在按摩牀上打開心靈的結

My first session with Ann E. began as they all would: I stood against a wall wearing only a sports bra and underwear while she stood against the opposite wall, looking me over. She had me face north, south, east and west, and each time her eyes seemed to be tracing invisible lines down my body.

第一次接受安·E(Ann E.)按摩時，和所有治療一樣：我先是隻穿着運動胸衣和短褲，靠牆站着，她則靠着對面的一堵牆站着，看着我。她讓我分別面朝東西南北四個方向，每一次，她的眼睛都像是循着一些看不見的線條，審視我的身體。

Being with Ann E. feels a little like being in psychotherapy, except you’re usually lying on a massage table in your underwear. It costs about the same for a session, although it lasts a lot longer and she doesn’t care if you doze through most of it.

和她在一起，感覺有點像是在接受心理治療，不過你通常都是穿着內衣，躺在按摩臺上。每次按摩的收費也和心理治療相近，不過她的時間要長得多，而且她也不介意你大部分時間都在打瞌睡。

Settled on her table that first day, I explained to her that I’d had many intractable physical problems in the last several years, the most recent being a pain in my knee that no medical professional could make heads or tails of. I couldn’t sit cross-legged on the floor or rise up out of a full squat, and I’d feel a sharp stab whenever I slipped that leg into my jeans. Some yoga practitioners that my husband knew had recommended I see her about this.

第一天，在按摩臺上躺好後，我向她描述了過去幾年身體上出現的許多難治的毛病。就在前不久，我一條腿的膝蓋疼，卻沒有哪位醫學專業人士知道是怎麼回事。我沒法盤腿坐在地上，也不能從全蹲的姿勢站起來。每當要穿牛仔褲的時候，那條腿都會感到一陣鑽心的痛。我丈夫認識的一些練瑜伽的人，建議我來找她。

After I’d spent 30 minutes on the table, Ann E. still hadn’t attended to my knee.

我在按摩臺上躺了30分鐘後，安·E依然沒有管那隻膝蓋。

She hadn’t so much as looked at it. In fact, she didn’t even touch me. She just held her open palm a few inches from my body — first at my hip, then my feet, then my other hip, then at the top of my head — and I became so relaxed I fell fast asleep in the middle of her talking to me.

她甚至連看都沒看它一眼，也根本沒接觸我的身體。她只是把打開的手掌放在離我身體幾英寸的地方——先是髖關節，然後是腳，再然後是另一邊髖關節，最後是頭頂——我變得非常放鬆，以致於在她和我說話期間睡着了。

I barely woke up as she started pressing her finger into my C-section scar. “What are you doing?” I asked her.

在她開始把手指伸向我剖腹產留下的傷疤時，我勉強醒來。“你在幹嘛？”我問她。

“Releasing fascia,” she said. Fascia is a connective tissue throughout our bodies that acts like webbing, keeping our innards where they’re supposed to be.

“放鬆筋膜，”她回答。筋膜是一種結締組織，遍佈我們的全身，像網兜一樣把內臟固定在它們應該在的地方。

As she pressed on my scar, Ann E. talked to me about my body in a way I wouldn’t really come to understand for many months, but which I could experience the effects of right then and there. She used one or two fingers, touching my torso gently until she felt something release, then she’d move her fingers an inch or two to a new spot and press gently there.

在按壓那處傷疤時，她和我談論起了我的身體。她那種說話方式，我在後來很長一段時間都無法真正理解，但它的效果，我卻是當場就感受到了。她用一根或兩根手指輕輕按壓我身體的軀幹部分，直到覺得什麼東西放鬆了。然後，她會把手指移開一兩英寸，換到另一個地方，繼續輕輕按壓。

I didn’t know what I should expect from this subtle prodding, but it wasn’t for my lungs to inflate like balloons. As Ann E. worked, my breath deepened, my lungs filling as they never had. “My breath just completely changed,” I said.

當時，我不知道應該期待這種微妙的按壓會有什麼效果，但肯定沒想到它會讓我的肺像氣球那樣膨脹起來。在她按壓時，我呼吸加深，肺變得從未有過的充盈。“我的呼吸完全變了，”我說。

“Yeah, I just created some real estate in your torso so your lungs are less constricted,” she said.

“是的，我剛在你的體內開闢出了一些空間，這樣你的肺就舒展了，”她說。

Now she had my attention.

這時，我開始重視她了。

Although I have spent about three decades — nearly my entire adult life — in talk therapy, I have always felt fundamentally unfixable.

儘管在幾乎整個成年生活的30年時間裏，我一直在接受談話治療，但我總覺得自己的問題無法從根本上治癒。

My longest therapy stint started in my late 20s. I was always sort of unhappy, but went to a therapist specifically to stop smoking cigarettes and to leave my job. At the end of six years, I was still at the same job and still smoking. Then, my company closed and I got pregnant, so my job ended and I quit cigarettes. But I don’t think I really changed at all.

快到30歲時，我開始了最漫長的一段治療。那時，我總是有些不開心，去看這名治療師卻只是爲了戒菸並辭職。我接受了六年的治療，卻依然幹着同一份工作，也依然在抽菸。後來，我所在的公司倒閉，我也懷孕了。於是，我不再幹這份工作，也戒了煙。但我覺得自己並沒有真正改變。

I had always been skeptical of anything too “alternative,” until about eight years ago, when I first started to see the connections between mind and body. I’d been referred to a psychologist to deal with back pain. But even that experience, despite eliminating the distress in my back, felt like more of the same — we sat across from each other, I told my story, I talked about my “feelings,” I cried.

我總是對特別“偏門”的替代療法持懷疑態度，直到八年前開始看到身體與心靈之間的關聯。當時，有人介紹我去找一名心理醫生治療背痛。那段治療經歷儘管消除了我背部的疼痛，但感覺也大同小異——我們面對面坐着，我講述自己的經歷，談論自己的“感受”，我還哭了。

I could have gone on like that for years, just as I had with other therapists, because no matter what I said, or how I looked at my story, the emotional pain always felt fresh and new. I felt stuck.

那樣的治療我本來可能會持續多年，就像我接受的其他治療一樣，因爲不管我說什麼，不管我如何看待自己的經歷，精神上的痛苦永遠歷久彌新。我覺得自己被困住了。

After pressing on my C-section scar, Ann E. moved around the table to my right shoulder. I had injured this shoulder twice. It took almost a year for the first injury to heal and then eight months later I reinjured it, leaving me in such discomfort I had to prop my arm with pillows when I drove. After doctor visits and months of physical therapy, the pain was gone, but I no longer had full range of motion.

在按壓了我的剖腹產疤痕後，安·E繞過桌子來到我的右肩。這隻肩膀傷過兩次。第一次受傷用了將近一年才恢復，八個月後我又把它弄傷了，留下了很嚴重的不適感，導致我開車的時候都要用枕頭撐着手臂。經過醫生的診治和好多個月的理療，疼痛消失了，但我的這隻手臂再也不能全幅度運動了。

I hadn’t told Ann E. any of this. I’d told her only about my knee, which she continued to ignore.

這些我一點也沒跟安·E提起過。我只對她說了膝蓋，而她一直無視膝蓋的問題。

“Don’t touch me there,” I said as she approached my shoulder. “It makes me uncomfortable even having you near it.”

“別碰那裏，”我對正在靠近肩膀的她說。“光是接近它都會讓我感覺不舒服。”

Yet ever so gently, she slid one hand under my shoulder and then even more gently, laid her other hand on top of it, holding it as lightly as you would a baby bird, and in an instant I was sobbing uncontrollably.

然而她的一隻手還是滑到了我的肩膀下，前所未有地輕柔，隨後放在肩膀上面的另一隻手還要更輕柔。她的雙手就像捧一隻小鳥一樣，輕輕捧着肩膀，剎那間，我難以自制地啜泣了起來。

What she was doing did not hurt and there was no sadness — or any specific feeling — attached to the crying. Tears streamed from my eyes, and my chest heaved. It went on like that for maybe five minutes, and then the crying stopped suddenly and completely, as if it had never happened at all.

她的動作並沒有導致疼痛，而哭泣也無關傷感——或任何其他具體的感受。淚水從眼中流淌出來，我的胸口起伏有致。這樣的情況保持了大概五分鐘，而後哭泣突然而徹底地停止了，彷彿什麼都沒發生過。

And without moving a muscle, I could tell that my shoulder had changed.

雖然一動未動，我已經能感覺到肩膀不一樣了。

Ann E. refers to her work as “unwinding” and likens the process to taking apart a big ball of tangled necklaces. Each tangle has come about through some emotional or physical injury from which our body has attempted to heal. But the body compensates in areas where it is weak, and those compensations turn into habits. The pain we feel is largely due to a once efficient system no longer working the way it should.

安·E稱她的工作是“鬆解”，就像是解開一團纏繞在一起的項鍊。每一個結都是某些情感或身體的傷痛留下的，而我們的身體已經嘗試過去治癒它。但身體會在一些弱的區域進行補償，這些補償又會變成習慣。很多時候，我們感覺疼痛，是因爲一個曾經高效的系統，已經不能再像往常那樣運轉了。

When Ann E. presses into fascia that has become gummed up like glue, holding parts of our insides where they don’t rightly belong, her touch somehow “dissolves” the gooeyness and allows the fascia to revert to its original light, fluffy nature. With each of these releases, the “necklace tangle” loosens and our bodies can start to sort out the mess that has been accumulating for so many years.

筋膜像膠水一樣，把我們體內一些本不在一起的部位粘在一起。當安·E按壓筋膜時，她的觸碰以某種方式“溶解”了粘滯感，讓它恢復到原本輕盈而鬆軟的狀態。隨着每一次的鬆弛，“項鍊結”解開了，在我們體內淤積多年的困擾得到梳理。

As I discovered on that first day, she rarely works where the pain is. She says that the body provides her a map of where it’s really hurting, pulling, stagnant, frozen, and she starts there, unfurling one little piece of the necklace ball, so that the body can begin its own organic process of unwinding itself back to health.

她很少去直接處理疼痛的地方，這是我從第一天就發現了的。她說身體給了她一張地圖，上面註明了真正疼、扯、滯、僵的地方在哪裏。她會從那些地方下手，解開一個個小項鍊結，好讓身體自行開始鬆解的有機過程，恢復到健康狀態。

My shoulder was not the only area that incited sobbing. This would happen many times, with other parts of my body, during my work with Ann E. Every episode came on the same way: I suddenly felt very vulnerable, almost unbearably so, and then the tears came, completely devoid of emotion, and then they stopped, leaving me feeling as if I were suddenly freed of something.

我的肩膀並非唯一一個促使我哭泣的區域。在接下來與安·E的合作中，還會出現很多次，事關身體的其他部位。每一次都是這樣：我突然感到自己很脆弱，幾乎難以承受，然後眼淚就下來了，完全不帶感情，然後就止住了，給我留下突然擺脫了某種東西的感覺。

What happened on that table was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I cried harder than when I was 17 and lost my father to cancer, harder than when our family dog was run over by a truck a month later, and harder than when I was dumped by my first love.

在那張按摩桌上發生的一切，都是我未曾經歷過的。我的哭泣比17歲時父親因癌症去世，比一個月後我家的狗被卡車軋死，比我被初戀拋棄，都要來得更痛徹。

But this is a body crying, not the crying of a heart.

但這是身體在哭，不是心在哭。

I’m not quite sure how to explain how the emotions become unstuck, but as with my shoulder that first day, much of my lifelong pain now feels as if it had never been there in the first place. The main thing I feel is a kind of unfamiliar optimism, along with a lot more energy — energy that, Ann E. would say, has been freed up from letting go of longstanding trauma.

我不是很清楚該如何解釋這種得到解脫的感覺，但就像第一天肩膀經歷的那樣，我的許多長年未愈的痛苦，變得好像從來就不曾存在過。我的主要感受是一種陌生的樂觀情緒，還有更加充沛的精力——用安·E的話說，這種精力是因爲放下了一些持續很久的創傷。

I continue to let Ann E. untangle me. I try to trust that she has my best interests at heart. I wrestle sometimes with how much I’m willing to let myself need her. But as I unwind, I sleep better. I breathe better. Parts of me that have hurt for years have stopped hurting. When I look in the mirror, I’m still middle-aged and my hair is still graying, but I feel able, possibly for the first time, to truly cope with life.

我繼續讓安·E幫我鬆解。我努力讓自己信任她，相信她在爲我的最大利益着想。有時我會自我搏鬥，不想讓自己太依賴她。但隨着我的鬆解，我的睡眠改善了。我的呼吸改善了。全身上下一些疼痛多年的部位不再疼了。我看着鏡中的自己，依然是那個中年人，依然漸生華髮，但我感覺到，也許是迄今以來第一次，我覺得自己能面對生活了。