…BE VERY CAREFUL…

Third day of the massage course in the New Agey village of San Marcos, Lake Atitlan. We spent all day yesterday on the lower body so today we moved up the body towards the upper limbs.

“People love to have their feet massaged,” stated Ito, our massage teacher, “but you have to keep in mind that twenty years ago they were all carpenters and builders, nowadays they’re all pen pushers and keyboard jockeys sitting behind computers desks, so when you get to massage their hands and arms, uffffff, if you do it the proper way, man, you will see some happy faces. Then, when you do their head and neck you’ll get people going like Oooooooooo. Finally, you’ll rub their scalp and faces, sending some of them Aaaaaaaaahhhhh vibrations down their whole bodies.”

“You have to be very careful, otherwise you’ll have people stalking you and asking for massages.” warned Ito with a very serious look, and then he burst on laughter.

For the next three hours, Chris and I took turns repeating all the movements learned on Ito’s head and neck until he was content with the result. For a moment, I thought that he was using us to get rid of all tensions that he carried with him.

When Ito was finally ready for another of his speeches, my exhausted hand and arms couldn’t have been more thankful.

“You already have the full body routine. Previous students took longer to learn what you learned in three days. Well done chicos! Now, you only need some pose tweaking and to fine tune your technique. That’s it, you’re ready guys! But don’t fret, there’s still three days to go. If that’s ok with you, you’ll do two to three massages a day. I’ll just get lots of people so you guys can practice on.”

Ciao 4 now

~ Paulo ~