Reflections From Teaching Couples Thai Massage
I feel the love in my fingers, the flow in my heart, the wholeness of my breath.
Having just spent a weekend teaching a Couples Thai Massage retreat at the Kripalu Center, I’ve received the gift of a lifetime: opening up to love. My heart feels expansive, my energy like the flowing rapids of the Colorado River and overall, I’m in a delightful state of contentment.
It is a gift that would not have been possible without the collective presence of 38 wonderful people who came, saw and kicked ass.
Like a Band-Aid being ripped off on old wound, what I am left with and what I think we who co-created this weekend are experiencing is the miracle of life lived sweetly.
There is a reason we are moved by our favorite melodies, a reminder of the music and the rhythm of something that lives presently and patiently inside of us.
Tune us to the right station and the song that sings is a melody in harmony with the harmonious sounds of life.
It’s what we hope to experience on a brilliant sunny day or a meditative walk through the woods where we hear the birds chirping and the crisp crackle of the ground beneath our feet.
What we learned this weekend is that this superpower lives in giving and receiving Thai Yoga Massage. It pours through our hands and our bodies and is accessible to us when we tune our touch to compassion, love and kindness. It is available to us as we listen, communicate and set intentions to welcome health, intimacy, connection and union with our partner and with our selves.
What’s more, as powerful as the gift of touch and massage was to help unlock these experiences in our souls, it would not have been half as sweet if we were not willing to take a risk and speak our truths in a sacred circle.
To share with our words and our hearts with people who were strangers on Friday night, and allies ever since, what these exchanges and these times together were stirring inside and between the partners.
It was not all sunshine and roses, but the time well spent together, with couples walking on their feet, rolling their forearms into areas of stuck-ness, stretching out tight hips, backs and legs, making gentle circles and rolling sweeps down their hair, cheeks, necks and ears offered a promise.
An opportunity at healing, growing, loving, smiling and fighting for things that really matter.
Each person knows what that means to them and their relationship and each person felt it.
I believe I’m not alone in knowing that many hours later we are carrying this torch in us. The spark of the weekend now has a light and it is felt. And if we continue to tend to that fire and be open to the multitude of ways it will express itself, then it will help purify that which needs release, provide incredible ways to connect and help each other, and present the profound gifts that are being birthed right now. Sweetness, created from our own efforts, to listen, touch, talk, notice, embrace and be with.
I give thanks to the love that lives in me, that has held me and taught me and shown me the way for what was worth fighting for. We have come a lovely way in this life and I feel your support vibrating, pulsing, flowing wonderfully. I embrace what this is, and I know it is all about sharing, because as I have learned so eloquently of late, giving is living.
Some might read this and think it is gobbledygook… spiritual psychobabble. And I get it. Until you live it and know what it’s like to turn on your massage powers and share it with someone you love, how can you know what is possible right now.
Shifting from an idea to a reality is a lot bigger leap than you think. It is also the place where we can feel safer, more loved, seen, cared for, understood and held where we ever thought possible.
And it’s not possible without one another. A room of like-minded people willing to give touch a chance helped to ignite the healing light of a 1000 power stations. Healing from isolation is what we called it in the byline of the course and you’re damn right! It’s an injury, a scarring, a hurt, a reality that predates the pandemic by many, many years.
This weekend taught us that isolation does not have to be a way of life. Knowing the massage and sharing it with people we care about gives us incredible tools to rewrite the story, undo deeply ingrained habits and live a better life.
As a teacher, what better satisfaction can there be when everyone learns the techniques at such a high level and shares it with their partner so tenderly? I was able to witness how they made the massage their own. A profound way to give, receive and express love, kindness, and generosity at the highest level.
