Jimmy Buffett: "Its my Job to be worried half to death ... that's what people expect in me..." or not. 14Jul11

I'm learning some really interesting things about myself from this book study group on the Trance of Scarcity.   A continuum between stingy and lavish was introduced in chapter three; lavish is represented by wholeheartedness and gratefulness and stingy is represented by constricted, limited and tightly controlled.  I live, like everyone else, somewhere on this continuum; on different days, and on different topics, I slide along the scale between free, easy and open to closed, tight and hurried/worried. 

This was made incredibly clear to me when I went in for a massage.  My masseuse had to cancel because of a family emergency and I was desperate for someone to work on my tight back, so I called some new friends who had opened a wellness clinic in town.  Two of the three co-owners were certified in massage and I got in to see the woman that day.

There's a story I have told myself about tightness in my shoulders and upper back.   It's just the place that I store tension.  The masseuse said, as she was kneading my shoulders hard, "You know, you don't have to store tension in your shoulders."  And then it hit me.  I thought, "Hey, you are right.  I don't."  When I got in to see my regular masseuse the next time, she said, "Whatever you are doing, keep it up.  Your shoulders have never been that loose."

Nothing had changed in my life, except an awareness I had held.  What had kept my shoulders tight, holding tension, was an old story that I had to be hurting in some way in order to warrant having a massage.  You didn't just have them because you enjoyed them, because they felt good.  That was somehow indulgent, and I must have enough puritan in my history that indulgences are not OK.  Good people didn't get massages unless they absolutely needed them, they had to be for 'medical' reasons.

So my new story, that opens me up more toward lushness, and away from stinginess, is that massages are reasonable self care and that I don't need a physical/'medical' reason to need them; that I have no need to store tension in my body because nothing is wrong, or if something needs fixing, I handle it and don't let it build up and store in my body and that I allow myself to be aware of what I want and I take care of myself.  

Pretty darn cool.