As I experienced four surgeries, six emergency room visits and five hospitalizations over the past 15 months, in three different countries and a cruise ship medical center, I noticed some pretty universal things about how nurses go about their work. Things that massage therapists, and indeed all healers, should take note of.

During that time, I’ve had nurses wash me, including my genitals. I’ve had many IV’s inserted in my hand and arm. I had a line fished into a vein in my upper arm till it reached my heart and wore that for a week nonstop, then it was pulled out. I had a nurse fill my bladder by pumping sterile water into the end of my catheter while holding my penis, until my bladder was full, then remove the catheter, to insure I could empty my bladder without it. I’ve had dozens of tubes of blood drawn. And I got a unit of someone else’s. Many, many injections, a few quite painful. Over that time, owing to the effect surgery and inflammation has on my prostate, I’ve had nine Foley catheters inserted… and removed. I had a tube running through my nose, into my skull and down into my stomach, and had that pulled out rather unceremoniously. I’ve had a 10 inch incision down the middle of my abdomen cleaned and redressed repeatedly, then had the stitches removed. I’ve had a colostomy bag and the adhesive disk changed and had my protruding colon cleaned repeatedly. I’ve had the deep open wound, left by the colostomy after reversal surgery, manually cleaned, probed and dressed, over and over. I’ve had a nurse present with me in the shower washing me head to toe while managing my catheter bag, IV and wound dressings. I’ve had the nurse ask me not to flush the toilet so she could look at my “poop.”

During all this, the nurses did something that I find many massage therapists simply can’t understand, much less emulate. They were “matter of fact about matters of fact.”

Was that all just “Too Much Information?” If you find yourself cringing at such things, try to figure out why. Most of those reasons will be your internal emotional limits. These can sometimes masquerade as ‘boundaries,’ but they have nothing to do with boundaries. They are more often about evading our deepest fears. Understanding and clearing these limitations free us as human beings and allow us to connect with compassion in the only way humans have ever been able to help one another heal.

Being “matter of fact about matters of fact” helps your clients, in their vulnerable state, to feel safe, to quiet their anxieties, particularly their anxieties about their body. I put this in quotes because this is precisely the discipline and mindset we use when teaching Trauma Resolution for clients with PTSD, Depression and Anxiety, clients with old embedded trauma of virtually every kind and clients with extensive sexual trauma. My working partner and trauma mentor, Teresa Descilo, coined this succinct description of how to project safety and strength in working with traumatized individuals. It arises from her over 30 years of work in Trauma. Yet, it works in most every situation, with most every client. It is powerfully reassuring.

These nurses would precede what they were to do with a short factual explanation, state that they needed to do this, and then get consent with a simple “ok?” They didn’t talk any more than necessary. They got right to it, did it and got it over with. They did it with straight faces, no wrinkled noses, or raised eyebrows. They were full of compassion. They knew how vulnerable I was, how uncomfortable, how painful many of the experiences were, and how very exposed I was. They knew that if it seemed my reality was making them uncomfortable, it would increase my suffering, rather than diminish it. By projecting confidence, competence, and treating me, not as broken and fragile, but as resilient and strong, they helped me to tolerate an enormous number of frankly unspeakable things, that it turned out, were absolutely necessary.

If you’re wondering how this applies to massage therapists, who never need to do invasive procedures, which are not within their legal scope of practice, allow me to explain. When we approach a client with the assumption that they are fragile, vulnerable or afraid, we project a lack of safety. We do this even while we contort ourselves and the session to continually reassure the client. Even as we check in with them, ad nauseum, to insure they are “ok,” we create a session where they can’t possibly be ok. All this coddling, interrupting, and anxiety on the part of the therapist is highly triggering to the client. It ruins the session for them. It makes them wonder if they are, in fact, safe because the therapist doesn’t seem at all sure. Sometimes the therapist seems quite anxious that what they are doing might actually harm the client.

Many of the best teachers I’ve studied with have said and illustrated, repeatedly, that our presence and attention to the body, quite literally at hand, is the best way to intuitively provide what is needed, and to do no harm.

Constantly chattering to the client, not only increases their anxiety and draws their attention out of their body, making them less able to give you useful feedback on how they are receiving the work, it also distracts you, at the time when you should be most mindful and conscious. When you’re in your head, anxious, or even merely concerned about your ability to provide a safe experience, your awareness is far from the parts of your body and theirs that would insure that you can provide a safe and healing experience.

So take a lesson from nurses. No matter what you’re doing, or for whom, seat your skill set firmly, know your job, internalize that skill set, until you can be matter of fact, about matters of fact. Allow your certainty and deeply embedded skills to project a calming safety over your client. In this state, they will better receive whatever work you offer, and achieve the greatest possible benefit from it. This is just one aspect of projecting safety, which is no less than a superpower.

When we project safely, the client shifts from an external focus to an internal focus. They move out of the “monkey mind” and into their body, a place most are barely familiar with. Their sympathetic nervous system and its armada of powerful but destructive neurotransmitters stands down. The parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for repair, maintenance and healing, steps up and goes deep, often deeper that the client has ever experienced. In this state they are much more receptive to whatever treatment you are offering. They may even experience altered states of consciousness, undergo profound realizations, or have epiphanies about patterns, decisions and behaviors that don’t serve them. You can’t and you shouldn’t suggest, advise or counsel regarding these things. You are not the client. Your life and body are different from theirs. But as a massage therapist, in projecting safety, you often introduce your client to their body and for the very first time in their lives, they may access its incredible wisdom and counsel.

You are not a mechanic and the client is not a machine. A human being is arguably the most complex self-regulating system the universe has ever devised. A human being and the body that allows them to experience life should inspire awe and reverence. Just as you can’t touch without being touched, you can’t separate the body from the psyche, you can’t treat one without impacting the other.