My tummy hurts. It hurts from yesterday's massage oddly enough.
Yesterday as a part of our anniversary celebration we were surprised with a most wonderful gift of a couple's massage at an upscale oriental spa. I was apprehensive at first to even go because I may be comfortable with my body and confident in it but having someone else touch it is a whole other matter. And well I know they're professional about it, after all it is their job to massage people's bodies, it's not my job to let people touch my body beyond trying to punch it in the ring.
There is pleasure in pain and that's always how I've thought about massages -- I want them to work out all the kinks in my body, massage out the soreness from the muscles, and leave me feeling like jelly.
A middle age woman attended to Snickers while a young man attended to me. Both Snickers and I were in a couple room together, just a meter separating our individual massage tables. I was relaxed, calm, comfortable with my face in a cushioned padding... and then the massage started. I could hear Snickers breathing normally, well as normal as Snickers with his three time broken nose can normally breath, but my breathing on the other hand instantly became heavy as my masseuse worked the hell out of my shoulders. He told me a few times to relax but I was relaxed. I tried to relax more but he then repeated himself again. By the time he had made his way from working on my shoulders to my forearms I was in pain. I told myself to count to ten whenever it was painful but at that point I had already exceeded counting to ten. I lifted up my head to peer over at Snickers and Snickers was super cosy on his bed, getting what looked like a softer massage. I on the other hand had this guy drilling what felt like his elbow into my shoulder.
"Wait, stop", I said, "this is definitely more pain than pleasure". My masseuse gave a little giggle and said, "You just need to relax".
The massage shifted back and forth between being that of pleasure and that of pain so I tried to stir up light conversation with him, to help me get through it. And what a time for me to start too, when he was working on the side of the upper part of my leg, aka my butt. "Just relax, you're so stiff", he said. Right then I knew something was up. "Ya... because it's called squats!" I told him. And with that Snickers lifted his head and blurted out "oh gosh... ummm... she's not flexing, she is just strong". I was both flattered and amused, but I was also thankful because perhaps I should have told him what I do for a living beforehand. Snickers ended up telling them a little bit about us and noted that I do a lot of training -- boxing 6 days a week and +45kms a week with my running.
"This is me not flexing", I told him, "and this is me flexing". I scored a thumbs up for that... hahaha.
The amount of pain that proceeded after that wasn't as quite rough as before but it still was pretty intense. I wanted that though and had even told them to work my body out hard. My shoulders had a lot of kinks in it, I knew that coming in, but I left with them totally kink-free and feeling great... jelly-like but great.
As for my tummy, my core gets trained a lot because of both my weight training and running. I have been really focusing in on my running form and have been practicing the "stir the pots" tip with my arms and core that a friend passed on to me. It really works out my core so now my runs end with my core many times feeling more worked out than my actual legs. I pride myself on my strong core and always stressing the need to build a strong core to my Hulkies. None the less, when the masseuse went to work on it today he repetitively told me to relax. And again, I told him "this is me not flexing and now this is me flexing". I got a thumbs up from him for my core strength but it didn't stop him from working the hell out of it. He told me that all my training has really strained my muscles and that I really do need to do more stretching activities. As soon as he said "Maybe you should do yoga" I giggled. I hate yoga. Yoga stresses me out.
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