My relationship with massage begins as far back as I remember taking baths, after which my mother would massage my sister’s and my backs and legs with Nivea cream or olive oil. The favour always had to be returned: at weekends after my mother’s bath, she would lie prone on the bed, and I remember trying my best to imitate the kneading and stroking to her shoulders that she had so lovingly applied to mine.

From there, I carried the notion that massage was a natural and integral part of care to others and to the self. In my adolescence, I whiled away classes padding my fingers along the ridges of my shoulders and up my neck, the teacher impervious to the fizzy shivers down my spine that had nothing to do with Jane Eyre. As a young adult in conversations across tables or in bars, I would absent-mindedly pad small circles around my pectoral muscles and biceps, seeking out the sensitive spots around the tendons. One or two people took me up on it, and I was always astounded to discover that it seemed weird to them, that no one else did this to themselves ever, not even at home. I could not understand this because it just felt so good. Didn’t they even massage their friends or partners? No, they said, and if so, rarely and it was never that good.

The physical intimacy and pleasure of massage makes it taboo. In Anglo-Saxon cultures, the word is synonymous with eroticism, red-lit windows and pink neon signs. It is not surprising that when a man walks into my massage studio having never received a massage before (apart from once in Turkey, by a massive bloke who slapped me with flannels ‘till my skin stung), he looks sheepish, as if he is guilty of a crime he has not yet committed. For many, taking their clothes off before a woman where there is no allusion to sex feels disempowering, especially if she is not even dressed in scrubs.

There is also the element of bodily shame. Across the board, people apologise for their hairy backs/legs, the state of their feet, or their sweaty hands. These are things consumer culture has taught us are shameful and, in the softly lit confines of a massage therapy room, we not only expose them to another’s eye but to their touch, too. It is no wonder that massage in the therapeutic sense is relegated, for the most part, to the commercial realm of “luxury”, dominated by spa retreats and slender white poster-women adorned with flowers and pebbles. A private therapist one sees regularly is considered something of an accessory to a privileged lifestyle and when it costs on average fifty pounds per hour (more in the capital), it has no choice but to be that. But this is not why most massage therapists do what they do.

I decided to take up massage therapy as a career when I was twenty-seven. Prior to this, I was a teacher and occasional writer. It was during a stint volunteering in a hospice of medically unattended dying people in Myanmar that it dawned on me how little I knew about the body. It was not that I required deep medical knowledge, but my lack of basic understanding on the anatomy and how it worked rendered me clumsy at best and useless at worst in my attendance of them. More than this, I walked about in a body just like theirs, depended on it for my survival and yet I knew near nothing about what was actually going on beneath my skin. A massage course, it seemed, would cater to this gaping hole in my knowledge as well to my tactile nature.

Two-and-half years on, I have a diploma in Holistic Therapy and Anatomy and Physiology, and my own practice. In the year that I have been practising, I have found nothing more gratifying than putting people at ease in their own bodies, even the sheepish first-timers. Most people walk out of a massage with the remark, “I never knew that about myself,” and even though I must charge the average price to afford my bread and butter, I increasingly see why massage therapy should be an accessible and integral part of our health culture. It generates bodily and emotional self-awareness, personal connection, breathing awareness, and helps alleviate the myriad physical and psychological conditions caused by stress and anxiety.

It was not until the Covid-19 outbreak and the impossibility of performing massage in person that the idea came to me as to how I could make my work available and more universally accessible. Thinking back to my childhood bath times, the conversations I had had about massage over the years, I thought wouldn’t it be nice if more people could offer those they lived with an effective and safe massage? I began offering online massage tutorials for isolation buddies. With no need to hire a room or use multiple towels, I could make also these affordable. So far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive and, more surprisingly, from the person giving the massage, who say they get just as much out of it as the recipient. Why is this? Because giving a massage generates the same benefits as receiving: emotional and physical self-awareness, breathing awareness, personal connection and relaxation.

I hope that one day massage therapy will evolve in our culture beyond the limited reach of the massage therapist, and our cultural associations with it beyond the red-light district. In many cultures from Russia, to Thailand, India, Turkey and Mexico, massage is an intrinsic part of looking after yourself: it can also become an intrinsic part of looking after one another without the mediation of money. Am I writing myself out of the equation? Possibly, but if that’s the price of contributing to a healthier, more relaxed and happier society, I consider it worth every penny.

To join a session and make massage a part of your home life, please book here.