body language
work in process//40.
The other day I had my first massage in over a year. Until recenty, I got regular bodywork to help my muscles recover from high-mileage running weeks, iron out kinks, and work through ornery spots before they became injuries.
There were always ornery spots: fussy limbs or joints or entire appendages begging for attention. My massage therapist and I would scrutinize them at the start of every session, speculating about causes and cures. To be an ultra runner is to be vigilant, adept at troubleshooting, always one step ahead of the next problem.
This time, though, something weird happened: I walked into the massage room and had nothing to report.
I didn’t know the therapist—a friend had been unable to keep her appointment, so I took it—and she didn’t know me. She didn’t know my body or my stories, my history with running or my resume of accidents, surgeries, setbacks and success. The anonymity was liberating: I didn’t have to tell her anything about my body that I didn’t want to. Of course I still had pesky parts—don’t we all!—but at some point over the past year, I’d stopped seeing them as problems. There was nothing to fix. They were just part of me.
The therapist asked if I wanted to focus on anything in particular. I searched my mind. Did I? No, I said sanguinely. I lay face down on the table, and she went to work.
It wasn’t the best massage, not even close. She worked erratically, with elbows and forearms. Every time I felt myself relaxing, she’d make another sudden move. I wanted her to go deeper and smoother. I wanted her to use her hands. I didn't realize that you have to specify hands in a massage, but I guess you do. Someone could knead my quads like bread dough all day, and I’d always want more.
But this massage was good in a different way. As she moved around my body, I found myself silently narrating my physical history. Oh, that’s my Achilles that got tight from running up mountains. It’s better now, but also worse. The lumpy bone at the back of my heel? It’s a Haglund’s deformity. My inner monologue went on: Don’t touch my neck, I’m very sensitive. I must have been guillotined in my last life. Go easy on my foot. I got a stress fracture in 2005. When she got to the outside of my left knee, I resisted the familiar urge to explain my scar—my two scars, really—like little asterisks or caveats, footnotes to a bigger story I often feel compelled to tell.
That’s when it hit me: I don’t have to speak for my body. My body can speak for itself.
I thought about how, for so long, massage has felt self-indulgent, something to keep secret, a luxury I couldn’t afford or didn’t deserve. There were wars, cities burning down. Other times it seemed non-negotiable, do-or- die if I wanted to keep competing. Somewhere along the line, it had morphed from a loving form of self-care to an almost hostile act of self-scrutiny and survival.
In a strange way, it reminded me of running.
Last year, I began to wean myself from both. I was still running, but far less than before. My body wanted a breather from the miles, but even more, my mind needed a break from the toxic grind of ultra running’s online culture: the training plans, the ever-longer races, the gadgets, the recovery strategies, the competitive obsession with caloric intake, the data. The stuff. Running has always been creative expression and practice for me, a way to be wild in my body so I can go wild in my writing and my imagination. Once my simple, private pleasure, running has gotten so much noisier.
I didn’t say any of this to the massage therapist. There was no need. She worked through the ornery parts and the good parts, and I let my mind rest in the silence. Her touch was rough in places, but I felt the opposite—tender toward my fussy parts, which, I realized as I lay there, are my strongest parts. The ones that carried me down rivers and up mountains, across a hundred miles, and distances far greater, through fine conditions and poor, pain and elation.
Last week I signed up to compete in the Lead Challenge—an audacious series of ultra running and mountain bike races over a six-week period this summer. Right now, I’d put my odds of success at 20 percent, possibly less, depending on the week, depending on which ornery part is squawking and how loud and how often. I won’t know unless I try.
The day after I signed up, I went out for a run. The sky was blue and my body felt decent. The self-criticism and chiding hadn’t yet kicked in, but I knew from experience that it was only a matter of time. I was listening to dharma talk podcast from Upaya Zen Center; the teacher offered an interpretation of Zen practice I’d never heard before: “Just do not find fault in the present moment.” It was so fresh and simple, I loved it immediately.
When the treatment was over, I took my time getting up. I didn’t feel like I’d been massaged in my body as much as rearranged in my brain. After I paid, I offered some gentle feedback. “Sometimes you feel this kind of work more deeply the next day,” the woman at the front desk replied. I smiled and walked out, fresh with understanding:
Our bodies hold secret histories. Like a geologic record, they reveal clues and patterns to where we’ve been, and where we’re going. They write their stories on our skin, in our joints and limbs, hearts and bones. Our work is to be vigilant and love them in this moment, free of faults, exactly as we are. To unhook from old stories and let our bodies tell new ones.
I wonder what mine will be.
Join me this winter for Desert Flow Camp, February 12-16, to write the stories your body tells. Mornings on the trail, afternoons on the page. Plus: wild Zen, yoga, desert rambling, delicious food and conversation, and mentorship for your personal projects. Come (exactly) as you are.
Apply today! Only two spots remain.
See you in the flow, xo
katie
