Tissue talk: accounting for bodily feelings through an analysis of massage and movement

Abstract

In a qualitative study of the effect of the massage of malleable bodily tissues on massaged women's reported bodily feelings, I was both researcher and massager. In order to understand the reports I constructed a discursive framework of the movement of the malleable body. The discursive terms of the massager relied on the mobility of massaged tissues, and those of the massaged person depended on the discomfort or pleasure felt during massage. During talk in massage, the meaning of some bodily experiences of the massaged person were negotiable in the discursive terms available to the massager and the massaged person. I linked feelings of pleasure with a person's awareness of the increasing symmetrical quality of the rhythmical movement of interconnected segments of malleable tissues, and a feeling of bodily discomfort with an awareness of a lessened degree of interconnected movement. In reports in which the massaged person's sense of the spatial placement of their malleable tissues were different to the perception of the same tissues by the massager, the discursive terms of the massager and the massaged person were no longer congruent. In order to investigate accounts of a discrepancy in the spatial perception of the massaged tissues, between the massager and the massaged person, I developed a bi-phasic model of bodily use. It was based on an alternation of two modes of malleable tissue movement. One consisted of movement oriented to a distant object(ive), the other of the interconnected movement of contiguous segments of malleable tissue. I have suggested that an increase in tissue malleability, effected by the tactile interventions of the massager, coincides with an increase in the rhythmicity of the interconnected movement of malleable tissues. My patterning of malleable bodily movement is germane to the freely acting individual. I suggest that it can aid their assessment of their bodily placement in relation to object(ive)s within their range of oriented movement, whilst ensuring a feeling of bodily pleasure by a maintenance of an optimum degree of interconnected bodily movement.