Background

I went looking for branding images recently. Go search under “massage” and you’ll find that over 95% of the images are men getting massages from women. That’s part one: Men get served. Women do not get served. And almost all of the women getting served are getting served by other women—not by men who honor them—and none look truly happy or relaxed. That is the background.

Look closer: The small number of women getting massaged are nearly all cosmetically perfect women smiling fake ass smiles: “I am so pretty. I am so happy.” That is part two: You will pretend to be happy with whatever you get. Your needs are so unimportant that you won’t even know what they are. Your job is to be polite, pretend to be happy, and make the people around you feel comfortable, even when paying for being served and cared for.

Keep going: I then went after images of women’s silhouettes, trying to find a powerful woman I could make radiate energy, because most of my clients are women, and supporting them is what I am best at. That’s part three: Try to find an image of a woman simply standing straight and strong, facing forward, without her hips tipping or swaying suggestively for a male audience. Good luck. There were none. Virtually all silhouettes of women are posing for a male viewer emphasizing sexual readiness, or in a few cases, dancing suggestively, or doing yoga.

These three searches confirm what I have encountered in 30 years of doing this work: Women are culturally coerced to be agreeable and low maintenance while being used, and do not expect to be valued or supported. There is no service model. It is too much to hope for. You are allowed to be pretty and pretend to be happy, and feel useful helping others, but it may not honor your complexity, richness, or needs at all. Even the services available for wealthy women, who can afford them, are mostly about looking good, not feeling good, and what you truly need to feel good is never seriously considered. Being messy and feeling good are not on the menu.

When I left school and started doing massage professionally, I realized the entire profession was set up for men–that women’s needs were never assessed or valued. Maybe talking for 5 minutes, taking off your clothes, and letting an unknown someone touch you for 50 minutes is great for a man, but not comforting or relaxing for a woman. What if men are energetically positive and easily offload emotional snot onto others? What if women are energetically receptive, and easily take on the emotional snot from others? What if women need a much more personalized, attentive, and energetically careful service attuned to them that allows them to offload safely? All true.

I quickly figured out that most women need to be listened to for at least half an hour to be comfortable being touched at all, and need a stable and supportive relationship in which to unpack emotional contents that are not being named in other parts of their lives. If a woman does not get these things, she will often stay frozen hard the entire time in her posture of personality, because her emotions are under serious pressure and she needs a safe situation to let them out with—that is not happening.

She needs receptivity, not force—the same receptivity and responsiveness she shows to others. She does not need a man to be in command or control. She needs someone to listen to her, value her, and move at her pace. She has all the information and intuition necessary to unpack herself. She just needs someone to honor and understand her.

Based on women’s feedback, I developed a system that helps a woman unpack her emotional contents efficiently and assure that she feels empowered by and throughout the entire experience. It is really just about giving her permission to do what she already knows how to do, but in a world where women defer to men because of the real danger of men becoming offended and violent if she is competent, it makes explicit that her skill and input are wanted. It also works with men.

You are in a therapy office to heal. You are there to get out of the postures of personality that make you ache and despair. You are there to be skillfully supported and carefully attended to by someone making sure the experience is productive for you. You are paying them to get results. If you need permission to get messy, they should give it. If you can’t get emotionally messy when you are being touched, when can you?

The activity stirs up feelings. You should feel comfortable enough with whoever is touching you to let it pour. And it is their responsibility to help you feel that comfortable. Crying, rage, fear, joy: Whatever it is. That is just baseline. If the person touching you cannot handle your feelings, they have no business touching you and stirring up your feelings. Touch is personal. They need to make it comfortable.

“Let’s make sure we both understand this: You have permission to feel here, even if it is messy or loud. As long as you don’t damage me, yourself, or the office, or get the neighbors to call the police, you are fine.” That was my first communication with clients, and I meant it. Then I showed up to prove it.

The term “gas lighting” had not been coined yet, but it was clear to me that women as a group were being gas lit on a massive scale: Your experience does not matter. Whole professions do not care if you are being served by them. And no one thinks this is a problem. Not even you. You are just used to it. You are just practical about dealing with reality.

So I began building a protocol where women’s unspoken needs were noticed and honored that has evolved into what we have here. I found that secure attachment (emotional connection and responsive support) are the most important things we can give each other to encourage growth. This is absolutely known among childhood development specialists, but strangely withheld from practitioners dealing with people still caught in childhood patterns. Massage Therapy considers emotional connection unprofessional. Pretty crazy to make the thing people need most in order to feel supported and grow off-limits. So, no thanks.

I was only able to see through this basic error because I had perspective: I learned my first massage style at 14 and did dozens of sessions without any idea that emotion was “bad.” In fact, I learned the opposite: that emotional connection is a form of communication that works very well. It allows us to know things directly as practitioners and allows us to reset how we feel about ourselves as clients:

“If someone else feels good about me, maybe I can too. If someone else likes me, maybe I can too. If someone else feels my feelings with me, and likes me, maybe I am likable after all. If someone else shares my experience with me, and finds nothing wrong with me, maybe there is nothing wrong with me. Maybe trying to like myself alone was the impossible challenge. Maybe I was supposed to have people understand me, support me, and like me all along, and there was never enough of that to make me comfortable with or confident about myself.”

Being celebrated for what you do is not the same as being valued for who you are. Many of us accomplish great things and are celebrated, but the »being valued« that we really need has nothing to do with our performances. It is being understood, accepted, and appreciated without having to perform at all, for just being ourselves, being real.

Emotional connection makes deep healing possible. Many, many times, clients said to me “That was worth more than five years of therapy.” They meant weekly talk therapy. A few hours of secure connection through touch—feeling accepted and appreciated as a being and a body as they cycled through emotional states—was all they really needed to like themselves again. They had paid tens of thousands of dollars for therapy that didn’t work and got positively reset in two or three hours with the kind of care animals instinctively give one another all the time: emotional connection and affection.

Chances were they didn’t get enough of it as children. Their parents ignored their feelings at crucial instants when they needed support and they dissociated from themselves and began to doubt their worth. All they really needed was getting what was missing to know they were okay, and move on.

People used to tell me, “This is my first massage that didn’t hurt.” What a world. Hurting each other is normal, and we even pay for it, because we are so starved for touch that feeling anything is better than feeling nothing. And no one questions this until something better happens.

This is the other end of the spectrum: My protocol is set up to help you know it is safe to relax and be sensitive: someone has your back so entirely, is so attentively caring for you and loyal to you, that you can go there and just dissolve into the goodness of being you. It should never hurt. Someone is listening to you that carefully and closely. Your feelings matter. Your human environment notices you, acknowledges your signals, tells you that you and your signals matter, and gives you what you show you like. The connection is constant, positive, and strong. “I like you. I care about you. I notice you. You are my friend. I got you.”

This is like rock climbing; we are going into emotionally dangerous territory and have to carefully protect each other. We are connected by a rope of feelings as we climb to the top of a cliff, and that rope is our lifeline. There is no spacing out or people get hurt. You have had enough people ignore your feelings and touch you poorly or even hurtfully. I am here to touch you well and make sure you leave here feeling purely positive about yourself. You are worth paying attention to. You are worth the same total attentiveness, carefulness, and kindness an infant is.

We’ll get into this further, but you don’t have to be nice, just real. You don’t have to be pretty. And if you skip the mascara and blush, my sheets thank you. Let me prepare you: First off, if you are working with me, your face will get so relaxed you won’t have the muscle tension to hold a fake smile. Within fifteen minutes, you will get so relaxed you won’t be able to speak. Your mouth will hang open. You may even drool. No one will say anything. It is a sign the process is working.

This isn’t a photo shoot. This is about getting floppy bunny and feeling so good about yourself you can’t move. You should feel completely good about yourself and not have to perform in any way. This is a place to do that. You can take your social mask off here and feel safe without it. You can feel accepted and appreciated at all times. Judging or hurting you is out of the question. Touch here is for creating your happiness and self-love. It is for telling you, thousands of seconds in a row, “You are wonderful, feel it, know it, trust it. You are respected here. You are liked. You belong.”

One reason this is different than most services is that I started doing massage early in life and see it, and the connection it creates, as something holy. It is a place I used to go out of the roughness of the world, either rubbing dogs or cats or people, that was much more sensitive, connected, and kind than how people usually behaved or treated each other. Other people may see it as a means to an end—I don’t. I see as a sort of kingdom of heaven where higher rules apply—where caring for and honoring each other allow us to be real instead of fake, kind instead of mean, friends instead of competitors. It is a sacrament. Massage is a sacred ritual that allows us to inhabit the opportunity of natural friendship.

Touch is truthful. Through it, we know what each other are feeling. We have to be real, so let’s make it good. It is a sanctuary where we don’t have to think or lie. It supports us in being real and knowing that is a good way to meet. Folks need to feel beautiful, valued, and loved to feel encouraged to be real. Touch helps with that. Good touch is mostly listening, with positive responses: “I feel you, you are good. I feel you, you are good. You don’t have to do anything to be liked, being yourself is enough, okay? I feel you, you are good.”

So I had already done massage with friends since I was a teenager before going to massage school, was more empathic and intuitive than most women, had experience, and had skills. As soon as I started working professionally with normal folks, they got into profound states with me, thanked me from the bottom of their hearts, paid me well for one of the best experiences of their lives, then never came back.

A few came back after a year or two and told me why: “I get more relaxed with you than with anyone I have ever known. Way more relaxed than with my partner. I get totally blissed out and speechless. I like myself without any judgments. I feel so good. I feel natural and holy and completely appreciated. I feel like my true self. Having to go back into my normal life is confusing. I feel amazing for a month or two, then I start asking: Am I supposed to do something differently? Am I with the wrong person? Why is my life so empty? Do I even know myself?”

This forced me to create a process that is totally transparent and educational, where you learn what is happening and choose what is happening at every point so that you can recreate it in your life. You get to have the big yummy, but you are directing the yummy at dozens of points along the way and know that you are choosing your path based on what feels good for you. I am just listening to you well, listening to your signals, going with what you like. Anyone can be trained to do that. By connecting with yourself consistently, you are learning how to train them.

You may have to train the people in your life. That is the education part: Your connection with yourself, hearing what you like or don’t like, and choosing what’s right, does the magic. Not what you think, what you actually feel and like: what you are actually ready for in the moment. Not the glamorous image, the simple reality. You can get that dialed in with me. I’ll help you. And once you have that, you can use it with anyone.

It will also help you stop getting played. Remember the beginning of this page? Where a whole profession was charging you money and wasn’t meeting your needs? Or the previous page, where people were intentionally ignoring your feelings to get you off balance, trying to please them, and doing what they want? This fixes all that. Just having your feelings matter restores your sanity and self-respect. Navigating from that fixes many ill situations.

There isn’t any wizard here; you are taking the steps: You are leaning towards what is good for you, speaking your truth, and someone is carefully meeting you. Someone is actually listening to you with all their being, and meeting you as well as possible, over and over. Every time that happens you get the signal it is safe to relax more, and you do. That trust-building by careful meeting unlocks sensitivity that allows you to meet yourself in deeper ways, and love yourself crazy big. Liking yourself without having to do anything, being at peace with yourself, is such a relief. It is a perspective that allows you to stop trying to be perfect, and to know when you are being treated poorly and say, “No thanks. That’s you. That’s not me.”

You make the decisions here. You are driving the car at every point. I am just supporting you in accepting and appreciating yourself. I don’t pretend to know what is right for you; I just value you where you are, and help you feel comfortable, confident, and natural. It helps you notice and enjoy landscapes you would otherwise miss.

I am just in the passenger seat, being a good friend. This is really just skillful, professional friendship, where someone is committed to helping you unpack and like yourself. This is your trip. Someone is finally noticing your situation and saying, “She needs to accept and appreciate herself. Not doing those things is making her crazy. I’ll help her. I’ll show her she’s good until she gets it. Someone, at some point, didn’t celebrate her. I will now.”

Trust ignites my loyalty. As a kid, the dogs or cats that let me pet them were giving me access to a special world, and I was grateful. I feel the same way about people: I feel grateful for the chance to connect honestly. Touch is honest. Being willing to connect through touch is being willing to be honest. Much human communication is very unsatisfying roleplaying. It is like jousting with armor on. Touch puts us in a direct and truthful conversation of feelings. I am glad to be in that conversation and loyal to you just for meeting me there.

Being in that conversation so much has given me powers: I have a very fine filter for noticing when people are saying things or doing things to try to please me, and I don’t put up with it. Please yourself. Do what makes you like yourself. Your happiness makes me happy. Be yourself daringly and honestly and I will celebrate you. No roles. No rules. Just be you, and be enjoyed for being you.

That is what this is about: Being the real you. Discovering it. Practicing it. Aligning with ways of being that feel the most real. That could include being smart or silly or profound or vulnerable. You have permission to be you here and the opportunity to be supported in it. I am here to celebrate and enjoy you while encouraging you to investigate and like who you are.

Being real may include becoming slower and more sensitive to yourself than you have ever been in other connections. It is a kind of honesty about what you really feel and need. I am good with it. Cultivating self-sensitivity creates presence that creates revelation. It is a method. It is a method for escaping from fantasy and role playing. Becoming more self-sensitive is a way of learning to be as real as you can: realizing your boundaries as well as your growth edges, so you can fill in your life completely.

Feel welcome

To talk or schedule: journeys@emorealnet