Is a Massage a Week Too Much?

I'm on a bit of a massage thing at the moment, trying to sort out the clench of my shoulder blades and my hamstrings, the twinge in my lower back. Trying to relax. I go to those places at the shopping centres, where tiny ladies lean their elbows into you and your muscles explode. Amazing. Patentable.

I don't want to have to justify my habit, if you want to call it that--Reliance? Program?--but sometimes I feel the question rise up in me: Is a massage a week too much?

Here's what I think: Fuck no. Is sex too much? Or shavasana at the end of hot yoga? Or the bit of ice cream dripping down the side of the cone, or tongue-slidingly-silky chocolate mousse, or those amazing head tickling things you are seriously not going to pay $25 for (but maybe?)?

How about when you do whatever it is you love doing, and you get into the flow of it and time tips over on its side, but what does it matter because you've had a killer coffee and you're doing what you love doing--that thing you'd do if it were your last day on earth because it makes you feel so right.

Yes, that. And massage. And maybe sex, too.

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Every day, we stress about dying or work or gravity, and none of it binds us. Stress isn't some miracle that keeps us from decomposing, and it doesn't mold us into the people we truly are. Who we are comes from looseness--physical and psychological and creative mobility. When we wear our skin like a naked mole rat does (and look how long they live!)

"Hold your story loosely," says Alan Watt, in his book on writing.

As far as I'm concerned, that's the answer to everything. Don't try to pin it down too soon, force it into something: if you let it breathe it can become so much more. More than you can ever imagine.

So can you.

Make space in your self--oceanic, atmospheric, blood-rushing space. Feel life rush in.
Axx