The body is the sanctuary of our perceptions and emotions, it houses the record of our thoughts, and so, naturally, in the body we treasure the memory of all that we have lived. From this arises the confidence that the journey of consciousness continues in one’s own body.
The Californian Massage is a call to enter into this journey.
This psycho-corporal massage technique is valuable in itself, and also as a complement in a psychotherapeutic follow-up.
The Californian massage facilitates the client to enter a state of intense relaxation that eliminates physical and mental tensions. The muscular, emotional and spiritual relaxation achieved contributes especially to:
– a nervous balance, thanks to soothing movements in the nerve endings;
– better irrigation of the tissues, thanks to the stimulation of blood and lymphatic circulation;
– and finally, psychological relaxation and awakening of the senses, which allow the client to listen to his body and accept it in its totality.
The massage experience is intense and deep in the present, facilitated by a deep contact with the breath. This meditative attitude connected to the breath, in attentive observation of the body, makes it easier to let go of thought. The lucidity unleashed in the experimentation, in the touches with long, fluid and deep movements, in each manipulation, awakens body memories, has an impact on blockages, brings or shows images and fantasies, which resolve anchorages and, therefore, are healing.
Then, a vibration that comes from within, liberating, can arise; each different organ can take its space and presence; in any case, the attentive registration of perceptions, whether of pleasure, tension or pain, facilitates the feeling of life. As in a cradle-to-cradle experience, life is all-encompassing, as if it ceases to be the usual concept and comes to be felt as a very new emotion, life. Life, totality. Somehow, normal consciousness is altered by the experience in the body, and internally a smile seems to take hold.
The most significant of my experiences is the journey towards the connection with my child, favored by the contact with myself at the level of recognition of my body hand in hand with the contact with another. Recognizing myself in my shape, texture, hardness-softness, temperature, tension, vibration… makes it easier for me to begin to realize myself, as the baby that dwells in me.
After opening my eyes to the world with curiosity, another possibility is to understand my contractures as burdens that I have taken on and that no longer serve me, that I want to let go of; and I do it, thanks to the contact with the other, by instinctively letting some muscle reposition itself in its natural place.
Recognizing movements, postures, places that I had never before perceived in my own body, opens me to new images and emotional experiences, which I do not want to question, but only to verify them, to register them, to allow them to fall into place, also on their own, on the path of integration that is being made. Likewise, this altered state of presence in me, by inhabiting my body, allows me to experience bodily allegories that speak of transcendence and my spiritual being.
Rosa Membrado
Gestalt Therapist and Massage Therapist at Spazio Massage Californiano
(Spazio Massage student