Pausing touch allows for your nervous system to catch up to the sensation. Your brain will better be able to process and reflect on the experience when you can integrate the experience. 
A very common teaching in massage school is to never break connection with the person on the table. The idea is that if you break connection, the person on the table will be wondering where you went. There has been further understanding that actually giving the body & nervous system time to “catch up” to what’s happening will actually allow for a more wholistic experience.
In your session with me, I’m trying to balance the amount of pressure and sensation with the amount of moments of space or relief to integrate into a full experience. These moments are truly moments and you may not even notice them but they are there strategically.
Seeing how art and massage overlap and inform both experiences is one of my favorite and inspirational things about what I get to do as a bodyworker. You can see through this quote about music that music is what you hear but also what you don’t hear. That feeling that music gives you is not only what the musician creates but it’s what they don’t create that still moves you. The same or similar could be said for body working or manual therapies.
**Side note as I researched the quote for this blog, it was a composter Claude Debussy and a few others have then coined similar ideas. It’s beautiful how art can be connected over time.
**This was written by myself, Sara Newberry.
