I wrote the following on Wednesday, January 29, 2013, while I was spending winter months with friends in Austin, Texas.
After cooking and cleaning at C’s, I went to a spa for a massage. No, I’m not some fancy lady spending large sums of money on being pampered. I am doing a work exchange for this massage. I read an ad on Craigslist posted by an actress doing a one woman show. (Her name is Patrice Blue Maltas, and her show was The Butterfly Monologues. (Watch a YouTube video for her Creative Seed Workshop.) She was looking for a prompter, someone to give her the next line if she forgets. She is also a massage therapist, so she offered to trade massage for prompting or to pay money. I thought it was really cool that she wanted to do work exchange, that’s definitely something I am into, and while I totally love to get massaged, I’m not really in a position to pay for massages right now. So I told her I would do the trade, and she was really excited. She agreed to massage me for 45 minutes in exchange for my services as a prompter.
When we first spoke, she mentioned that she does some kind of massage that I had never heard of, said it was kind of rare. I didn’t know what she was talking about, so I just made some general positive noise of acceptance. On New Year’s Eve, I looked at her website and found out that she does “Ashiatsu Barefoot Massage: A combination of Tia-Thai, Avedic and Asian body work. In this massage the therapist is suspended with horizontal poles and massages the client with their feet. This is an advanced holistic deep tissue massage for chronic pain. It helps with digestive, lymphatic and circulatory systems just to name a few.” Yep, this woman massages clients with her feet!
When I first realized she was talking about massaging me with her feet, I was a little weirded out. But then I realized I would probably never get the chance to get this kind of massage again. Why not try something new? So I decided if she offered to do Ashiatsu, I would say yes.
Sure enough, when I called to make an appointment at the salon/spa she works out of as she instructed, the receptionist asked what kind of massage I wanted. I resisted the urge to shout, FEET!” but when she said “Ashiatsu?” I said yes.
The massage was the most amazing nonorgasmic physical thing anyone has ever done to me. It was a really, really good massage and so STRONG. I guess it should be strong, as she was able to put the weight of her whole body into it. When I get massaged, I want deep, strong pressure on my muscles. This one gave me what I’ve always wanted. Most of it was just on the good side of too much. Any more and it would have hurt. I had to breathe deeply through some parts of it, but that was good too. I could not believe what this woman was able to do with her feet. She didn’t just walk on my back. She stroked me with her feet. I wish I had been able to see what she was doing (or at least had someone see it and describe it to me later), but alas, I was lying face down and couldn’t see anything. WOW!