UpClose & Personal - Steve Capellini

It’s normal to be feeling the way you feel. Many people before you have felt the very same way. The people who come to you for therapy have felt the same way themselves. Your enemies have felt the same way. Stupid people. Brilliant people. We’re all the same.

We’ve all been shaken up over the past several months by events beyond our control. It has seemed the world is spiraling out of control. And yet, now we find ourselves edging back into normalcy again. Some of us have even felt guilty about feeling normal. This is normal too. There is really very little outside the bounds of common human experience.

In Japanese Zen monasteries it is a tradition for the Master to give some parting words of wisdom on his deathbed, one final pithy insight, the ultimate Koan. One Master, his disciples gathered around, said in a weak but humor-filled tone, “I understand now that it is not just the untalented who die.”

In other words, get over yourself.

I recently attended a “Spiritual Eldering” workshop, based on the teachings of a Rabbi who wrote a book called From Aging to Saging. Check out the book if you’re at all interested in the process and challenges of growing not only older, but wiser. As the youngest person in the room by at least two decades, I thought I might feel out of place. But instead, of course, I felt embraced and wildly appreciated. These elders asked me to share my insights into movement and touch, and I led an impromptu massage and stretching class one afternoon. Women in their eighties taught me a thing or two about touch by approaching me, hands outstretched, and simply stroking my face and hair. “You’re so beautiful. I just want to touch you,” one of them said with a look of spiritual wonderment in her eyes. How much better would each of our own therapy sessions be if that were the foremost thought in our minds at the time?

One of the exercises we did in this workshop involved the creating of our own “ethical wills.” This Last Will & Testament doesn’t talk about what material objects or wealth you’re leaving behind for others, but rather the spiritual, intangible lessons and legacies you hope to impart to those you’ve touched. What ethical legacy would you like to offer your massage clients? What would you like them to take away from their experience with you, knowing that someday that experience is going to end?

Another topic discussed was mentoring. Have you mentored anyone lately? If you’ve been a therapist for two months, that means you have something to give to someone who has been a therapist for one month. Or someone who is still a student. We all have something to give, even if it is just our hands outstretched in love toward an object of beauty—another soul.

What tendencies or self-limiting thoughts are holding you back from just plain being normal? From simply reaching out? From dismantling the barriers constructed by ego and put into place between you and the rest of the world? We, as a group of professionals, are lucky to have touch as our skill and trade because it is touch that is the simplest expression of our shared humanity. The further we go toward developing our palpatory skills and therapeutic techniques, the more we have to remember that they are the icing on the cake. The cake is the simple normal connection of human beings. If we can make therapy and compassion and caring normal, we’ll leave a legacy behind that can’t be ignored.

Good luck to you.

Steve Capellini
www.royaltreatment.com

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