"Like a chef berating his customers for being hungry."

A fellow PMTI grad -- Raju Mantina -- was profiled in the Washington Post MisFits column in the health section this week. Raj is a highly skilled and well-respected massage therapist. The columnist mentioned that Raj told him his hamstrings were "terrible" and strongly encouraged the columnist to stretch more and stretch properly.

This has led to a conversation among a few massage therapists about how we talk to our clients about their bodies. A few of us are beating the drum for banning negative language. As Amanda Long, a fellow MT, says:

"I stopped going to sooooo many therapists who made me feel guilty about my tight this or that or my inability to take a full breath. Uh, that's why I'm here. Its like a chef berating his customers for being hungry."

When you're using negative language around any relationship -- body, peoples, organizations -- you're going to get a negative relationship. What's the value of having a negative relationship with your own body? You can't walk away from it when it pisses you off. It can't come back with a stinging rebuke when you talk trash about it.

Perhaps you believe in "negative reinforcement" -- make someone/something feel bad enough and it will change its ways out of shame. I've never seen that work in a long-term effective way, especially when it's directed to your own body, your own self. Short-term, maybe. Long-term, never.

You are completely utterly profoundly stuck with your body. Every <bleeping> inch of it. And it's stuck with you and here's the good news: it's doing everything within it powers to work well and be optimally functional. Everything.

Sometimes your body, or a given body part, doesn't have access to all the resources it needs. The flu, appendicitis, diabetes, high cholesterol, etc. can all affect what your body has to work with. And it's still doing the best job it can.

If your body were a friend or a lover and you knew that your friend or lover's best was short of perfect, would you berate them, talk bad about them, put them down? You wouldn't if you wanted an enduring mutually-supportive relationship!

You have no more intimate relationship than the one with your body. At least treat it with the same respect you would a good friend because it's the best friend you've got. It's how I'm going to treat it.