D

••S c 2

Did Massage Envy Save My Life?

It begins with my life being a disaster, on the brink of going over the edge into suicide. I went to Alcoholics Anonymous because I could see that it wouldn't likely happen if I would not drink anymore and yet, I couldn't quit drinking because drinking alcohol was the most consistent reliable stress relief that I had experienced in my life.I didn't hardly know a way to really calm down, to really get some stress relief sometime without that constant rat race up in my head going, "What are you going to do next? What did he say? Can you believe she said that? What are we going to do tomorrow? Are you going to have enough money for the next day?"

Instant stress relief

I had one thought after another after another, and when I drank alcohol, "Okay, oh! Now…" It knocked me down into a simpler state of being. After three months of not drinking and going to Alcoholics Anonymous I was insane. My whole body was rigid and locked up and all I did was think, all day every day, and that's why I'd never been able to stay sober as an adult because I knew drinking would give me instant stress relief. Without drinking, I had no stress relief.Sure, there were other things that worked a little bit here and there for a few minutes, but I'm talking about the stress relief on the body level, complete and lasting stress relief. I'm grateful today that I was so insane when I went to get my first massage. I literally was split, there were two of me.One part of me wanted to just get drunk and circle a drain: "Let's just get drunk and die. That'd be a whole lot of fun on the way out and you can't handle it any other way."Yet, I was terrified of that because I knew, I had this intuition, whatever you want to call it, that to drink again for me was to die, to commit an act that would set me on a path where I couldn't avoid then taking my own life while ruining lives of others in the process.As that part of me guided me to this parking lot like, "Hey, there's a public liquor store right there, you can go."The other part of me was desperate for stress relief. I heard one day in anAlcoholics Anonymous meeting, a lady shared that, "I go get a massage and I feel so good afterwards." She must have been like 60 and at that time I didn't process that at all, but then when I got home like all by myself I said, "I need some stress relief, what I'm going to do? That old lady said a massage. All right, it was right next to the liquor store. Either way either I get drunk or go get a massage. I'm going to get some stress relief, one way or another."I ended up in a parking lot where the liquor store and the Massage Envyliterally were next to each other. I was looking at both of them wanting to do both. I wanted to get drunk and I wanted to go in and get a massage. Half of me wanted to do one thing, half of me wanted to do the other, like a good angel and a bad angel sitting there. This time I had a different experience than, "You should do this!" like you might imagine a God pointing down from Heaven, "You better obey me or else!"I had a different experience than thinking, "You better stay sober or else," I thought I understood why I was afraid to go in that liquor store. I knew because I've paid the price for it: hundreds of hangovers, sick, vomiting, thousands of stupid things, shameful things, stupid posts on Facebook at 5 in the morning, thousands of things I've suffered from alcohol.I knew why I didn't want to go in the liquor store and as I looked over at theMassage Envy, I realized that I felt the same way about it. That didn't make sense because I knew why I shouldn't go in the liquor store. I knew the predictable result I'd get out of it, more pain and suffering, but why was I equally afraid to go get a massage?That was unexpected.I thought, "Why am I afraid to do something that might help me and might not have any other consequences than spending money. That's ridiculous!"And for once, I just went in and did the right thing, I said, "Well, it's just stupid that I'm afraid of going to get a massage, I'm just going to walk and do it." What I realized as I was walking in is that I was afraid of the unknown, what would my life look like if I quit making the same stupid mistakes over and over again?What would my life look like if I tried something new?What if it actually worked?And it did.

My first massage

As I laid down for my first massage, I started focusing on my body.Now, Eckhart Tolle talks about going into the body instead of just being stuck in the head, in his book "The Power of Now" and his retreats. He's one of the top spiritual guys, I guess, in the US and has a global following. I learned how to go into the body by getting a massage. I had no idea how to go into the body, and no interest in going into the body.As the massage therapist had me lay on the table and just lay there, then she continued to push different things here, pull different things there, and rub knuckles in, I was curious and I stopped thinking, I don't know for how long, I just quit thinking for 10 or 20 minutes, and paid attention to what she was doing.I didn't comment on it or judge it the whole time, my thoughts just stopped. That's true self-relief to have a blank mind -- I said self-relief as almost a slip, I meant stress relief, but I said self-relief. It's both, it's relief from self. You see, when there's no thoughts, there's no self either. There's no me, there's no Jerry Banfield if I'm not thinking it. I'm just here. I am, I am that I am, I'm here.I have to think for there to be a me, there has to be, "Okay, what's my name? Jerry Banfield. What am I doing? What am I talking about? Okay, we're doing this podcast."I have to think for there to be me when there's no me, there's no stress. When there's not all these thoughts, there's no problem.The amazing thing after 10 or 20 minutes of stress relief, in the form of the massage, I received three original thoughts in my head. At least they felt original at the time. Up until that point, my adult life, I had had almost completely compulsive thoughts.Therefore, I was extremely defensive about what new things I would let in because I was essentially consenting to think about it for the rest of my life,"I'm going to read this book. Well, I don't want to read any new books because then I'm going to have to think about everything they said the rest of my life. I'll just keep the same old, compulsive thoughts I've got and that's who I am."I had three thoughts coming to my head about working my Alcoholics Anonymous program. After months of going I hadn't had a sponsor, I wasn't reading the book and I was only going to two meetings a week.In the middle of the massage, it was as if God spoke to me. I got three extremely clear and peaceful, but very loud thoughts, "Ask this man to be your sponsor, go to five meetings a week instead of two, and read the book." Very simple instructions like you might read in a cookbook, "Put this in the oven at this time after setting the oven and this, and get it out at this time, bam."What I experienced though, was enough cessation of thinking, enough paying attention to my body where I was able to have everything that I needed come into focus and stop all these useless compulsive thoughts, "What's going to happen to me? What do I want? What am I thinking? What did I do yesterday?"All these thoughts that are just a waste of time.

I just got a massage today!

I'm grateful that some people alongside watching my videos share comments like, "How do you do so much? You upload all these videos every day," and I spend a lot of time with my family and I go to a AA meeting every day.I spend probably two to three hours a day with my family. I go to a AA meeting, I spend an hour or so a day reading and watching video classes. I take an hour or so to walk with my dogs every day. I do what you might call a lot in a very short period of time and it's because my brain generally is not garbaged up with all these other compulsive thoughts. It's wide open. When I go to do something like this podcast episode, I step up, it rolls through and that's it. Now sure, I've had a few thoughts about it beforehand, but I didn't sit there to think, plan and live the whole thing out beforehand.I'm grateful today because I just got a massage. That's why you can see there's this round thing on my head from laying face down getting a massage.

A fantastic tool for meditating

Massage has been amazingly powerful for me since that first massage. After I walked out of that first massage, I was just shocked like, "What just happened?"I felt so much relief.Now, I didn't consciously notice this because I don't think I was hardly thinking about it. There's a funny thing when you're not thinking about things you can essentially be oblivious to what's going on.My wife said that I was way more relaxed at dinner that night and she's seen a lot of different sides of me. Then a week or two later when I realized what happened I said, "My God, I'm enlightened. I had a spiritual experience. I heard God," or however you want to put it. I reconnected with the whole.Massage for me is a fantastic tool for meditating. If you have a hard time meditating, get a massage. There's nothing like a teacher to help. If you have a good massage therapist, they're very much like a meditation teacher. If you have a massage therapist who's a lot like I was most of my adult life, they'll be trying to hurry through your massage. They won't be really paying attention to you, and you may not feel a whole lot better afterwards.Most of the massage therapist I've been to are present. They're actually paying attention to what they're doing carefully. They're with me, they teach me meditation and by now I've had 20 or 30, or maybe even 40 different massage therapists. I've had 100 of massages in the two and a half years since I got my first one.They told me that I should probably come back within a month, I came back a month later and it worked again. I thought, "My God, this is great.Then I started thinking, "Well, why get one once a month? Why not do once every two weeks?" Now, I get a massage every week. I'm thinking about doing it twice a week, but for now it seems once a week is good.For several days after getting a massage, my body feels way better. After about a week, my body starts noticeably tensing up again and it's ripe for a massage. I just get a relaxation massage normally. Although I've had some deep tissue massages. I've had lots of therapists do lots of different kind of massages.They consistently provide the stress relief. They consistently help me focus on my inner body, focus on my breathing, focus on practicing all these spiritual principles, focus on giving up my thoughts, letting go of who I am, what I'm thinking about, and just lay there and pay attention.

Did massage envy save my life?

D

Did Massage Envy Save My Life?

Instant stress relief

My first massage

I just got a massage today!

A fantastic tool for meditating