No I couldn't feel it. I just happened to have a partner with good arms so I could pretty much rough out where the muscle went to a point. But actually feeling the bony protrusion? Umm...no. But fast forward a month or so and I'm sitting on the couch holding my forearm and rotating it back and forth. Brent looks over, "What are you doing?" "Feeling my interosseous membrane." "Of course you are."
By the time I graduated I could not only find the deltoid tuberosity I could feel it. I could also feel the texture to your bones. We think of them as smooth and almost polished but they aren't. They are rough and bumpy and yours feel different than mine. And if you ever had a break the area where the bones knitted together feels totally different than the space around it. I could feel where in your muscle the fibers weren't releasing. And I could feel it release when I massaged you. I could feel how deeply that scar tissue on your arm went. And I knew how to soften it up so the skin would move more freely. I could tell when you walked by me what you were going to tell me hurt. And hopefully when you got off the table and left I could see a difference.
Now a few years later and I've lost most of that sensitivity. The nerve endings that grew in response to need have receded. The veins in my hands aren't so pronounced because I don't demand the work out of them any more that I did so they don't need to the blood supply they used to. It would take me awhile to build back up that level of touch sense. And it would take awhile to build back up the knowledge level I had. I've forgotten most of my origins and insertions. Almost all of my theory is gone. Because I don't use it anymore. That's what happens. We keep what we focus on and the rest fades back away.
But sometimes it comes back in weird ways. Brent and I were watching True Detective last night and there is a scene where Matthew McConaughey is wearing a wife beater t-shirt. You get a long shot of him walking away and all I could think was...
He has great deltoids. And not in a he's hot sort of way, just in an appreciation of the muscle itself sort of way. Which is what it was like when I was still in practice. The way you look at the human body shifts. One of my instructors said after massage school there are things that are ruined for you. Like looking at an attractive person. Because all you do is look at the muscles or the posture or the odd way they are carrying their left shoulder you bet that they have a trigger point in their trap that needs work....
And after admiring Mr. McConaughey's deltoids I realized I haven't lost all of my schooling.
Or at least that's what I plan on telling Brent when we are in Hawaii and I'm admiring the surfer boys...
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