I’ve been doing more massage lately and I can feel it in my thumbs, wrists, shoulders, and the sides of my body. It’s been really fun though, so I keep saying yes to appointment requests. Spending this extra time in my office with my hands on clients has me thinking about the art of muscle manipulation. The more I work, the more important it becomes that I pay attention to how I am working. I’m finding that the more artistry I bring to how I apply pressure and move tissue, the better the outcome for my clients and myself.
I always wanted to be an artist. Self-expression is such a beautiful thing. The massage school I attended is called The New Hampshire Institute of Therapeutic Arts. Art—the word is right there in the name. Now, as a massage therapist, I definitely consider myself a clinician, but I also consider myself an artist.
To me, bringing art into our work as massage therapists and bodyworkers is where the elixir of healing comes in. It is possible to manipulate muscle tissue day in and day out without adding much creativity and still manage to do some good for people. But in my experience, it actually hurts to do that after a while. Bringing in our own sense of artistry then becomes essential so we can be the effective healers we are meant to be, for our sake and for that of our clients.
I’ve realized, for instance, that more pressure is not always better. When I first started practicing, I listened to what people told me they wanted, and what they often said was, “I think I need you to go really deep today.” It was like they were telling me, “the harder you press, the better.” I wanted to give them what they were looking for so I would work as deeply as my joints could bear, often to my own detriment. Then I realized that what my clients were really saying was, “I think I need a really effective massage today.” To them, deeper meant more effective, but as I worked, I started to realize that working deeply was sometimes counter-effective, and that the biggest releases could come with hardly any pressure at all.
And this is where the art comes in.
Yesterday, as one of my longtime clients left my office, she said, “That was a really elegant massage.” I found that an interesting choice of words, so I asked for more feedback. “What do you mean by that? Can you elaborate?” I asked. She thought for a moment and said, “It was the flow of it, the rhythm, the places you went hard and where you were soft.” I thanked her for her description.

Holding Space for Creativity
Art and creativity are part of a bodyworker’s career, mostly in the form of how we present ourselves in our marketing materials and through the way our offices are set up. But there are a lot of bodyworkers who work for other people and do not have much control over these aspects of presentation. It occurred to me that the primary way we can express our bodywork creativity is in how we show up, in the moment, and the actual touch we administer to our clients.
Even if you have been instructed to give the exact same massage routine to every person on the table, you still have room to be an artist. Let’s say you have a client in a supine position on your table and you’re supposed to start with the right leg. Before you dive right in to effleurage, you can take a moment to greet the leg. Lightly rest your palms on the quadriceps, the knee, the sole of the foot, note the tension in the ankle, and find out where your attention is drawn. Discover where tissue is moving easily and where it is taut. Follow what you feel, start out lightly, and then go deep in exactly the places where the leg shows you it needs it, instead of being heavy-handed over all the muscles. Vary the pressure where it feels right, add tapotement or brushing at just the right points, and use your thumbs for the deepest work where called for. There is no reason why, even in a set massage routine, you can’t use this kind of creativity to have a conversation with the body in front of you as it is presenting in the moment, instead of applying an entirely rote and predetermined massage. This kind of work keeps you in the moment with your client. They will feel it more, and you will save your hands from unnecessary pressure.

Painting With Touch
I was at an art museum recently for a Winslow Homer exhibition. He is best known for his marine landscapes. Looking at all the water in his paintings, I noticed how many colors Homer used to depict the ocean. If you had asked me what color the ocean is, I would say blue; but right there in front of me an artist was showing me that the ocean is blue, white, black, red, orange, purple, green, grey, yellow, brown, pink, and every shade and mixture of these colors imaginable.
I feel like the art of applying pressure is similar, in a sense. Clients want an effective treatment, something that will benefit their whole being and make them healthier and happier. They may say they want a deep massage, and it might seem like deep means you should paint their whole body blue, but an artist would know that deep includes every color of the rainbow and they would know just where to place each hue.

Jennie Hastings Stancu, LMT, is the author of The Inspired Massage Therapist (Massage Blossom Books, 2012). She lives in Portland, Maine, where she practices massage, yoga, and coaching with clients, and sings to herself for fun. Find out more at www.inspiredmassagetherapist.com.