Message Therapy: The Intuitive Touch
Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805.
By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
Members of the Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health Coaltion. Courtesy photo.
In the past three years we at the Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health Coalition (OMMH) working out of the Acuna Gallery/Café on A, has made tremendous progress to reawaken, develop, support and improve our physical and mental health wellness protocols that we call Community Defined Practices (CDP). This is a health movement of local community based wellness practices that in effect seek to reclaims our right to wellness and health self-determination. The daily integrations of CDP’s in our community are a bold step toward a significant degree in ownership and stewardship of our wellness lives and that of our family and community. The significance of this self-determination health wellness paradigm shift; from a cold, culturally incongruent and ineffective institutional model to a loving local organic integrative medicine movement can’t not be overstated.
As with any significant human shift, there both strong and weak areas in the development and implementation process; such is the case with our current CDP’s protocol. We have been rediscovering and practicing many successful CDP’s, such as mesa redonda encounters, Peace and Justice Reconciliation sessions, dance/exercise/meditation movement classes, diverse arts therapies and classes using every art medium possible, Unity in Recovery, KEYS Leadership and Empowerment for the at-promise youth, drum circles, purification rituals, Friends of the Earth that prompt local ecological actions and educational; all of these wellness CDP’s. Yet we felt that we were still not fully grounded/connected to one another; and then came massage therapy, the intuitive touch, and the community defined practices circle for OMMH was connected!
We live in an alien, cold and foreboding modern world. We keep everyone, except our closest family member and friend, at arm’s length. Many of us are loathe touching or embracing another human being. We have erected invisible shields and walls against the rest of humanity. At the core of this alienation is fear; perhaps the greatest illness of all! That is why message therapy is so important, done correctly and with love can help break down the walls of fear and alienation. Done by a curandera (healer) the message therapy is restorative, rejuvenating and healing.
I have written in the past that about the grandmother and mother, they were curanderas; healers! People from all over the surrounding valley came to our home in Ahualulco, Jalisco, Mexico seeking remedisos (healing). My grandmother and mother healed with herbs, roots, “el encuentro de las manos con mal estar” (The meeting of the healing hands with the pain and aliment of the illness), chants, prayers and cleansing rituals. “Las manos de la curandera sienten todo!’ (The hands of the healer intuitively feel everything). Both my mother and grandmother would tell them, and then with their healing hands and remedios would make believers out of the non-believers.
My mother and grandmother would use massage for all of the family aliments; I recall like it was yesterday what my mother would tell me as she placed her strong, healing and loving hand on my small head and begin to massage my head and shoulders until I was almost motionless and near sleep. I can hear her now telling me, “Apaga tu mente, no pienses tanto, mijo apaga la mente como un vela! (She would say turn off the mind, do not think so much: blow your mind like you would a candle). Very heavy stuff for a small kid but it stayed within my sub-conscience mind. I learned early to control my brain, and throughout my life I have been able to control my brain and make it do what I want. This extraordinary gift came from the power of my mother and grandmother loving healing hands.
Today a woman much like my mother and grandmother has come in the OMMH healing circle and she has the power of intuitive massage healing. This woman travel a long distance, she didn’t know where she would end up. She settled in Ventura County and the magical pull of the Acuna Gallery/Café on A and OMMH was irresistible! She has begun to massage and heal some of the OMMH members on an individual basis. With the first session I immediately felt the same energy that I use to receive from my mother and grandmother.
Her massage technique is both gently, yet powerful; I felt the healing magical and instant! She located the points of stress in the body and through her loving healing hands she re-aliens the flow of energy. In the coming day, weeks and months while she is still with us, we have asked our local curandera to begin teach all of us the ancient art of intuitive message therapy to all of our OMMH member. The idea is that the OMMH member will learn the healing massage techniques and pass them on to their family and friend, so that everyone is Oxnard has the power to touch and heal. We all have the power and energy and it emanates from love, the greatest power in the universe!
We will be submitting the opinion to Elaine Crandall, Executive Director at Ventura County Behavioral Health Department to consider funding OMMH through their innovative funds and helps to continue to expand mental and physical well through the blending of VCBH institutional services and our own OMMH Community Defined Practices.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., is the executive director of The KEYS Leadership Academy@ Café on A in Oxnard and chair of the Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health Coaltion.