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Chapter 3
Your Skin: Frontier to the
Rest of the World
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In This Chapter
p Thinking with your skin
p Looking at your multidimensional skin
or. Recognizing that your skin is on guard
p Understanding how massage affects the skin
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"We touch heaven when we lay our hands on a human body"
—Novel's (pen name of Frederich von Hardenberg)
S iaktin is the essence of what makes humans human. How do I know, you
sk? I saw it in a Star Trek movie, so it must be true. In the movie, a wily
alien treated Data, the android, to a taste of being human by grafting a swatch
of flesh to his mechanical arm. He already had a brain and a fully functioning
body, but the one thing he lacked was sensation. He was Just a machine until
he had this little patch of skin attached to him, and with it, he became
human.
The essence of being human is the ability to feel. "But," you might respond, "I
feel things in my mind and with my nerves, too, not just my skin. And
besides, can I really trust Star Trek as a source of anatomical knowledge?"
Well, guess what? In this case, the writers of Star Trek happened to be right
on the money. Your skin, your nerves, and your mind are really just different
layers of the same thing.
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34 Part I: Discovering Massage for Greater Health and Happiness
Thinking With pour Skin
In his book, Job's Body, Deane Juhan, a researcher into the effectiveness of
massage and other touch therapies, says, "Depending upon how you look at
it, the skin is the outer surface of the brain, or the brain is the deepest layer
of the skin."
This assertion, though it may seem absurd initially, can be proven quite
easily if you look closely at the development of the embryo. As you know, you
start out as a little clump of cells deep in your mother's womb. In the very
first days after conception, these cells begin to divide into three distinct
layers that will later become your body. The endoderm layer of cells eventu-
ally forms your internal organs, the mesoderm forms the muscles and
connective tissues, and the ectoderm forms the nervous system and the skin.
As the ectoderm cells develop, they gradually turn into your brain, spinal
cord, nerves, and skin, which are really all one unit. "Nowhere along the line
can I draw a sharp distinction between a periphery which purely responds as
opposed to a central nervous system which purely thinks"(Juhan p. 36). In
other words, your skin "thinks" as well as feels, and your brain "feels" as well
as thinks. It's all one thing. And it starts at a very early age. In fact, at six
weeks and less than an inch long, the little embryo can already "feel" light
stroking on its upper lip, which causes a withdrawal reaction.
Feeling = thinking
Imagine the following sequence:
1. Imagine a pinprick at a certain point on the skin (Point A).
2. Imagine the sensation that travels up from the sensory receptor near the
skin's surface, to the nerve, and then on toward the spine, which it
enters at Point B. From there it continues up to the brain.
3. Imagine your brain processing this impulse somewhere around Point C,
sending a further impulse to your mouth, which then says "ouch."
So the question is, at what point does the sensation of the pinprick cause you
to pull your skin away from the sharp object?
A. At point A, the exact moment the pin pricks the skin.
B. At point B, a nanosecond later, when the sensation enters the spine.
C. At point C, inside the brain itself.
D. None of the above.
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This question is tricky. Most people assume that the answer is C, inside the
brain, because that's where they think they have the thought, "That hurts." But
in actuality the answer is B, when entering the spine, for the following reason:
You pull yourself away from the pinprick as a result of a reflex arc at point B,
which is an impulse that enters the spine and then shoots right back out
again in the form of a reaction. You actually experience the pulling away
before your brain catches up to what's happening and you say the word
"ouch." Ever notice that? For the same reason, your knee jerks when tapped
with a little rubber hammer, without your having time to think about it. So, in
this sense, your skin and nerves do the "thinking" for you.
Note: Do not try this pinprick experiment at home on friends or family. I guar-
antee that they won't appreciate it.
Multi-
Investigating pour
dinwnsionat Skin
,coPINI04, In his book, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, Ashley Montagu
offers many pearls of wisdom, such as: "To shut off any one of the senses is
to reduce the dimensions of our reality, and to the extent that that occurs we
lose touch with It; we become imprisoned in a world of impersonal words,
sans touch, sans taste, sans flavor. The one-dimensionality of the word
becomes a substitute for the richness of the multi-dimensionality of the
senses, and our world grows crass, flat, and arid in consequence."
Sadly, he's right. People end up ignoring most of what they feel, and as they
get less and less in touch with themselves, they become more and more
hectic, filling their days with frantic activity rather than just enjoying the
sensation-filled miracle of being alive. Instead of hectic, I think people
should become more haptic. A haptic person is especially in tune with her
sense of touch, or, as Ashley Montagu would say, has a "mentally extended
sense of touch which comes about through the total experience of living and
acting In space."
Haptic comes from the Greek word, haptesthai, to touch. To start yourself in a
haptic direction, you need to know a few details about the skin:
I,fro You have more than 3 million cells in a patch of skin about the size of a
bottle cap.
roo Your skin contains 2 to 5 million sweat glands and about 2 million pores.
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36 Part I: Discovering Massage for Greater Health and Happiness
3 Your skin is your largest organ system:
• 2,500 square centimeters in newborns and approximately 19,000
square centimeters (19 square feet) in an adult male.
• An adult male's skin weighs approximately 8 pounds.
3 Your skin gets strength and form from collagen, which comprises 70 per-
cent of your skin's dry weight.
3 You have approximately 640,000 sensory receptors embedded In your
skin.
3 Your skin ranges in thickness from No of a millimeter on the eyelids to 3
or 4 millimeters on the soles and palms.
3 Your skin becomes softer in summer and more dense in winter.
Because you have so many sensory receptors In your skin (pain cells are the
most plentiful, followed by a variety of pressure sensors, cold sensors, and
warmth sensors), it's no wonder you can be so "touchy" if you're "rubbed the
wrong way." And no wonder that a caring, calming massage can be so soothing.
All you really have to do to get back "In touch" with your true, haptic self is
to tune in to your senses, your skin, and your environment, like you did when
you were six years old and mud puddles were sources of unending pleasure.
To help you get back to that sacred sensory space, you can try the sensitivity
exercises that follow.
Sensitivity exercise #1:
The Zen cantaloupe ceremony
Consider, for a moment, the word "cantaloupe." Nice, round word that evokes
the picture of the fruit itself in your mind. Perhaps the word even summons
up a sweet cantaloupe memory or two. But too often the word itself is a sub-
stitute for the fullness of the thing, a crutch people use to classify this or that
specific bit of reality, filing it away for easy reference.
If you want to move yourself beyond your mind's habitual categorizing mech-
anisms, try the Zen cantaloupe ceremony:
1. Buy or borrow a fresh, ripe, high-quality cantaloupe.
2. Find a quiet, private place (where no one can see you and make fun of
you) and sit with your cantaloupe placed on a plate within reach.
Have a knife handy. Then close your eyes.
3. Spend five minutes or so just calmly breathing and slowing your
mind.
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Chapter 3: Your Skin: Frontier to the Rest of the World
4. Slowly, with your eyes still dosed, reach your fingertips out until you
make contact with the cantaloupe.
Do not attempt to pick it up. Just feel the surface in extremely minute
detail, as though you're trying to decipher a message encoded in the
fruit's convoluted furrows. Pay attention to your fingertips.
5. Begin to lift the melon up, using your fingertips alone.
Spend a minute feeling the weight, shifting it from hand to hand. Then
slowly bring the fruit up to your face, rubbing the rough texture against
your cheek.
6. After this thorough tactile encounter with the melon, place it on the
plate again, and then slowly and ritualistically lift the knife and begin
your incision, slicing out just one sliver, cleaning off the seeds.
Open your eyes while slicing but then close them again.
7. Lift the slice to your nose and take three long inhalations.
8. Open your mouth and place the cool orange flesh inside your lips, but
don't bite down at first.
Let the juices gather on your tongue and savor the sensation.
9. Let your teeth literally sink down into the fruit, and then let the piece
melt in your mouth for a minute before chewing.
10. Repeat the biting and chewing until you eat the whole sliver.
Breathe deeply for a few minutes again. Then, finally, open your eyes.
If you pay attention to the feelings that you have at each step of the cere-
mony, you'll discover that cantaloupes have much more depth than just the
word "cantaloupe."
Just as the original Zen tea ceremony was used by Samurai warriors in Japan
to calm their minds and bring them into the present moment, the cantaloupe
ceremony can help focus you on the tactile reality underlying your ongoing
reinterpretation of the world through thoughts and words. You can repeat the
experience with other fruits, vegetables, and just about any safe, non-toxic
foodstuff.
This exercise is a great way to help yourself get into the right frame of mind
for giving a good massage. You don't have to think so much. Don't speak. Just
touch. Feel. Be with the world you come into contact with, including other
people. Performing the Zen Cantaloupe Ceremony is a great way to sensitize
your fingers and your mind immediately prior to giving a massage.
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Sensitivity exercise #2:
The tenure of the World
Your fingertips have the largest concentration of sensory receptors of any
part of your body. This feature is quite convenient for giving massages, which
requires a real sensitivity to the person you're touching.
With their unique sensitivity, your fingers can actually "see" objects, a fact
you confirm every time you fish through a purse or pocket, searching for
keys. You can develop and fine-tune this capability through a simple attune-
ment exercise called the "texture of the world? The exercise helps you gain a
certain sensibility that is crucial for getting and giving good massages.
You need a partner for this experience — someone you trust.
1. Have your partner gather four or five objects and arrange them on a
table, without showing you what they are.
See why you have to trust your partner? You don't want someone who
may choose bird droppings, tar, rotten dairy products, and so on.
2. Have your partner blindfold you and sit you in front of the table,
within arms' reach of the objects.
If you haven't been blindfolded since playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey
as a child, be prepared for a startling and powerful experience.
3. Reach out and touch one object at a time, picking it up and using your
fingertips to try to determine what it is.
If your partner has been creative in choosing the objects, you should
have an interesting experience. Use just your fingertips for this exercise
and resist the temptation to get your nose or other senses involved in
the process.
4. Override your mind's tendency to identify the object and then create
a visual picture of it, categorize it, and dismiss it.
Your mind goes into its automatic pattern the moment you realize what
the object is. Instead of giving in to that tendency, continue to explore
the object, discovering properties you overlooked before. If you can't
guess what the object "really" is, that's okay. In fact, that's good. Just
continue to feel it. When your mind can't categorize something, you're
forced to perceive It in a new way.
5. Based on your present tactile encounter alone, rename the objects.
A golf ball, for example, may become a dimple-nut. Have your partner
write the new names down on pieces of paper and place them next to
the objects.
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Chapter 3: Your Skin: Frontier to the Rest of the World
Little skin, lotta feeling
Do you know why little tots seem so extraordi- opposed to 20 M a young adult, and 4 in old age
narily sensitive when it comes to touch? (Montagu, p. 7). That's why babies are so over-
Children up to three years old have a total of 80 whelmed by tickles and touches. They feel more
specialized sensory receptors called Meissner's than we do.
corpuscles per square millimeter of skin, as
6. Remove the blindfold and check out your work.
Just being blindfolded greatly alters your perception of the objects. Unable to
take them for granted, labeling one a "golf ball" and another a "yellow stick-
on note," you will quite likely discover something about your ability to feel,
and in the process Increase your touch-ability (see Chapter 5 for more on
touch-ability).
Layering It On
Your skin, like every other part of your body, is a living, growing, changing
thing. In fact, you have an entirely new outer layer of skin every 27 days,
which means you're an awful lot like snakes, lizards, and other animals who
leave their skins behind periodically. You Just shed your skin one skin cell at
a time, so it's not so obvious.
The epidermis, the outer portion of your skin that keeps replenishing itself
and flaking off, is made up of several layers. The bottommost layer keeps
reproducing new skin cells, which are then pushed toward the upper layers,
collectively known as the horny zone. It is called the horny zone because the
cells there are hardened, like horns.
So, what you're really seeing when you look at somebody's skin is a whole
bunch of dead, hardened cells that are about to fall off. In fact, exfoliation, a
particular type of spa treatment that I explain further in Chapter 15, assists
the skin in this process.
Keep in mind that certain skin conditions make performing a massage Inad-
visable (see Chapter 10). For now, I'm talking about basic, healthy skin in an
average person.
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The hazards of breathing
The "dust" particles that you see floating in a man, and even your own self into your lungs.
shaft of sunlight are mostly dead skin cells from This situation presents no biological hazard and
the epidermis that have recently been shed by is usually not a cause for concern because most
you and any other people who have inhabited people don't know about it and therefore don't
the room. As you breathe, you can't help but get grossed out.
inhale some of these flaky cells, thus sucking
Whoops.
cousin Bob, Aunt Julia, the refrigerator repair
Beneath the epidermis lies the dermis, which is filled with fat cells, blood and
lymph vessels, oil glands, sweat glands, nerve endings, and hair follicles. The
dermis also helps to bind the outer layers of the skin to the subcutaneous
(which means "beneath the skin') tissues below. In this area, you find some
very important cells called fibroblasts, which are responsible for producing
connective tissues. You owe a great debt of gratitude to your fibroblasts,
especially after you break your skin in some way, because these specialized
cells are responsible for rushing to the area and filling it with connective
fibers, mending you back together. Massage can also affect these fibroblasts
to enhance the appearance of your skin.
Getting the Skinny on Your
Personal Border Guard
Throughout your life, your skin defines the intimate boundaries of your exis-
ence. Skin Is the millimeters-thin line that separates you from the rest of
Say and allows you to perceive that reality. Here are the six major tune-
ions of your own personal border guard, the skin:
3 Protection
3 Absorption
3 Secretion and excretion
3 Heat regulation
3 Respiration
3 Sensation
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The importance of getting licked
Have you ever watched a cat give birth? Directly action of licking engaged in by other animals. In
afterwards, mamma cat begins licking her other words, he was advising us to.metaphori-
babies all over, with a special concentration in calty lick the baby's butt.
the genital area. The same is true for dogs. And
horses. And cows. And aardvarks and At the moment, and for several years after-
antelopes and giraffes. In fact, every species of wards, I thought this California massage
mammal with the exception of man lick their instructor was a little too "out there" for his own
young immediately afterbirth. good. But now, after discovering the importance
of this type of stimulation in every other species
At first, you may assume that this licking is to of mammal, it makes perfect sense. This critical
clean off the gooey stuff plastered all over the form of early contact jump-starts the newborn's
newborn's body. That's partially true, but far gastrointestinal tract and is perhaps the most
more important than the cleaning is the licking primal type of "massage" that we can offer our
itself, the touch of tongue to flesh or fur. young.
I was in my first massage therapy class, in You can recreate the natural sensations of lick-
California, when the instructor stated that mas- ing for your newborn by taking a baby-wipe or
saging a newborn baby% perineum Ithe area moist towel and rubbing' it gently over the skin
between the genitals and anus) with a warm in this important area a couple times a day for
moist cloth was a good idea to simulate the the first few months of life, starting on day one.
Protection
Whenever anyone tries to pass over the border from Spain to France, say, he
or she is stopped by the border guard (usually men in sadly decorative hats,
with sour expressions on their faces). The same basic thing happens with
your body. Your skin says "Stop and present your papers" to anything big and
obvious trying to get inside of it, such as steak knives, harmful bacteria, #2
pencils, and so on. Having the men in the sad little hats there to protect us is
a very good thing, as I'm sure you can appreciate when you think about what
kind of chaos would ensue were millions of Spaniards to suddenly turn up in
your pancreas.
Absorption
Once in a while, you want to allow some people across the border to spend
those tourist dollars and improve the economy, right? Your skin can do the
same thing through a process called absorption. Your skin can absorb certain
cosmetic products, chemicals, drugs, and water in small amounts.
Unfortunately, certain items are not beneficial to your body, such as toxins
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Part I: Discovering Massage for Greater Health and Happiness
and pesticides. Your skin is equally capable of allowing these terrorists to
cross the border, which means you should stay on guard regarding the prod-
ucts you come into contact with.
Excretion and secretion
Your skin can also get rid of toxic elements, like exiling unwanted characters
from the country. This process is called excretion, and it's handled by those
ruffians, the sweat glands. You have several million of these glands, and they
eliminate waste products via perspiration.
In addition to excreting, your skin secretes as well, issuing forth an oily sub-
stance called sebum that coats the skin and helps preserve moisture.
Secretion is a good thing, because the skin Is about 50 — 70 percent moisture,
and you don't want it to dry out.
Heat regulation
Your skin is constantly monitoring the temperature in the environment and
helping to maintain your body's internal temperature at an even 98.61E (37°C)
through adjustments of blood vessels and sweat glands, which dilate or con-
tract in response to heat and cold.
If you don't touch me, I'll die
Touch is literally a matter of life and death. The essentially zero human contact, a startling 99
philosopher Bertrand Russell noted the impor- percent of them died within one year of.admis-
tance of touch, saying, "Not only our geometry sion (Juhan p.43). Those who survived suffered
and our physics, but our whole conception of signs of retardation and maladjustment.
what exists outside us, is based on the sense of
To say that the world would truly be a better
touch? For this reason, it's urgently important
place if more people received massage—
that infants and small children receive an abun-
especially as part of their developmental
dant supply of human contact.
years — is not an exaggeration. Touch is a vital
In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry Dwight Chapin part of human growth, for individuals and for the
reported that when orphaned babies were rou- entire community.
tinely put in homes and left to wither away with
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Chapter 3: Your Skin: Frontier to the Rest of the World
Respiration
Oxygen comes in through the pores of the skin, and carbon dioxide goes out,
just like in the lungs, but on a smaller scale. If you're a James Bond fan and
saw the classic movie, Gold Finger, you may remember the famous opening
scene, which featured a woman painted completely gold and then left on a
hotel room bed in Miami Beach. In the movie, she died because her skin
couldn't "breathe," and a similar fate could happen to you in real life if all of
your pores were suddenly blocked.
Sensation
If skin were basically Just nature's way of keeping what's inside of our bodies
in and what's outside out, life wouldn't be nearly as much fun as it is, and, as
it turns out, those guards at the border have a sensitive side beneath their
hats after all.
Providing you with a rich, complex variety of sensations is by far the most
personally gratifying of the skin's functions, which is something you'll
develop an even greater appreciation for as you practice the techniques in
the other chapters of this book.
Touching the Skin through Massage
Recently, even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has become con-
vinced that massage offers undeniable results. My co-author, Michel Van
Welden, has worked with the FDA extensively and has substantiated some
claims for the effectiveness of massage. Following are some of his findings:
toe Scientific evidence points to the fact that massage can positively impact
skin tone.
sof Pigs love massage.
's true. In a series of experiments at Vanderbilt University and UCLA, Michel
worked with a team of ace physicians administering a series of massage
experiments on some very special subjects: Flopsy, Zeus, and Peewee, three
Yorkshire pigs.
The three pigs were chosen for their high moral character and love of luxuri-
ous spa treatments. No, actually they were chosen because pigs (even though
you may not like to admit it) have remarkably similar skin to humans. Twice a
week for 13 weeks the three brave little oinkers received deeply stimulating
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massages with a device that strongly affects circulation. The FDA eventually
approved this device as an effective way to tone the skin and improve the
appearance of cellulite. Here are some of the findings of these experiments,
as reported in Newsweek magazine, November 1998:
3 This type of Massage, called Endermologie', stimulates fibroblasts,
which produce collagen.
3 An increase in collagen fibers can improve the elasticity and youthful
appearance of the skin.
Michel should know. He's been a physical therapist in France for almost 30
years, and in that country the physical therapists do an awful lot of massage.
In fact, each of the 35,000 practicing physical therapists in that country gives
an average of 4,374 massages a year, most of them paid for by national insur-
ance. Perhaps that's why the French have a saying, bien dans son peau, for
someone who is happy and content; the phrase means "good in his skin."
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Chapter 4
I've Got You Under My Skin:
The Basics of What's Inside
In This Chapter
> Discovering your three-dimensional body
Getting a feel for muscles and bones
j> Exploring the organ systems
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 6 OOOOOOO 0 OOOOOOOOOOOOO 0 0 0 OOOOOOO
M
ost people would prefer to leave the interior of the human body a mys-
tery, like the ingredients in a Hostess Twinkie. You're better off just
enjoying the thing, they figure, and not asking too many questions. This atti-
tude works fine for most applications in life, such as walking around, going to
the movies, eating pizza, and so forth, but once you decide to massage some-
body, you'll benefit by knowing a little about human anatomy.
Here's why:
3 You become aware of certain areas that are delicate or sensitive and
should therefore be avoided (see Chapter 10 for more information on
this issue). .
3 You develop an idea of what's going on internally when someone com-
plains about specific aches and pains.
3 You discover how certain strokes on the surface are acting on deeper
structures, such as the circulatory system, the lymph system, and more.
3 You come to understand how your touch is affecting the body as a
whole.
The purpose of this chapter is to give you a very basic understanding of how
your touch is felt, not Just on the surface of the body, but into its depths as
well.
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Michelangelo's inner vision
Have you ever been to Florence and visited the The fact is that studying anatomy the time-
Galleria della Accademia where Michelangelo's honored way (using cadavers) was illegal
famous statue of David stands? Well, let me tell during Michelangelo's lifetime, outlawed bythe
you, it's worth it. You enter and walk down a long Catholic Church as sacrilegious. Undaunted, the
corridor filled with half-finished sculptures artist found a sympathetic priest who gave him
before you come to the high glass-domed cham- a key to one of the city's morgues where
ber where. David awaits. The power oldie piece Michelangelo would break in at nightto perform
is not just 'nits mass and detail, but alsain its illicit autopsies. Even though he had to risk his
fullness. David seems to be filled to-diet:1m own life to do it, exploring the interior of the
with life, as,if he's about to burst out of his skin human body proved:invaluable to the creation
at any moment of his art.
How did Michelangelo know exactly howeach To give a massagethat feels like a work of art,
of the muscles and bones were arranged inside you'll want know what's inside the human body,
the human body in order to recreate such real- too. And these days, nobody's going to arrest
ity? Did he study anatomy at the medical school you for wanting to find out
of Florence? Did he look it up in books?
Wow, That's Deep
Perhaps the most fundamental misconception people have as they first set
out to massage somebody Is that the human body Is a two-dimensional
object rather than a three-dimensional object. How Is that possible, you say?
Everyone knows we're not flat. Right?
Well, that's true, but everyone knows that a lake is three-dimensional, too,
having depth as well as width and breadth, right? What do you picture In
your mind when you think of a lake, though? If you're like most people, you
think of the surface of the lake, the visible area of water surrounded on all
sides by the shore.
And in a similar way, even though you know there's depth inside you, too,
containing all the unfathomable mysteries of tissue and bone, you may still
habitually concern yourself with the surface, because that is what you see.
The problem with this two-dimensional way of thinking is obvious if you con-
sider what would happen were you to attempt to walk out to the middle of the
lake. Quite quickly, you'd understand about the lake's three-dimensionality.
The same applies when you wade out onto the seemingly two-dimensional
surface of a person's body as you give her a massage. The mysterious liquid
depths beneath the skin suddenly surge up around your fingers, and If you
don't know how to swim, you'll drown. Or at the very least, you'll look silly
doing the dog paddle as you head desperately back to shore.
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Chapter 4: I've Got You Under My Skin: The Basics of What's Inside
You can give a nice, pleasant rubdown without knowing a thing about what
you're doing: The mere tactile stimulation of skin-to-skin has positive thera-
peutic effects; but to give a good massage, one that makes people say "wow,
that was incredible," you have to learn how to swim.
Proof That you're Three Dimensional
Here's a way to prove scientifically that you are indeed a three-dimensional
being and that all kinds of secrets exist below the surface of your skin. You
only need two things to do this experiment: your hand and a flat surface such
as a table or desk.
First, turn your hand palm-downward and hold it over the table a few inches
high. Then reach down with just your fingertips to touch the surface. And
finally bend your middle finger and fold it under your hand until the first two
knuckles are flat on the table. Good.
What I'd like you to do now is lift your other fingers up and away from the
table top one at a time while leaving your middle finger firmly planted. Go
ahead and do this right along with me as you're reading If you'd like. First try
the thumb; it lifts downright easily, doesn't it? Way up high. Next try the
index finger; not quite as impressive as the thumb but still definitely off the
table. Try the pinkie finger; you see how it lifts up about the same or higher
than the index finger? And lastly, try the ring finger. Go ahead. I'll wait. What's
wrong? Come onl Lift it up already. Can't do it?
Why can't you lift your ring finger? You may have tried this experiment
before, but did you ever figure out what's going on? Somebody showed it to
me when I was in high school, but it wasn't until I was studying anatomy as
part of massage training that I understood what's happening.
The secret is this: Buried within the depths of your forearm are three tiny
little muscles, one that lifts your index finger, one that lifts your pinkie finger,
and one that lifts your thumb. But you have just one muscle that lifts both
the ring finger and middle finger, and so when one of them is held down, the
other one can't lift up. Go ahead, try it with the ring finger on the table
instead of the middle finger. Same result, right?
This example is Just to show the effects of your three-dimensional depths on
your two-dimensional surface. It's important to remember this when you're
getting ready to massage someone, and I'll remind you to "think 3-D" when
you read the chapters in Part M.
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Figure 4-1:
Tiny mus-
cles deep
in your
forearm
determine
the possible
movements
of your
hand.
Learning► to Feet
For a moment, imagine you have a bas-relief map of the world before you In
which all the landmarks are raised from the surface. Now imagine an opaque
layer of rubber a quarter-Inch thick covering the whole thing. Reaching down
and touching this smooth surface, can you tell where your fingers are Just by
feeling? Where's California? Where's the tip of South America? Where's the
protruding peninsula of Iberia? Can you determine what it is you're feeling,
even without seeing it?
Now, making a leap in your imagination, think of the human body as that
covered-up map that you are trying to identify by feeling its contours. This
type of feeling-with-a-purpose is called palpation. Many professional massage
people use palpation to determine what type of massage they are going to
give to an individual, based on the way the person's body feels compared to
the norm. You can get very sensitive fingers by practicing this, and in the
next section, I lead you through an exercise to help you start that sensitiza-
tion process.
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Chapter 4: I've Got You Under My Skin: The Basics of What's Inside
Getting a feeling for palpation
Try this exercise to begin sensitizing your fingers to the various textures,
shapes, and landmarks you will find beneath the skin.
I. Sitting in a chair, with your back straight, turn your head to the right,
as if you were trying to look back over your right shoulder.
2. Now, reach up with your right hand and, using just the fingertips, feel
gently along the front of the neck until you locate the long band of
vertical muscle stretching from your collar bone up to the side of your
head, called the sternocleidomastoid muscle, which is illustrated in
Figure 4-2.
3. "Walk" your fingertips up and down this muscle, feeling for where it
connects near the center of your collar bone (the origin) and up along
the base of your skull (the insertion).
Do certain parts feel tighter than others? Is part of the muscle thinner
than others?
4. Grasp the muscle between your fingertips, as if it were a guitar string
and you were going to pluck it.
Be careful not to dig your fingers into the sensitive front part of your
neck.
5. Still grasping the muscle, slowly bring your head back to center, feel-
ing the softening in the muscle between your fingers as you do so.
Repeat the process several times, back and forth.
6. Walk your fingers down to the base of this muscle and then onto the
collar bone, following it along out toward the shoulder.
How does the bone feel different than the muscle? In what ways is it the
same?
7. Now walk your fingers away from the collar bone up over toward
your back until you reach the top of your shoulder.
Use a little firmer pressure to feel along the length of this muscle. Where
does it feel harder? Where does it feel softer? Are there any "knots" or
"bands" of harder tissue within the more pliable surrounding area?
Notice whether there are any points that feel more tender when you
touch them, and whether these tender points correspond to the "knots".
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Figure 4-t
Turning your
head to
one side
exposes
your stem-
ocleidomas-
told muscle,
which is
then easy
to palpate.
Take several minutes to do this. Get a feeling for feeling. Let your fingers
become familiar with all the permutations of texture, density, and tone that
you can find Just below the surface of the skin.
Bony landmarks
If you attend massage school yourself one day, you'll learn all kinds of intimi-
dating anatomical terms with which to impress your friends and loved ones,
such as "Boy, Cheryl, that's one exquisite medial malleolus you have there."
Cheryl probably won't know that you're talking about her inner ankle bone.
And there's a very good chance she won't care either. Therefore, I'm not
going to bore you or her by loading you down with all kinds of Latinate words
and phrases. Instead, I'm going to do something fun, in plain English, that's
going to help give you an idea where things are located anatomically.
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Chapter 4: I've Got You Under My Skin: The Basics of What's Inside
Your medial malleolus, or inner ankle bone, Is one of at least forty seven
"bony landmarks" throughout your body. Now, before you go making any
crude comments about bony landmarks, let me assure you that this is indeed
what they are called by professionals everywhere. They have compelling
names, such as xiphoid process, occipital protuberance, and greater tuberosity
of the humerus. I'm going to use laymen's terms, though, and expose you to a
few of these landmarks as part of a game. That's right, It's time to play ....
The bony landmark game
It can really be a lot of fun getting to know what's where beneath your skin,
and, in fact, for many centuries (before the invention of TV) people the world
over would sit around the campfire playing the bony landmark game. This
was a great way to pass the time between wolverine attacks, and It's an effec-
tive method to teach anatomy to the young at the same time.
The game is simple: I describe a particular landmark (see FIgure 4-3) for you
In terms that yoti can understand and give you directions on how to locate it
through palpation. Then, all you have to do is supply me with the common,
everyday term we use to describe this landmark. It's important that you actu-
ally do the palpation, not just read the words, because that is what will
familiarize you with the terrain you massage In future chapters.
Ready?
1. You can find this landmark by holding one hand out in front of you, with
your palm facing you. Feeling with the fingertips of your other hand,
notice that you have two bones in the forearm, one on the pinkie finger
side (the ulna), and one on the thumb side (the radius). Follow the bone
on the pinkie finger side all the way from your wrist to its extreme other
end. You'll find a bump there, called the olecranon process, otherwise
known as the
2. Cross one of your feet up and rest it on the other knee so you can exam-
ine it. Then feel with both hands along the shin bone (tibia) in the front
of your lower leg. Follow it down all the way to your foot and see what
happens to it. Feel how it curves back toward you and ends up in a
bump at the top of your foot? This is the medial malleolus or
3. Trace your fingers down onto your foot and then back In the opposite
direction from your toes onto thecalcaneus, or bone.
4. Now sit up straight. Reach down along one side of your body until your
hand almost slips underneath you. Right at that point you should feel a
bone called the greater trochanter of the femur, which is otherwise known
as the bony knob at the top of the longest bone in the body, the
bone.
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Figure 4-3:
"Bony land-
marks" are
specific
areas on the
skeleton
that you
can feel
from above
the skin.
5. Walk your fingers back up along the side of your body about 6 — 8 inches
until you hit the next bony landmark. It should be a sharp ridge that
sticks out and that you can follow along toward the front of your body
for a few inches. This is the iliac crest, also known as the bone.
6. Reaching your hands up to your face, locate your chin and then feel
back along the lower ridge toward your ear. It curves up here, forming
the ramus of the mandible, otherwise known as the point at the angle of
the bone.
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