Relaxation with Rocks

Haley May calls her massage business May Massage Arts, an apt name, as Haley, like any artist, is creative with the materials of her art. Like a sculptor with clay, she molds the muscles of the body into the shapes she envisions for them – stretched long, rounded smooth. I am the clay she is molding into shape, and because she is an artist, I feel my body perfected in the shape it is. Like a painter or composer – or a poet or novelist or any artist – she pays attention to details: this pinpoint spot needs extra pressure, this touch of hardness that cracks under her hands needs to be gentled into smoothness.

Last week when I came into the studio for a massage, Haley showed me a tray of steaming water in which lay a dozen or so smooth round rocks: black ones, dark red ones, striped gray ones, most just the size to fit into her palm, though four or five were small enough to fit into the circle made by a finger and thumb. Some had blunted points. Some were slightly textured with pimpled surfaces. The hot water stirred over them like a creek running over rocks. I was entranced, as when watching the moving water of a creek or river.

Haley left the room. I undressed, lay face-down on the massage table, pulled the blanket over me, and called to Haley that I was ready. 

      She began as usual, massaging my back. Then, with hardly an interruption, moving as smoothly as a dancer, she picked up two rocks from their hot-water bath and rubbed them rhythmically, one in each hand, over my back. Their heat sank into my body. Haley turned a rock’s blunted point to go more deeply into a stubborn muscle. The hot rocks (“Are they too hot?” “No, they’re perfect”) slid smoothly over my massage-oiled skin. They were of both earth and water, and they brought me into their essence. As their heat flowed into my body, I became the water flowing over the rocks. At the same time the water was flowing over me: Haley’s hands moving with the constant yet ever-changing motion of the river, the creek, the stream, the tides. I was underwater; I was water itself; I was immersed in smooth, warm, earth-born, water-rocks waving and rippling over muscle and skin.

Haley slid the warm rocks she had been using on my back into the palms of my hands, where they rested like eggs with life inside them. My hands curled slightly over them, like a bird settling her breast over her brood.

The rocks drove their heat deep into my muscles as Haley slid them over my arms and legs, uncovering, then covering again, each limb in turn. Like ripples of soprano notes, the small rocks in her hands danced over my cheeks, around my eyes and lips, until my face sank into the deeper registers.

Finally Haley returned the rocks to their hot-water bath. She massaged my feet, wrapped them in warm damp towels, rubbed them dry, and drew the covers over them. “All right, Diana,” she said quietly, always the signal of the end of the massage. “Take your time getting up,” and she left the room.

It took a while to draw myself up from the underwater currents, but eventually I sat up, dressed, gave Haley a hug, and floated to my car. Then I drove to Ashland for a yoga class.

I have never done a better yoga.