Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Bring the Earth your love and happiness.
The Earth will be safe when we feel safe in ourselves.
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Peace is Every Step (1992)
Keep it simple.
Often, massage sessions are seen as moments of luxury, of a way of treating yourself to something nice, for an hour every now and then. While there’s nothing wrong with this, my ambition is to offer something more.
Massage can be so much more than a moment to relax and find relief, something that may only last for the time you lie on the massage table, or perhaps a few hours after that. Massage, or ‘touching with intention’, can be part of a transformation – which Anouk Devi sees as part of “revolution of touch”. It can be a treatment that you can take with you though time and shared with others. Ideally, I imagine massage and bodywork sessions to be part of a transformative process in our lives.
The ‘down-to-earth’ concept that I try to embody in my massage is part of a larger attitude to life and living. It is one aspect of a (yogic) philosophy that is convinced of the power of treading lightly, of bringing all things to their terrestrial mother and to live a more simple – and sustainable – life.
We often believe that we need to add many spices to a soup to make it better, or that we should divise even more complicated sytems and technologies to solve our everyday as well as global problems. But a more simple solution is often staring us in the face. It involves removing what we do not need, of having less on our shoulders rather than more, of simplifying the routines and systems in which we find ourselves, so that we may actually begin to understand what is going on. All of this is a part of what I believe is the necessity of bringing things down to earth again. I believe this must begin and end with our bodies.
How do we stand or walk in the world? Do we know our posture, our pose? Our attitude to life is more than how we feel about things, it defines who we are, the way we interact with those around us and with our environment at large.
“Belonging to a territory is the phenomenon most in need of rethinking and careful redescription; learning new ways to inhabit the Earth is our biggest challenge. Bringing us down to earth is the task of politics today.”
Bruno Latour: Politics in the New Climatic Regime
It is often believed that the Buddha once said that “the mind is everything. What you think, you become.” Part of regulating, or being more in tune with your own mind, is to brind your mind back into your body and back to where you body resides. The trick is to be aware of the place and space, the very ground on which your body relies.
In order to heal the mind – and the world – it is important to re-learn how we touch the ground with our feet, and how to allow the ground to hold us, to support us as we walk, run and fall.
The earth is sacred and we touch her with each step. We should be very respectful, because we are walking on our mother. If we walk like that, then every step will be grounding, every step will be nourishing.
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Walk
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