Quality of Touch

Develop Your Quality of Touch

When performing a massage, the goal is to have the highest quality of touch possible. We want every technique to feel like an adventure of pure peace so we may create the massage of someone’s dreams.

To achieve this level of quality of touch we need to maintain contact with the person we are massaging as much as possible, offer a completeness to our touch, and create masterful transitions between each technique. Fortunately, all three of these work in tandem so as you develop one, it enhances all three.

What do I mean by completeness of touch? If you want to provide the highest quality of touch, you will need to first understand how to touch someone with completeness. This means you must be absolutely present. You must have the intent to offer them comfort, safety, and to achieve discernible results. You should have the goal of providing them with the best massage experience of their life.

To do this you need to tap into the love of your soul and give them the cleanest, most genuine and honest touch one human can give to another. You must let go of everything else around you and focus solely and absolutely on them. For the duration of their massage, the only focus you will have will be their peace and pleasure, so when you touch them, they will know you are in the here and now, and they are the center of the universe.

From that point forward, when you move your hand across their body they will feel everything, and they will know your intent is pure, wholesome and good. Perhaps for the first time, they will feel like they have someone’s undivided attention, and they will know their existence matters to someone.

When you can tap into the completeness of touch you can inspire people to live their greatest lives, you can infuse hope into their soul and reawaken their desire to live. When you learn how to have a completeness of touch the value transcends simply performing massage. It influences how you interact with the people you love. It encourages you to be present, to listen more, and to genuinely engage with them. At its core developing your completeness of touch heightens your ability to hold space, and to create spaces that elevate.

To get to this state of mind, we have to let go of our tendency to draw inwardly. We have to release the selfishness we all tend to hold close. We have to exist with the intent to give, to heal and help, without our ego getting in the way. This means we must be searching to be in the service of someone else. In many respects this state of heart and mind is akin to our paternal and maternal drives. It’s the state of wanting to provide, protect, nurture and uplift. It is the spiritual state of wanting to give wellness as a gift, and to give without the expectation to receive.

Once we are in this state, it will transform our quality of touch. We will be present, and focused on their comfort and safety, so we may provide them with an experience that enriches their existence.

By developing our completeness of touch, we will elevate our quality of touch. This will open the door for us to take our massage experience to the next level. The way we do this is by maintaining as much contact as possible.

As we massage we want to maintain contact with the person we are massaging as much as possible. The reason is that when our hand lifts away they can feel the moments between each second, and this can seem like an eternity the longer our hand is away. When someone is laying on the table all they know is the touch we give them, if we are providing a completeness to our touch they will feel safe, peaceful and comforted. Taking this away can be uncomfortable or instill a sense of emptiness, aloneness or uncertainty. If you are performing a professional massage, it may cause their mind to wander, they may begin to think about all the time and money being wasted. These thoughts are counterproductive to their peace, so develop an ability to maintain contact throughout their massage journey.

One of the greatest ways to maximize our contact throughout a massage is through our transitions. Transitions are the movements we make between each technique. They are an opportunity to showcase our artistic flair, to offer our hand the opportunity to rest, and make our massage seem seamless.

If you want to have the highest quality of touch your transitions must be impeccable. This means you need to have the ability to organize your thoughts, techniques and strategies throughout the session. The way I organize my massages is by interlinking my massage techniques into groups I call micro formulas. A micro formula is a series of techniques that are always used together in a sequence to achieve a desired result. If you are new to massage and do not know enough techniques yet to create a micro formula keep this concept in the back of your mind. Perhaps this approach will become valuable to you once you have hundreds of techniques in your toolbox.

Our goal should be to provide the person we are massaging with as much pleasure and ease we can. We want them to feel like they are floating away into a sea of peace so they may experience the pleasure of their dreams. To achieve this our massages must be seamless, so when you move from technique to technique search for ways to make it feel delightful in between.