Dropping like Flies

In massage, my teacher often refers to the time when the client being worked on "drops". Its fairly self explanatory, considereing word context, but brielfy, a background. The Nervous System (one of the 11 body systems i have my final on monday) has two parts: The CNS and PNS. Central is brain and spinal cord and peripheral is automatic and somatic. The somatic deals with nerve fibers that send information to the CNS and help project skeletal muscle or something. uninteresing. BUT the autonomic controls the smooth muscles and the glands (involving other systemes like digestive and endocrine[hormones]) and IT has two branches, well three but two only interesting to my topic sentence. Hailing back to seventh grade bio, there is the sympathetic nervous system "fight or flight" and the parasympathetic nervous system "relaxation response". they are the opposites of one another, and in an effort to keep your attention, parasympathetic is the response that decreses heart rate, restores body resources, returns body to a non alarm state. The post coital cigarette. Hot sand after icy water. Your "happy place" The best place to be.

So, when a client "drops," he or she is going there, to the parasympathetic. All the massage trainees throw around that verb like our mama never told us to, because its really cool to get someone to that state. You feel almost maternal, especially when you flip them over, and their jaw is slacked, facial muscles all droopy. You pull their arm out from under the sheet to massage it and its like a dead weight. Sometimes i want to lean over and pet them i am so grateful. But that is a)creepy and b)severely unprofessional. So i just continue with my protocol, trying not to breath too loudly.

It's funny that it is refered to as dropping. Dropping usually means something bad; dropping out, dropping the ball, dropped on your head as a child. Shit, now i've said it so many times its starting to sound weird. The thing about dropping is that no one can drop you but yourself. Even in massage, sometimes even the guy oftn referred to as "Hands".....(pause for the RIDICULOUSNESS) can't get a client there because the body's own response is ultimately determined by itself.

To drop something, you have to let go. I guess its not always a bad thing. In fact, dropping sounds healthy. It sounds like a purge, a way to renew oneself and clear out the system. You can't carry the extremities of everything in life: spacey expectations, obsessive self image, impossible standards, devastating heartache, hateful grudges, anger, pessimism, Narcissism, unrealistic day dreams. I highly believe that you can tell when something is weighing you down. Somewhere in between your third and fourth chakra you know what you need to rid yourself of; and of course it's hard, it developed because you needed it to.

For instance, if you have read my previous post on Anger, i am definetly holding on to some sort of melodramatic emotion. It is completely self serving, completely ineffective in "getting even" or proving my point. In fact, the hatred i feel eclipses all notion of rationality and clearly defined logic on why i feel this way in the first place that if someone were to ask me my original complaint i would probably just sputter on about how much i hate the bastard.

Somedays, I can envision what it would be like to let go. I see me, in white, graceful and having a great hair day. I envision an exhale, a gradual return of static, parasympathetic emotion. a cool healing, a peaceful relationship with myself and the little woodland creatures around me. Im in field, hair blowing, zen as shit.

Dropping could be misconstued as sacrificing something that maybe gets you up in the morning. But you wouldnt have to let it go if you could carry it, but now it's TOO damn HEAVY. You have to leave it be. This is a good drop. Drop the hurt, drop my ridiculous hate, drop rejection, drop my snarls, my drunk dials, my hissy fits and hair pulling. Drop my pride.

I think it is well to drop things. Go nuts. Drop as much as you can without losing yourself.

Haha massage is crazy.