An amazing massage experience

The other day I was briefly transformed into a musical instrument in a pretty unusual set of circumstances.

I was in a little side street of a backwater town of a mostly ignored little country in South East Asia, and went into a tiny establishment advertising modestly on a small billboard outside various cures using asian massage medical techniques. It had taken quite a bit of searching to find the place – 3 years on and off I had been looking – but here, via some rather unlikely individuals, I was.

The woman inside – who wouldn’t want me to qualify her as a doctor – spoke a little bit of English, but it scarcely seemed to matter; she radiated such an aura of gentleness and personal happiness as she answered my questions simply, I was pretty awestruck with what I can only describe as sheer positive energy that litterally shone out of her, while I sat in her spartan office with meditative asian music sofly playing in the background.

Beforehand I had learned that she studdied massage and medecine under a Vietnamese master, and then travelled to neighbouring countries to learn their techniques while practising in each country she visited. I had also learned that she was passionate about her art, and had helped out a surprising number of people. This fit in with exactly what I was looking for both for professional and personal reasons, and it was under the effects of a bit of stage fright that I mentioned my various ailments and told her to do her worst, with time not a consideration.

I’ve been lucky enough to experience the talents of a few expert asian healers over time, and know that it can be a transformative experience, but also a painful or uncomfortable one, but here I felt pretty good about the whole thing. I saw the previous patient leave beaming radiantly at the universe, which probably helped along with the doctor’s angel-like demeanor.

She started out with a series of massage techniques that got me relaxed and feeling good, and got a kink out of my neck and and lower back effortlessly with me barely registering it, but that was just the warm up. She then rips open a sealed packet and produces a small object that looked like a tiny hammer, with one end covered in tiny needles in a pattern. I had seen a similar hammer before – in chinese medicine the famous “prune tree flower hammer”, so named because of the rows of tiny needles on the hammer head that form a star like flower pattern, that gives it the appearance of an obscure torture device – which it is definately not. These needles penetrate just the surface of the skin as it is tapped very quickly and lightly, usually over a series of accupuncture points to achieve various results depending on the points and what else is being done to the patient.

In my case, she  starts drumming on my lower back each side of my spine softly with the hammer while alternating hammer touches – just strong enough to feel the impact – with firm and decisive pressure on various other points to the left and right, each touch feeling like her finger sunk into a well that opened between my muscles and tendons, while strangely each time leaving a sensation of sealing something when her fingers left my back. I  have never felt something quite like that, her movements so rapid that after a while they faded into a knitting sensation, as though my back was a frayed piece of wool she was reassembling. I realised with a bit of a shock after a few minutes that every touch with her hammer and fingers was perfectly in sync with the asian string instrument that had been twanging away in the background, tracing a complex harmonic of notes into my back as if playing a human xylophone. One hammer touch leaving a slightly tingling feeling, follower by several finger pressures on different points in succession rapidly, then another hammer touch before more finger pressures in time with the music that made my back feel like a flute being played allegro by some joyous skipping piper.

But stranger was to come: after a good while, it must of been twenty minutes “under the hammer”, when I was in such a completely receptive, relaxed state that I had become part of the massage table, an impression of warmth starting somewhere in my kidneys gradually spread to the surface, and the tiniest muscles and tendons of my back started moving of their own accord, jumping and rippling in response to every touch she made. as though they had decide to leave me to it and follow the piper’s every note. The feeling was incredible but unfortunately after a few more moments I either passed out or fell asleep. When I woke up she was still weaving her pattern, and my dorsal muscles were still doing their tiny repetetive movements in a circle clenching and unclenching around my spine of their own accord. After a while she unwound slowly the complex rythm, told me to sit there for a while and not do anything: it was important I didn’t sweat for the next ten minutes – the day was quite hot. I felt pretty amazing straight off while we chatted about a little project I want her to participate in (which I’m happy to say she agreed to with her glowing enthusiasm), eventually walked out in a bit of a daze and then over the next 48 hours felt very alive, with a back pain that has haunted me for the last two years transformed into a vague memory.

Epilogue: It’s now a week later and my back hasn’t felt this good for years !  It feels almost as good as it was years ago when I used to work on martial arts three to nine hours a day ! I will not give more details on her here, but will if someone interested in her services contacts me nicely by email – It’s in the comments on the “About” section of my blog