A few years ago my wife and I attended a two-day introductory course to massage. Although, there were twenty other people in the course, given the personal nature of massage, we expected that we were going to learn by massaging each other. The first surprise came when after the first session the teacher told us “You are going to have to swap partners”. I told her “We are a couple and we are here to learn to massage each other. We don’t really need to massage other people”. “No” she said “everyone in this course will have different partners and there is no exception even for couples. It’s best for your learning”. “Well” I thought “massaging another girl can’t be that bad after all” and that’s when the teacher gave me the second surprise. She said “This is going to be your next partner” indicating a tall, dark, strong … Samoan man. His name was Stanley. “Aren’t there any other girls?” I asked. I looked around the room and all the girls had partnered with another girl leaving four guys, including me, to partner with another guy. I had two choices, one was to quit the course, the other choice was to massage and be massaged by Stanley. I looked towards the door. “What’s up bro?” Stanley said “Are you afraid to massage a man?” “Of course not” I said to save face “lay down on the bed”. First, it was my turn to give Stanley back massage. At the beginning I was really nervous (for the gentlemen reading this, if you ever had to touch a half-naked man, you know what I’m talking about). “If my friends see me, what are they going to think?” I kept thinking. My movements were tense and jerky. He was never going to relax like that! “Pablo, it would be better if you slow down a little” Stanley said giving me feedback. “You can do this” I told myself “Who cares?”. I calmed down, smoothed my pace, and got the rhythm. As I was concentrated, focused, massaging his back forwards and backwards in a repetitive manner, it suddenly hit me: “Gee, his skin is… beautiful”. I must have been enjoying myself because at some point I realized that my wife started getting jealous… Later on I reflected that when I stopped thinking about what other people may think and focused on what needed to be done, I was able to have a laugh.
In a previous blog post we saw how important is to communicate emotions to make your message memorable. Stories are the best way to communicate emotions. How do you tell stories? The story above has some basic elements common to all stories. Can you figure out what they are? I would like to tell you right now… but I’ll do that in the next blog post while you think about it. It’s best for your learning.
Make an impact,
Pablo
This blog post was first published in 2012.