Blind massage

I opened my eyes to the wonders of blind massage in Hanoi. Visually impaired people provide services in many Vietnamese spas. This expands their employment opportunities, and their worlds, helping them become more independent and gain visibility in society. 

A dear friend recommended the Omamori spa in West Lake area. One November Monday, I pedalled towards it, sedated by the balmy twilight and semi-sightless under the thick cloak of motorbike smoke. The spa was housed in a 3-storey colonial villa accessible through a narrow downhill alley. A sense of awe descended upon me once I stepped over the threshold and set my bare foot onto the glossy dark wood. 

The ground floor consisted of a reception area that led to a vast museum-like chamber. Abstract life-size oil paintings claimed their places on the wooden walls like bespoke entrances to Wonderlands. They offered hectic visual gibberish to the naked eye and could, perhaps, be fully decoded only by those equipped with inner vision. Spotlights exposed monumental floral urns and cast theatrical shadows. 

At the opposite side of the chamber, some of the therapists had gathered around a grand piano playing fragments of melancholic melodies. They appeared visibly happy, connected and at peace and at the same time, distanced and elevated. Like a vision of a host of Angels. 

My therapist was called Hoang. I shook his warm hand and looked at the empty sockets of his eyes. They seemed to conceal a deep ocean of humanity and kindness that spread behind the young man’s reserved facade. We climbed the stairs and I undressed in a modest curtained cubicle. Body sunk into the massage bed, eyes, nose and cheeks sticking out of the face hole, is if to reach another dimension, I commenced my journey with Hoang. 

He hunted down the points of tension instantaneously. I felt a weird mixture of pain and relief. Hoang massaged my body with the pressure of a tyrant, the touch of a mother and the detachment of a deity. In spite of the pain, I drifted off to a space of clarity. Halfway through the session, he rolled hot stones along my spine. They punctuated my state of ease like some kind of desert bites designed to electrify my senses. The next day, I felt renewed, confident, anxiety-free. I decided to revisit the blind massage practice and knew that I had to write about it. 

One week later, I was lucky to get Hoang assigned to treat me again. My work day had been particularly exhausting and I questioned whether the massage would manage to release me from the straightjacket of anxiety. Once again, Hoang performed the most intuitive stress exorcism I’ve ever experienced. I imagined him harpooning my tension-wrapped spirit which was constantly running ahead, and bringing it back to the body. And once again, I felt like I was seeing with my eyes closed. Eyes closed to the transactional world of people, places and things and open to a genuine world within. When the treatment finished, I sat down in the reception area and sipped tea quietly. Then I heard the soothing sound of the piano. Hoang was playing. A requiem for the departed stress. I realised that this story had written itself and hurried home to capture it. For a glimpse of a moment, the blind massage had allowed me to see.