Wholed It Together – W.I.T
Blog entry 5 of many
Entry: Vuja De
We’re all familiar with Déjà vu which is having the sensation that we’ve done this before. But if we flip that into Vuja De, we can take something familiar and bring a fresh newness to it.
Being a massage therapist has the common trappings of Déjà vu because we can get stuck in our routines, massage sequences, and interacting in repetitive ways. If another person tells me “I just hold tension in my shoulders” I might freak out because of the repetition of that statement. However, by bringing a Vuja De to the moment, perhaps we can find the newness.
Look them in the eyes, take a deep breath, and ask: “What does that tension feel like? When do you notice it most? If you could ascribe a color to the tension, what would it be? Have you ever named your shoulder tension?” Let’s be original. Allow our clients to feel their bodies in a new light.
Vuja De has the potential to get to the heart of tension in the body and produce profound insights. Find the uniqueness in every single interaction and bring in creative approaches. Just today a colleague was using a full-sized foam roller to kneed another massage therapist head to toe. Looked like he was rolling pizza dough and from the outside it even looked a little too intense. However, the massage therapist receiving it was hailing its effects and saying how amazing it felt. It was creative, unique and he brought that Vuja De into what otherwise could have been just another typical massage.
When we commit to seeing things as if they are new, new things present themselves. Massage therapy has an endless degree of newness available to us if we just open our eyes and see.