Physical World
The scene of TV writer Burt Pearl’s first chair massage is a stuffy office suite in Studio City. The windows look out on languishing pines and palms; the bookcases are stacked with a multi-volume edition of the Bible on videocassette and treatises on Christianity and seraphim. A file cabinet is coronated by the 1995 “Faith and Values Award,” honoring the television series Pearl works for, “Touched By an Angel.”
Moving toward a portable chair that resembles an ergonomically correct Puritan stocks, certified massage therapist Jill May provides the stage directions. “What you’re going to do,” she instructs Pearl, “is, you’re going to sit up in the chair, with your feet up like this, and I’ll adjust this part to your height. You’re like . . . ?”
“Six-two,” Pearl laughs his booming laugh. “A strapping fella.”
“A strapping fella indeed,” May agrees.
“I have a script shooting right now,” Pearl says. “So this is good timing.”
Pearl sinks his face into the padded horseshoe of the chair’s headrest until only his nose is visible. His big arms, bent at the elbows, jut straight ahead upon a horizontal shelf. With fingers, elbows and forearms, May leans into Pearl’s back like a fencer in a lunge, penetrating past the thick material of his corduroy shirt, always applying pressure from her hips and knees. Then onto the other common points of writerly stress: the cramped shoulders and neck, the fingers tortured by too much typing of spiritual television.
May has been a massage therapist for a decade; she diversified into chair massage six years ago. She studied under San Francisco-based David Palmer, the designer of the first massage chair in 1986, who teaches workshops worldwide on the modified semi-upright shiatsu techniques. At 15 minutes, as opposed to the usual hourlong full-body session, chair massage cultivates a clientele with limited money and free time. Flinging the collapsible chairs by the shoulder strap, therapists have staked out fresh massage territories like farmer’s market shopping malls, airports, street fairs, corporate offices and supermarkets.
In a culture still squeamish about the moral implications of full-body manipulation--in Los Angeles, the profession is licensed under the category of “adult entertainment”--chair massage presents a chaste, fully clothed alternative. It targets work-related stress, which is conveniently confined to the upper body. During Pearl’s massage, May does not venture anywhere near the legs or loins.
While the demure, value-priced lures of chair therapy have contributed to the growing popularity of massage, May sees some larger rationales, “We are in the infomation age,” she says, “and people are more insular, more isolated and maybe less in touch with their own physicality. Most of us live in our heads now. We’re like talking heads--that was such a great name for that group! And massage is a way back to the root of our being, back inside of ourselves, into our bodies.”
Head reddened but beaming, back and arms newly unknotted, Burt Pearl fairly floats away from his angelic session.
“I feel opened up,” he gushes. “I had been so stressed out for the last two weeks with this script in prep and starting to shoot. And, actually, I feel better than I’ve felt in two weeks. I feel--tingly.”
“Mm-hmm,” May approves. “That’s the circulation moving into areas it hasn’t been in for a while.”
“Like my brain,” Pearl says, laughing his booming laugh.