I walk into my first Esoteric Breast Massage session, butterflies in my tummy, unsure of what is going to happen and how I’ll feel. We talk for a short while then it is time to begin the bodywork part of the treatment. As I undress, gently and deliberately folding my clothes, my bra sits atop the small pile as the last piece to come off taking with it my cover, my protection – or so I thought.
For a moment I stand there exposed and yet strangely detached. I have shut out any feelings of embarrassment by putting on my “I can deal with anything” front. Even though the practitioner has encouraged me to allow fragility and express myself so that I am comfortable throughout each part, I have auto-piloted myself into the same disguise I wear when I have a smear test i.e. I lie back with my legs in the air and check out from my body for a while, I grin and bear it.
I hadn’t even noticed I had been given a beautifully warm towel to cover myself with so when this is passed to me I realise how vulnerable and exposed I am actually feeling. As I bring the towel and warmth to my chest I start to feel that perhaps there is something precious here that needs my care and attention.
I move to the treatment table, lie down onto what I can only describe as a cloud that is supporting my every muscle and cell, and I start to let go and allow myself to sink in. As I do this the female practitioner begins to massage my upper chest.
I have never felt a touch so tender and unimposing. I do not touch myself in this way and in the realisation of this I feel a sadness come to the surface that has been lurking in the cells of my body – hard and unyielding. I let go some more. I become aware of my breasts – or more accurately, I become aware of where I think my breasts are, but I have the strangest feeling – they are not there?
I have large breasts which I have always either tried to hide so I didn’t get unwanted sexual attention, or that I have used to receive wanted sexual attention. The contradiction of this does not escape me and in this treatment I start to consider what the relationship I have with my breasts is, especially as I cannot feel them even though they are the focus of the session I am in. It’s shocking to feel the empty space, like a numbness, where I know my breasts are.
My chest feels hard – it’s like I am wearing a metal breast-plate from a suit of armour. But as I allow myself to feel this protection, more tears flow and what I’ve been bottling up starts to arise.
I talk. I talk about how I feel about my breasts – possibly with more honesty than I’ve ever brought to the subject before – the shame and the loathing I feel towards them is not something I need to hide anymore. I talk about how I find it nigh on impossible to look at them in any way other than disgust and that when I touch them it is as little as possible and purely for functional things like putting on my bra or washing them in the shower. I talk about my breasts as if they are not part of me, as if they are separate to me and the rest of my body, they’re only for the pleasure or use of others. It is difficult to express but as I do I feel some of the layers weighing down my breasts lift off and I have a feeling that there is something there after all.
I notice a warmth spreading across my chest – it is coming from deep within my body and spreading out into my entire breast area. I am a little surprised at how quickly I have been able to feel more connected when only a short while ago I would have sworn on my life that I couldn’t feel a thing.
Though what grabs my attention the most at this point of the treatment is the wonderment of the delicateness and fragility I am feeling. I realise I had thought this was something for others and not for me – that I was not worthy of feeling the exquisiteness of my vulnerability and the beauty of me as a woman. Not so.
I get dressed with the care and tenderness I have been inspired to bring to myself from the quality of care I have been given by my Esoteric Breast Massage practitioner. I have never put on my bra with so much honouring of what I now feel to be such a precious part of me and my body.
The experience of the Esoteric Breast Massage reminded me that my breasts are so much more than the ‘flesh’ that gets considerable attention in the world we have created. I feel the flutterings of reigniting the nurturing pulse that is the natural expression of my breasts – of me – and I step out onto the London street for the first time free of my breast-plate of protection, feeling the fragility that has just emerged, but also the depths of the incredible power that lies beneath.
By Lucy, UK
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Discovering me through the EBM – For most of my life, I didn’t consider that my breasts were even part of my body …
Learning to love myself through my breasts … discovering my Breasts were a map of Myself!