When real healing means pushing through the pain

"There are ways, but the way is uncharted." I thought about these words, the first line of the first poem of the Tao Te Ching, as I lay facedown on a table carefully covered with fresh sheets, and the visually challenged masseur went to work. He began at the point where my neck meets my shoulders, pressing with his elbow. Pain.

I didn't get his name. Before the appointment began, he asked the usual questions. Where are you from? How long have you been in China? I answered in Mandarin as best I could, and he gave a toothy grin.

He complimented my language skills. I blushed and thanked him, filled with confidence. My friend provided translations anyway, for which I was grateful. She had the truth of it; my Chinese was garbage.

He didn't feel around to map the shape of my body; each connection point was confident, intentional and forceful. He worked his way up my neck and then down my back, uncovering deeper pain in each new area. At my calves, he unlocked the ninth circle of Hell, and I yelped. "Do you want him to go easier?" My friend asked, but I would not acquiesce. I had signed up for this.

I think my torturer knew this. I squirmed and gasped several times throughout the process, and each time, he stayed in that spot and found new ways to attack. He approached me like a stern mother. His truth was greater than my misery; my body needed healing.

I worried about my friend. She had brought me to this treatment as a gift, and I didn't want her to think I hated it. So I ground my teeth, clenched my fists and submitted to the suffering.

The activity had a name — "blind massage" — but for each of us, the experience was unique. My friend wanted to treat me, the masseur wanted to fix me, and I wanted to escape. Somewhere between these intentions was an unnamed reality.

"There are names, but not nature in words," the poem continues. We grasp for descriptions of our world, but its truth eludes us and that's the point. "The secret waits for the insight/Of eyes unclouded by longing."

The lights in the massage parlor were hospital-bright. The design was Spartan, essentials only. I didn't have the silk robes or soothing piano music to which I am accustomed. For the masseur, these material things were irrelevant. His senses were unencumbered by light, so he could instead worry about inflammation in my back, and lactic acid in my calves.

After the massage was finished, my friend commented on the excruciating noises I'd produced. She was generously making space for me to be critical of the experience, which I wouldn't do — couldn't do. I struggled to find the words to describe it. I was grateful and disappointed, tense but somehow relaxed. I still don't know how to explain what happened. It was what it was.

Contact the writer at haydn@chinadaily.com.cn