The lovers guide to massage for fun and profit

This is the deal with my head:  my brain has a pain switch that’s constantly set to HIGH ALERT.  No one knows why.  It’s an electrical/chemical thing, a bit like the kind of malfunction you get with migraine and epilepsy. It's 24/7.  And it also travels - neck, back, arms.

It’s difficult.  

But not as difficult as lots of other things in this life, on the whole.  So moving on.

The upside is that I’ve taken off my clothes for more strangers than I ever imagined might be possible.  (This is an upside? Sure it is!) We’re talking massage here. 

Loud and proud: I am a lover of massage. 

Good massage creates pain but it’s the beautiful kind – the kind that takes your mind off the dull, colourless and frankly boring pain that like a faithful hound, dogs your brain the rest of your daily existence.  The difference between a good massage and a bad massage can make you weep.

Okay, so most of you only get massages on special occasions.  Why is that?  Too expensive?  That thing about taking your clothes off?  The pan-flute rendition of “Flashdance” that sounds a lot like the pan-flute rendition of “Memory” that morphs seamlessly into the pan-flute rendition of  Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you”?

You need to get over the barriers.  Massage is for everyone.  A few tips:

1.     Don’t wear odd socks.  You can probably get away with undies with daggy elastic in the legs, because chances are you’re going to be covered with a towel at all times, but the socks will be noticed.  Trust me.

2.     Choose your menu with care for 24 hours beforehand.  Mexican is out.  It’s a small room.  Nuff said. 

3.     Don’t plan important meetings/dates-with-people-you-hope-to-later-marry/photo shoots directly after the massage.  You can’t lie face down while people apply pressure to your head without coming away a little touched-up looking.  It’s gone in an hour but still.

4.     If people walk up and down on your back – just go with it.  Make sure they remove their high heels first.

5.     If, on the other hand, you’re 22 and home alone with a young bloke who turns up to your massage looking a lot like a backpacker and he asks you to parade around wearing only your underwear so he can get a ‘feel for your posture’ – don’t go with that one.  Unless he’s extremely cute, ask him to leave.

6.     If you’re up to it, converse with the friendly Chinese masseurs while they’re working on you because you learn heaps and many of them really seem to enjoy practising their English. 

7.     Take care re-dressing after a post-work massage if you’re racing to get a train.  Otherwise it looks a lot like an office affair and no matter how loudly you say to yourself “Oh GOSH I’ve put my shirt back on the wrong way after that MASSAGE!” people just smirk. 

8.     Too much oil is The Devil.  The best masseurs can find your hideous spots and get rid of them through your clothes if they need to. Thai massages are usually oil-free and they’re the bomb!   This is also handy if you don’t want to get your gear off although lots of Thai masseurs ask you to put on a very nifty pair of pyjama type-things which aside from being fashionable are very comfy. 

9.     Give feedback.  Appreciative moaning and groaning might work well with your significant other but just sounds weird coming from the cubicle next door.  Tell the masseur where you want them to work, how hard and what’s going well.  I hate elbows.  But I’m really crap at asking masseurs to lay off with their pointy bits.  I just tend to hang onto the table and sweat while they END ME.   (Good masseurs won’t use their elbows anyway.  They do it when their hands are too tired to work anymore, I’m pretty sure.)

10. For you, the best time of day to get a massage is probably 5pm, but trust me your masseur will be wilting.  They’ve been pounding the flesh all day and they just want to go home and hang out with fully clothed people for a while.   So get a massage first up when everyone is fresh.

11. If you find a good masseur – get their name, get their number, buy them a drink!  (Okay, just their name).  Ask for them next time you visit.  Or find a regular person to treat you who knows your dodgy bits. 

12. Do I even need to say this?  Don’t fall asleep on the massage table.  It’s not just that you could drool or even that you’d be wasting money.  It’d be a bit like sleeping through sex – you’re supposed to be appreciating the experience? 

Right.  So now you’re going out IMMEDIATELY to get yourself a massage, right?  You’ll feel better, promise.  The benefits are well documented and not even all that expensive.  And if you’re lucky enough to have health cover, claimable.  (On my cover- $18 for a 40 minute massage)   Do massages do the trick for me in terms of pain relief?  Not exactly.  At least, not for long.  But to a pan-flute soundtrack,  they’re a damn good distraction!

*What?  You thought I was going to write about how to get a massage from your LOVER?  Oh.  Well sure. I can do that.  Tune in next time.  

The shocking truth about Mother's Day: Say it proud.

High noon, executive suite, New York City, 1917.

Al:  So here’s the pitch - I’m seeing a Day to commemorate Mothers.  Classy.  World-wide kinda theme…  There’s no one in the space, right?  So we make it big, make it bold:  Mother’s Day.

Vic:  Nice…  Love it, love it.  Keep talking.

Al:  So we get the biggies on board, right?  Hallmark, Roadshow, Cadbury, Walmart, those guys that do roses....

Roger:  Interflora?

Al:  Right, right.  Package this thing so it really pops.  I’m seeing fluffy dressing gowns with matching ugg boots, hand-picked musical compilations for Mums, Jodi Piccoult going off, twin pack ‘Love Actually’ and ‘Bridget Jones Diary’ on blu ray…

Roger:  Objection.  They don’t exist yet.

Al:  Details, details…  You reckon we could get Ricky Martin to do a ‘Greatest Hits Souvenir Edition’?  How about Buble?  That guy must have something in the can…

Roger:  Objection.  They don’t exist yet either. 

Vic:  Roger, you’re bringing us down.  This thing’s gonna make millions.

Al:  Juice fountains?  Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals?

Vic:  Keep talkin’, keep talkin’….

Actually, that’s not the shocking truth about Mother’s Day, although it is kinda startling to consider that Australians spent about $1.36billion on Mothers Day gifts this week.  Not that I begrudge anyone their ugg boots. (Got a pair myself.) It’s just that this week the Australian Government is likely to slash money from our overseas aid budget (worth around $5.2 billion spent on saving actual lives).  And there are still 1.2 billion people on this planet living on less than $2 a day, not to mention elderly people struggling to afford a place in a nursing home and indigenous children who can’t read and… and…  Sometimes gift giving in this country gets a little out of hand. 

The truly shocking thing is that Mother’s Day has moved so far from its compassionate and activist origins.  Mother’s Day was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis back in 1910; the idea went a bit viral, with President Woodrow Wilson declaring it an official day of celebration in 1918.  Anna wanted to commemorate her mother, Ann Maria Jarvis, who set up Mothers Work Clubs in five cities to improve health and sanitation and clothe both Confederacy and Union soldiers.  She was a bit of a radical who saw the potential of women to care not only for their own, but for people everywhere.

But the idea of a day for mothers didn’t actually originate with Anna. 

The first official attempt to institute a Mothers Day was kicked around by Julia Howe Ward in 1872 and it wasn’t to commemorate mothers at all.   It was to mobilise mothers everywhere to unite for resolution of war.  It was a political, pacifist movement that issued a proclamation calling on women from around the world to join together for peace. It failed to catch on but Anna Jarvis, who eventually succeeded in popularising Mother's Day, was deeply influenced by these ideals.

Tragically, by the time Anna died in 1928 she had become deeply disillusioned by the Day she had inaugurated, believing that it had been totally taken over by commercial interest.  She dissociated herself from it completely.

Motherhood is so sacred and so intensely special that I hardly dare suggest that the day celebrating it could be modified in any way.  Totally honest?  I love receiving those hand-made cards and carefully chosen gifts from my daughters.  I love thinking about what to write on the card for my own Mum, who is awesome beyond measure.  But like many things, maybe it doesn’t have to be entirely about us as individuals, either. 

Maybe we could find room to think of mothers everywhere who are also nurturing children, only in refugee camps, in deserts, in suburban backyards struggling with disabilities and in countries where you can be paid less than a dollar a day to stitch clothing for eight hours.  Maybe we could lift our gaze a little higher to take in a bit more of the sisterhood and use whatever resources we have to help lighten the load.   Maybe we could heed that call to be women united around the world for peace.  Maybe we can teach our children likewise.  It’s not just about ending war.  It’s about creating all the right conditions for justice. 

To all my fellow mothers- I think you’re amazing.  And I know that you’re probably already doing more than your little bit to re-ignite the original Mother’s Day vision.  So let’s say it proud, hey? We are more than a soft target for pyjama marketing.  As women, we're a world-wide force for good.

Happy Mother’s Day.   

** Disclaimer:  I was complicit in the buying of a zebra-patterned one-sie pajama suit by my children as my Mother's Day Gift.  It was probably the funniest moment we had all day... but just so you know. I have a way to go with enforcing all my own ideas.

*Okay all you grammar Nazis out there:  the apostrophe is where it is because the original Mother's Day was to celebrate your own mother and it's how Anna wanted it!  But I acknowledge there are lots of other ways it's done now.

Ending religion along with poverty? Bring it on.

So religion will be extinct by 2035 and it’ll mostly be the fault of do-gooder organisations like the ones I work for who are trying to end poverty.  Bloody charities!  (Christian ones, I might add…) Why couldn’t they just leave well enough alone?

This is the view of a new paper published by Psychology Today which tracks the rise and fall of religious belief and pretty much concludes that as poverty falls, so too does the need for God.  Afterall, if you’ve got an iphone, why would you need a deity?  You can ask Siri for just about anything and she’s more than happy to oblige.  God, on the other hand…

Atheism, anthropologist James Fraser argues, is pretty much the domain of those who believe they can provide for themselves. People who live in economically developed countries are more able to predict and control forces of nature – thus, science supplants religion as a major belief, the paper concludes.  Likewise, countries with more stable governments able to care for them and with longer life expectancies see less need to rely either on the hand of God or the idea of an afterlife. 

Fair call.  Makes perfect sense.  And it’s hard to argue with the stats.  Heaps of the growth in religions does take place in the developing world.  But the growth is significant, at 25 000 000 new converts each year to Christianity alone, still the fastest growing faith.  The sheer weight of numbers alone in a country like China, where Christianity is undergoing a massive boom, is enough to make clergy who are desperate for growth here in Australia drool into their dog collars. 

It’s a little depressing, however, to conclude that people primarily reach out for God when life has dealt them such a poor deal they have no one else to hang onto.  Perplexing to imagine that as soon as we have the means we dump the deity along with the analogue TV.  That our minds evolve away from the possibility of God-ness.

I'm pretty sure it's not accurate to equate all faith in developing countries - or anywhere else - with the simple notion of supply and demand suggested by the authors of the study.  There's a richness and diversity to faith that goes far beyond the stereotype presented here.  But let's suppose, just for a minute,  that there's something in it.  Exactly what kind of God, in that case, would it be who's being ditched? 

If the religion that’s being rejected is the religion of the old white guy in the sky who holds our fate in the palm of his hand and doles out either blessing or suffering according to his ‘divine will’ then I can’t say I’m either too surprised or bothered by his passing.  This is the God who is the product of what I’d describe as a pretty flat reading of the Scriptures and a distorted PR campaign by the Church - a God whose main function is to keep us honest lest we fall foul of his judgement, provide us with comfort in the knowledge that somewhere out there He’s on our side even when it doesn’t feel like it and ultimately pluck us safely away to Heaven where we can spend eternity stroking a harp and singing His praises. 

The death of that God?  No great loss.

I had a conversation with Jem a few weeks back, both of us tucked up in her bed, which began with my suggesting, straight faced, that actually the mainly great thing about Easter is the chocolate. 

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”  Jem says in mock horror.  “You’re supposed to be telling me that your life revolves around JESUS and nothing in the world is more important than JESUS!”

“Are you not getting that impression, then?”  I say.

“Well…” says Jem thoughtfully, beginning to wave her hands around in a vaguely circular motion.  “I kind of get the impression that Jesus is… you know…”

“A window cleaner?”  I ask, pointing at her hand gestures because I’m in one of those moods to just be a pain in the rear.

Jem laughs and then hauls up short.

“Well actually, yes.” she says, suddenly thoughtful.   “That’s quite a good metaphor for what Jesus seems like in your life to me.  It’s like Jesus makes things clearer.  So you can see more easily.   So yes.  He’s a window cleaner.”

Bam!  We go on to unpack together what all that might mean and how my faith has evolved blah blah blah, but actually I’m just incredibly chuffed that my 11 year old thinks Jesus is the window cleaner in my life.

Please forgive me if this sounds heretical, arrogant or misguided.  But I don’t look to God as the source of either my blessing or my suffering.  I don’t beg God for protection and for me, the game isn’t about eternal life.  I am agnostic about a million things that classic religion probably regards as essential.  My scientific knowledge sits happily alongside my wordless wonder and joyful thanks.  But God seems to me the ultimate expression of Love - Love that’s with me regardless of the circumstances of my life, Love that calls me to be with others regardless of the circumstances of theirs. Love that is stronger than death.  And yes - seeing life through the lens of the person of Jesus makes things clearer for me.  For this, I am truly grateful even as I realise I no doubt understand actually very little. 

I would fight to keep that relationship alive in the face of this so-called onslaught of atheism born of prosperity.  I would.  But something tells me I won’t have to.

Alain De Botton might be one of atheism’s finest spokespeople, but his book on Religion for Atheists only convinced me more deeply of religion’s merits.  Wisdom, community, kindness, education, tenderness, perspective, art - these are the gifts that Botton recognises religion brings in abundance.  I’ve been a glad recipient all my life.  

If 'ending poverty' ends belief in a God of a particular kind, so be it.  But if in its place grows relationship with the God who is Love and calls us to fearlessly embody that love for people and planet, then bring it on.  

Get the F*K out of my pool- and other personal development concepts

Hipsters.  I thought they were just a variety of undies until fairly recently.  Nuh.  Apparently they’re effortlessly cool urban bohemians who’re into indie music, independent thinking and progressive politics.  Actually, not that independent as it turns out.

This week I came across a clip that’s been doing the rounds from the Coachella Festival, held in the Inland Empire’s Coachella Valley, California.  Home in the past to big name acts like the Black Keys, Kanye, Florence and the Machine and the Lumineers,  as well as a whole lot of up-and-comers, it’s also a magnet for Hipsters.  And Hipsters like to know what’s going down, right? 

So when interviewers made up a whole lot of bogus band names and asked people what they were looking forward to about the acts, no one batted an eyelid.  No one cocked an eyebrow at whether 'The Obesity Epidemic' might not be the best name ever or threw out a polite “WTF?” 

Nope.  They waxed lyrical about how much they enjoyed the genre, how much energy they and had and like, you know?  How cool it was all going to be.    Check it out (here on mobile devices).  I'm pretty sure you'll laugh.

Funny.  And also highly relatable.  Because I just have this sneaking suspicion that lots of us, facing a similar scenario, might have done exactly the same thing. (Like, you know, using like... slightly more sophisticated language?)

Let's say you’re in a situation because you’re supposed to be a bit of an expert- a conference for example.  Everyone else is talking up the speaker or the topic.  Are you really going to stick your hand up and say:  “Hello?  Actually… no idea.  I’m all at sea here.”  Asked directly about something we're expected to know, wouldn't quite a lot of us make something up rather than confessing our ignorance?  

We all want to fit in.  We all want to look smart.  Maybe even to the point where we’ll openly lie to cover ourselves...

It’s funny because I imagine if I asked Brydie (who’s seven) a question about a band she’d never heard of, particularly if it had a ridiculous name, she’d nail me with one of her famous ‘are you out of your mind’ double takes and say “What the?”

That’s because at seven, children are generally fearless.  They’re the centre of the universe.  They don’t much care if they don’t fit in.  They haven’t yet learnt to fear non-conformity.    The truth is out there and it’s meant to be spoken.  Which is why a couple of years back the checkout chicks in our local supermarket knew that my undies had the word HOT on them and we tend not to ask for Brydie’s input during Children’s Talks in church. 

So when does that fearlessness get lost?  When do we replace it with a desperate desire not to stand out or risk looking dumb?  Do we ever come out the other side, able to stand on our own two feet again?

It got me thinking about a whole range of people from Fowler to Erikson, Kohlberg and M Scott Peck who’ve done a lot of work looking at the different shifts that people undergo as they move through life from being totally preoccupied with self to finding some kind of harmony with the bigger picture.  Basically development thinkers seem to follow these kind of patterns. 

1. Ego:  Occupied with self, concrete views of the world, others serve our needs.

2. Conformity/Authority: Need to conform, desire to please others, serious about authority (including faith - seeking absolutes and certainty)

3. Skeptic/Individual: Question reality and beliefs, perhaps become disillusioned about faith, internalise right and wrong & potentially become committed to causes

4. Mystic/harmony:  Find and accept a path that emphasises what we have in common, not what divides us, at peace about mystery, emphasis upon community. 

That's a really pretty sketchy summary, so if you're interested, google it!  All the thinkers suggest we float back and forth between the various stages and might be at one stage in one area of our lives and a different stage in another.  But most suggest that it’s some kind of ‘crisis’ that tends to move us from one stage to another, not just age.  Looking at the descriptions, you can no doubt think of older people who fit stage one or two and younger people who might just as easily be stage four.    And you?  Got a number beside your name yet?  (Self analysis.  Great for a quiet moment during the washing up.)

The Hipsters' desperate desire to please, in spite of wherever else they may fit on the charts, is a pretty natural part of any journey, it seems to me.  No doubt there were a few who politely told the interviewer:  “Actually I haven’t heard of “Get the F*K Out Of My Pool”, but boy, with a name like that they’re bound to get some good airplay!” 

Doesn’t make for such great vid though, does it?  But maybe it sheds a bit of light on our own personal development path.  Where are we at?  Where are we headed?  How do we get there?

(So let me guess- you put yourself between 2 and 3 and your cat at 1, right?)

Away

I’m pretty sure my favourite part is when they’re all stumbling toward one another in the glowing dark with pointy sticks at eye level, enthusiastically offering up the charred remains of their marshmallows for inspection.

“Mmmmm, perfect!” everyone’s saying with too much enthusiasm.  Clumps of soggy charcoal are landing in laps and on bare feet and there's a lot of squealing with waving of firebrands.  “This one is exactly right!”

I hate marshmallows, actually.  And every time we go camping I tentatively suggest there might be a rule about children/sticks/fire in combination with wild and/or vague arm waving.  Every time we go camping I get quietly ignored.  Which is fine, because so far no one has been disfigured for life. 

Our girls go feral when we camp.  They wade in streams and swim naked in waterholes, carry sticks, eat out of cans, head bush for a wee rather than risk “Poo Hill” with its (actually pretty decent) pit toilet. They get enthusiastic about climbing the steep side of hills, play cricket and soccer with a wild and desperate look, sing loudly and unashamedly tell embarrassing stories in the flickering light of the fire.  They smell of woodsmoke and their hair is tangled.   

They are never more beautiful.  They’re away.

At night when I fall into my sleeping bag my brain is roasted from hours spent staring into the mesmerising flames of a fire, my veins silky with alcohol, my jaw either sore from grinning or slack from simply sitting wordless.  The monkey that usually comes alive in the tree of my head about this time of night lies prone across a branch, too sun-warmed and lazy to lift a finger. And for minutes I lie curled listening to the whisper of water over rocks, birds nickering quietly in trees, the gentle sigh of a tarp.  Air is cold on my face; moonlight reaches one solitary finger into a corner.  Sleep sidles in.

I’m away.

We Aussies are big on holidays.  These days, a record number of us take them overseas- about 9 million OS hols this year alone. Aussie dollar being what it is, why wouldn’t you be winging it off into the wild blue yonder?  And resorts.  Resorts feature large on the Australian wish list for a decent getaway.  Cocktail by the pool- children in the Kid’s Club.  What’s not to like? 

It's maybe too easy to make ‘getting away’ a grand affair, that's all.  It costs money.  You have to plan well in advance- take a decent amount of time off.  Where to go?  What to see?  In the meantime, the spontaneous getaway goes begging.  Not that I’m suggesting throwing everything in the trailer and heading bush is easy either- or everyone’s cup of tea.  Sixteen loads of washing later, have we recovered from the camping trip?

But a commitment to the idea of the getaway seems like a good one.  The getaway on the back deck or the local park on a Friday night with a picnic. The one-night house swap with a friend between the city and the coast.  The unexpectedly long lunch-break by the water.  The Mindfulness App that chimes twice a day and asks you if you want to meditate… (Well no, actually, I’m in the middle of wrangling the three year old and we’re in a supermarket queue but yes… I could take three minutes to breathe a bit more deeply.)   The DWA with the Man in a B&B on the Mountain.  The one night solitary retreat (yes, solitary, as in 'on your own'.  Totally recommend.  Google a place- actually not expensive at all).

Sitting in the bed of the creek on sun-warmed stones, some discussion arose over buying the property we were camping on: to own this patch of secluded, rugged, mountain land with river frontage, full of memories to make and share out with others.

Nope.  Not for me.  Part of the appeal of ‘away’ is that it’s there, but it’s not mine to keep.  Like the ocean, it calls, but I don’t own it.   It sends me home warmed and loose in the back and seeing the world differently.  I don’t want it to become normality.

I long after it.  It’s slightly out of reach and all the more beautiful because of it.  That's away.

Away.  Where are you going next?