Martin the masseur

Not this Martin at all :)

But an equally clever one in his own inimitable way.

Martin B. is a quirky, irreverent and slightly eccentric Darwin character. He also has a wonderful gift for talking muscles into "behaving themselves"

He is a masseur of extraordinary talent.

I had an appointment with him this morning. My sister introduced me and he remembered me from my first visit some six years earlier. He was suitably impressed that there is significantly less of me than last time too. :)

As he works on you, you can literally feel electrical energy vibrating through the muscles. Martin mutters at the muscles and tells them off in a fatherly, authorative way.

"You don't have to do anything now. Just let go. That's better now. Ah! Ah! Ah! That's NOT what I told you to do. You don't need to assist that one; it's fixed. You can let it go. There now! Isn't that better? Good on you my precious! Much better!"

That is a sort of sample of the kinds of things Martin will mutter during the course of a massage session.

He will slide his arms and hands over the legs and kind of jump occasionally as if startled by something. He told me later that this is a sort of electrical shock he gets from the muscles fibres, within his patient, unlocking and releasing their grip.

The massage can hurt - quite a lot - at times, but honestly? I have been to so many masseurs in my life, I've experienced significantly worse pain with some than I've ever had with Martin but with a lot, lot, less satisfactory results.

Technically, I could probably do with a few more treatments from this Master of Muscle but our flight heads back down south tonight.

Some people go into massage as a way of making a bit of money. They're either okay at it or reasonably good at it. Those with a true gift for it seem to approach the whole ethos of massage from an entirely different stance. For them, its like they are connected to the source of their gift at a fundamental level that goes beyond fiscal or other reward. There is a kind of power in the exercise of the gift that is more satisfying than simply a relaxed (and paying) customer. It's as if the process of the massage becomes a spiritual expression and its value is inherent in that process.

Now that its a few hours past my own massage experience, I am feeling slightly heady, a little droopy, relaxed and kind of chilled in a "I-dance-on-the-inside" kind of way (I am still quite warm and sticky from this relentless humidity even so :)).

Our flight leaves at midnight tonight. I hope Martin's vibrational, electrical, energy-charged "discussion" with my tensed up bio-mechanical self will have achieved positive results by the morrow. I am sure they will. :) He IS a genius after all :)