sometimes, I’ll come out of a session and have blurry vision. When that happens, I still feel as though I’m “fully in my body” but on some level I’m not really grounded in my senses anymore. At least my visual sense is “off” and unfocused. It’s been a helpful physical sign that I need to work on staying well-grounded in my own energy system while I’m working with someone else.

I can see that this is part of learning how to be sustainable in the work—not just effective, but well-resourced.

Working on People & Bodies: The Kind of Work I’m Drawn To So Far

In short:

• Myofascial everything
• Intuitive, not formulaic

Working in the student clinic (as well as on fellow students, friends and family) has been a very rich process. I can’t imagine doing massage school without diving into the process of giving full, professional-ish bodywork sessions. Bodywork first and foremost is a hands-on craft, and the scariest and simultaneously most invigorating part of the learning journey, for me, is actively doing it.

I’m trying to find what “my lane” is in this world, which as I’ve already said feels super hard because there is so much that interests me.

One thing I’ve taken and run with is myofascial work. I’m still early in my formal study of myofascially-oriented bodywork, but I find myself consistently drawn there—and receiving clear, positive feedback when I follow that thread. Even at the beginning of my practice, this approach seems to be working for me — To the point that if I leave this lane and try to do “standard Swedish and Deep Tissue” (whatever “standard” is) I get thrown off and disinterested.

It’s a little scary to already feel myself wanting to “specialize” in a type of approach, because I’m scared of people having expectations of me and me potentially failing to meet those expectations. But if I can let go of the fear and just be in the work process itself… I’ve had the most amazing and intriguing experiences already!

My myofascial-forward approach is a low-to-no oil kind of physical contact. I’m basically plugging my hands into the myofascial tissue layer and letting it talk to me about what it wants… and then, I sort of dance with it.

Sometimes the dance is more forceful and invigorating, as with something like skin rolling— which I LOVE to do and is very gratifying especially when I’m working with athletes.

Sometimes it’s totally dreamy, as with moving and melting into the fascia over the sacrum and sternum. I can tell there’s something totally magical about connecting to these specific tissue areas, and I find myself drawn to work there on pretty much everyone. I can get very absorbed in that.

Do I understand everything I’m doing at the head level? Not really. Do people love it? Generally, yes. If not, I’ll move on and find something else that’s meaningful in the moment. There’s always more, if I’m open and listening.

Learning to Trust my Intuition

Every time I’ve tried to be too measured and planned about a bodywork session, it’s backfired on me. I feel like I get disconnected from myself and from my ability to deeply listen to a body. If I rely too much on a formula, I kind of miss the opportunity to let curiosity take me anywhere, and it shuts off my senses a little bit because I’m lulled into the false idea that I know what lies ahead.

My best sessions by far have been started with the premise that my intuition is what will guide the session, not my head. This approach also has its challenges, mostly that anytime self-doubt arises I can lose my groove and feel lost. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

Last week, on my birthday, I did a trade in class with one of my classmates, and both the giving and the receiving were two of my best yet in the program. Both of our sessions were so non-formulaic and deeply alive. The feedback he gave me afterwards was utterly wild to me. How my hands had found their way to very specific patterns in his body that he’d not shared verbally with me, and how I’d found my way to “just the right depth” around sensitive spots that historically clamp up in response to mis-attuned touch.

On some level, my hands know what to do much better than my head does.

The way I experience it, it’s like there’s a conversation happening between their body and my hands, and my hands have a kind of intelligence inside that conversation that my mind will never understand — and simply has to surrender to. This is the intuitively healing touch that can’t be taught in school, that on some level I’ve always had. I realized recently that I’m not in school to learn how to massage, but to be in a container where I can feed and develop this healing intuition that is already present in me. It’s about developing my own craft and gift — something I already have the seeds of — and about exposing myself to teaching from other bodyworkers who themselves have this gift and have given substantial energy to cultivating and nourishing it in their own lives. It’s truly such an honor to find myself here, with this kind of awareness. What we’re working with is magical to me. That I can work with my hands in this way, and that on some way it’s actually FOR MY HANDS —- almost like I, formerly overly identified with my brain, am recognizing my hands for the first time in my life as what they are — a separate and equally valuable center of intelligence.

I don’t know how else to describe my work. I can’t let my head get in the way of my hands. My head doesn’t get to run the show. My hands already kind of know what they are doing. Yes, they are also teachable. Yes, I can take my hands into learning spaces to help further develop my ability to sense, feel, and act appropriately in a body. Yes, all these things are undoubtedly improving in my schooling journey, and in my evolving practice of bodywork. And yes, I want to stay in learning environments… I want to keep learning as much as I can to support whatever is happening in my hands organically when I bring them to a body with a posture of service and reverence.

In some ways, I wish I could go back to my past work as a software engineer with this kind of awareness of the intelligence of my hands. If I saw coding as working with my hands instead of working with my brain, would I have felt less mental stress and bodily discontent than I did?

I’ve done a lot of writing in my life, between long-form journaling and this rambling on-and-off blog over the past 10 years… and that, too, is the work of my hands, even if it’s mediated through a keyboard instead of directly into paper via pen. Thank you hands!

My Approach to Good Body Mechanics

While my best massages come from trusting my hands and letting my intuition lead, there is another component that is necessary, and that is about being in my whole body.

At school we have been taught about body mechanics in mostly a rational and linear kind of way. We’ve looked at standard postures for proper joint stacking, for example. And on one level this is very good – I actually do believe in drilling body mechanics, to some degree. It feels dry, but it is useful and practical in that it builds inner awareness. And especially when going into deep tissue work, getting that initial posture comfortable and well-aligned is crucial.

The point to which a linear approach stops being useful to me is the point at which I am thinking instead of feeling — analyzing instead of embodying. I shouldn’t be stacking my joints because I want to look like a straight line… I should be stacking my joints so that I can FEEL the line of connection between where I am touching my client with my palm (or fist or elbow or knuckles), and the place where my feet are contacting the ground. I should be FEELING this connection of weight through my whole body, and lining everything up to support that connection, so that I am not sourcing muscular tension or putting strain on my own body (or losing connection to more subtle signals between us). The real way to stay safe with my own mechanics is to stay fully present and alive in my whole structure.

In me, the best way to find this is to be in a dance. Then, I can be listening with my whole body. Breathing with my whole body. Feeling with my whole body. And in a sense, to dance my way through a session is to be in my highest form of intelligence.

This is no doubt informed by my personal background with dance and movement. And one of the reasons I’m even in this bodywork space is because of my background in dance and movement, so it’s natural for me to bring that kind of body awareness to my practice. I find comfort in this approach, because it means each of my sessions can be its own work of art and love through my body. It can be an expression of my soul’s dance with life. Maybe this is actually at the core of how I wish my work to feel and be in my life. This is the seed I want to water, and nurture, and grow. This is the essential gift and offering: the place where my soul’s dance touches another person’s field in a healing way.

Feeling The Way Forward

As I head into the new year and the last two months of this program, I hope to hold all of this lightly and gratefully — to prioritize curiosity over mastery, presence over perfection, and sustainability over urgency. I’m here to learn, to listen, and to keep refining how I show up in the space of touch. I don’t yet know exactly what my practice will look like, but I’m beginning to trust the direction my hands are pointing me in.