I appreciate your being here and am honored to have you on my table. I am grateful for you taking the time to give me so much information about your body and what you need today. I love getting feedback during the massage and am glad to make adjustments for your comfort. Now, you can quit helping me.
When I move to adjust the bolster beneath your legs and you lift your legs for me, I know you haven’t begun to relax yet.
When you raise your head as I am working on your neck, I think there must be something uncomfortable or you don’t trust me enough yet.
When I lift your arm to adjust it and you try to help and extend your arm into the air and hold it there, I know you are a helpful person and usually have the ability to realize when people need help and pitch in. I don’t need your arm up there in the air and I fault myself for not communicating clearly.
When I am working on your foot and you lift it up for me, I know you are appreciating the work however; once again I question myself and then you. “Did that tickle?” “Was it uncomfortable?” “Did you want a different pressure there?”
Laying on a massage table and allowing a Massage Therapist to work with you has got to be one of the most challenging things in this world. It requires trust, willingness and letting go. I honor that and you for being here.
“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person;
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but to pour them all out, chaff and grain together,
knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
I will move your body sometimes, lifting an arm, 
leg or head. I promise I won’t drop it. I know you have to get used to that though. I know you may have had a lot of massages where people treated you like a paper doll and massaged the front and the back, without moving anything but the drape about.
I will use different pressures in different areas for different reasons. While I hear you want deep work I am not going to barrel through the muscle causing you pain or a tear. Sometimes less is more. When you ask for medium and/or light work and you feel me sink in a little deeper it is because your body and made that so, called my hands in, relaxed underneath my fingers like a sinkhole to bring me into the tissues. I still tread gently and you can always say something to let me know if it is uncomfortable.
When I was a little girl my Dad once said to me “If you keep being so helpful I am going to have to ask you to leave”.
I won’t ask you to leave. I too, know how hard it is to relax. I won’t tell you to relax because that usually causes people more tension and stress as they TRY to relax.