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Body Ink
The True Stories
As a Massage Therapist, I have seen it all. I’ve learned many lessons through observation.
Setting aside the evident physicality of therapeutic massage, there are hidden signs in plain sight.
When I meet a new patient, my physical ‘intake’ begins with how they walk. I can read what is bothering them by watching their gait. Bad hips, tilted pelvis, rotated shoulders, or if they can hold their head up. Most of us have terrible posture, as reflected in our technology: we are in constant forward head posture, sometimes for hours at a time. I’m seeing dowager humps — the bulge of C-7 — affect people in their 30s and younger.
But this isn’t where I am going with this article.
Once the patient is on the table and covered, and once I reset the proxemics (face cradle and foot bolster positioning), I get to work. If the patient is new, the challenge is not only to learn what is going on under the skin, but also to assess who they are from what I see on the surface. It’s the ones with body ink that fascinate me, not only from a narrative viewpoint — because each area of body ink has a story to tell — but what, why, and where they chose to put the ink.
