Sunday, March 11, 2012

Geek

touch skin muscle bone
deep tissue subtle movement
fixing when it hurts

I know what it feels like hurt.
My first job was doing Tech Support, then Tech Writing. I filled in for the manuals that people never read, then I started writing them.
I was laid off four times in four years. I lived in constant tug of war between the hope of a huge public IPO, and the dread of the failure of the company (you can guess which one actually happened).
I spent hours a day in front of the computer. For work, for fun, for communication and socialization.
My shoulders became one with my ears. My lower back, my arms and wrists and hands. My knees. I understood the idea of ergonomic seating. I just never actually practiced it. It was not a big deal. It was just my job, finding a way to fix the problems people had with their computers, so they could do their jobs.

I know what it feels like to stop hurting.
I never got massaged as much as I should have, but every time I did, I swore I would not go so long before the next one.
It felt good to be relaxed. To be able to move more normally. To lose the tensions I had spent months holding on to, to let go of aches and pains I as not aware I even had. The healing process was begun, and I knew it was as important to healthy functioning as drinking enough water and eating right.
The fact I lived on Jolt Cola and Pizza was probably pretty telling.

I know what to do to make it stop hurting.
After the last layoff, after the divorce and the moving out and starting over, I studied massage. I started with studying anatomy, the way the human body is put together and how the bones and muscles all move together. Then I studied Deep Tissue, Passive stretching and focussed resistance, swedish, Prenatal. And even now, my education continues. Everything I learn, building on everything I have already learned.
I started my Massage career where I ened my Tech Career, in Silicon Valley. My clients were mostly tech workers, and worked at relaxing the same kinds of tense shoulders and sore lower back issues that I knew so well from the inside. I found that those kinds of tension were not limited or unique to high tech professionals.
The solutions are not unique, either. I listen to what you say is bothering you, I observe the way you hold yourself and how you move, and I spend the first few minutes of the massage finding and tracing the tensions in your muscles, and then the rest releasing them from the source.

I used to make computers better.
Now I  make life better.
Tech Support for Human Hardware.
Touch Fusion Massage.

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