Defining the sensual touch

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It can be difficult to discuss massage with others if we don't have the same definition of words. In France there's typically a focus on a loving and sensual touch during a massage. A touch that's nourishing and deeply compassionate. Where you connect and awaken the senses of the other person.

When we speak of a sensual touch in massage, we mean a touch that pertains to the senses and physical sensation. We speak of a massage that helps the recipient to awaken their five senses.

Touch from the hands of the therapist. Scent from the essential oils and incenses. Sound from the music being played during the massage. Often sight and taste are included by the environment in the massage room and a cup of tea after the massage.

Many associate sensuality with eroticism and sexuality, which is a great shame as they are not the same. The word sensual has been used in an erotic context for so long that they've become the same in the mind of people, even dictionaries tend to define sensual as erotic first and non-erotic second.

According to dictionary.com "sensual" is: "of or pertaining to the senses or physical sensation; sensory".
Perhaps sensory is a better word to use, if we're to avoid misunderstandings and wrong associations.


What do you think?

Creative Stone

Image by Taunaki via Flickr

Last year I wrote a post called "Creative Stone" describing a Massage Créatif enhanced by hot stones. As I've learned more skills and know my stones better, that writing has become inadequate. Creative Stone is now so much more than just adding a few hot stones to a Massage Créatif session. In fact, I wouldn't even call the massage part for Créatif any longer, as that expression has also been changed.

So what is a Creative Stone session all about now?

The answer is simple, yet complex. It is a holistic massage. Creative Stone addresses tense and sore muscles, nourishes your heart and soul, refreshes and lightens your mind and leaves your body fully relaxed, while you feel renewed and revitalized.

Creative Stone takes the best elements from the LaStone techniques I've learned, combined with the care and tenderness of Massage Créatif, as well as other body-work techniques, to create a massage specially for you. One treatment is never like one other, as it is uniquely suited to your wants and what your body tells me it needs.

This means that in one treatment I might use a lot of Deep Stone techniques to release and normalize tense muscles. Another treatment might rather use the stones as grounding elements while lots of hands-on work provide compassion, care and closeness. A massage can provide you with warmth when you need nourishment, or refresh you when you feel tired and exhausted.

In every massage I use my knowledge, insight, and intuition to evaluate what will suit you best in that moment. I listen to what you may say and the signals your body sends me. As the massage progresses, I adjust my treatments to what I'm told by you verbally and non-verbally.

Creative Stone is a highly intuitive massage that draws upon everything I've learned both as a massage therapist, body-worker and as a human being. Creative Stone is a massage to and for you; to help you heal yourself and obtain true wellness.

As I expand my knowledge within LaStone and in other areas, my Creative Stone will be enhanced. It is a massage that will never become stagnant, nor routine. It is truly unique and a new experience each time.

Six steps to increased body awareness

Last year I wrote an article about body awareness and how we walk through most of our lives not aware of our bodies and the signals it sends us. The article focused mainly on the physical aspects of body awareness and how massage therapy helps you increase body awareness.

Recently I came across a website describing a technique called "Focusing". The basics of focusing is that you use awareness of your body and muscles to help you discover how your mental and emotional state of being is. Anger, stress, sadness, frustration and so on all build up and settles as tensions in our body. Personally frustration and stress makes me tighten my jaw, leaving me in pain when it's really bad. Once you've discovered and acknowledged these tensions and their reasons, Focusing helps you release them physically and emotionally.

Focusing is no set method with a right or wrong. Most often a trainer is the best method to learn focusing, but they give Six Steps you can follow on their website, which gives us all a start at least. In brief the six steps are the following:

1. Clearing a space
   Relaxing and focusing inward on one part of your body. Notice how it reacts when you ask it "How do I feel about my life right now." or a similar question. Acknowledge that feeling.
2. Felt sense
   Select one problem and focus on it, without going into it. Essentially you sense your body's reactions.
3. Handle
   Describe the feeling with a word or phrase that feels just right.
4. ResonatingGo forth and back between the felt sense and the word you gave it, observe your body to find precisely where it fits.
5. AskingAsk what it is about this whole problem that gives it that quality you described in your handle.
6. ReceivingAccept and receive what comes with a friendly shift. Stay with it and be open-minded.

I recommend you read the website for a more in depth guidance.

If you use Focusing during a massage, you can actively bring the entire treatment to a new level, not only releasing physical tensions, but deal with all the emotional tensions in your life. You become in control of your emotional releases during the massage session.

Why do we think pain is good?

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A while ago I wrote an article about misunderstood touch, and how touch becomes sexually charged. Recently I wrote about if a massage should hurt, discussing the misconception that a massage must be painful in order to do any real good.

There are probably many reasons why people think pain is necessary during a massage. Poor education of how the body reacts and functions and a lack of being in touch with our bodies and actually being able to feel the signals. For many there's a hidden desire to punish themselves, which is supported by a society saying that "you don't deserve good without going through bad first."

Personally I think a large part of the blame also lies in how we perceive touch. We often feel guilt over enjoying touch, and if a touch hurts we can't enjoy it and thereby we avoid the feeling of guilt. We're often not allowed to treat ourselves well enjoy pleasant things. This is in particular true for women. So if the massage hurt and left us really sore the day after, nobody can tell us that we had a massage because it felt good.

Another reason is that we often only experience two forms of touch. Intimate/sexual touch and violent/abusive touch. Anything in between we can't quite figure out, as it doesn't suit one or the other extreme. If we see two men hugging closely on the street, our first thought is often that they must be lovers. If an adult touches a child, we worry about abuse, which has gone to the degree that teachers in some schools aren't even allowed to hug and comfort a crying child.

This means that we tend to avoid touch all together, unless it's intimate. We feel uncomfortable with a friendly, pleasant touch which isn't intimate and we see pushing in the metro as more aggressive than it was intended.

I still recall how shocked I felt when I was introduced to a friend of a friend in France and he gave me two kisses on the cheeks. A strange man so close and so intimate was something I had never experienced before and my entire system became ready to fight or flight.


All these different aspects of how we view touch and what we put into it, means that a pleasant massage-touch becomes linked with intimacy and sexuality instead of natural healing. By making sure the touch hurts, and we disassociate the two and can better enjoy the therapy, or even justify it to ourselves.

Should a massage hurt?

Image by +whup+ via Flickr

Due to confusion let me add: 
In the massage world we often operate between two definitions of pain. Good pain and bad pain. 

When I write hurt in this article, I am referring to bad pain. Bad pain is when the muscles tense up, you feel like screaming and just want to get out of the situation. 

Good pain - which I here call soreness and discomfort - is a pain which you can easily breathe through and where your muscles remain relaxed. You can feel that it's tender and sore, but it is in a good way that doesn't kick-start your fight-or-flight response.

Often there's a perception that a massage must hurt in order to do any real good, and if we're sore or in pain the day after it's just because the massage was really deep and did a lot of good things. Nothing is further from the truth than this idea that pain is necessary to achieve good results. In fact, pain is a sign that harm has been done to the body and should be avoided.  Pain puts the body into defence mode so it can protect itself from further harm.

Slight discomfort during the massage is all right, but not pain that makes you grimace, flinch and tense your muscles. Then it's too deep, too hard and becomes counter productive to what a massage should achieve. The body is sending you a signal that says "Stop instantly, this is harming me".

A light soreness the day after is acceptable, just like a workout can give a pleasant light soreness. Pain that impairs your ability to move, reduces your flexibility or even bruises are plainly wrong. Your body is in a crisis mode as it has been abused (this is true too if you experience real pain after exercising). A bruise is a bleeding in the tissue, which isn't exactly healing to the muscles.

You can't force a muscle to relax and release all its tensions. It needs to be cohered and encouraged to do so. Too much pressure and discomfort and the muscle will tense up to protect the area and avoid damage to it. A massage should encourage relaxation of the muscle and increase the flow of fresh blood to the area to support healing.

So if you encounter a massage therapist that makes you flinch from pain during a massage, do tell her it's too deep and is hurting you. Any good and well educated therapist will instantly ease off and employ different techniques to relax the tissue they're working on.

If you're bruised the day after or in pain that makes it hard to move and do things, then change therapist and find another. If you meet a therapist says that the pain is necessary to healing and a good thing, then run away and don't look back.

Have you experienced bruising or pain during a massage? Did the therapist claim it was for your own best? What are your experiences with pain and massage? Please share your comments below.