Is there a person who has been in the hospitality industry for more than 10 years without suffering from low back pain, neck pain, various bone pains, varicose veins, etc.? Well, I’m not spared from that either! 20 years in the kitchen, non-stop on my feet, a large number of working hours, improper lifting of crates blah blah blah rewarded me with lower back pain, which was diagnosed 2 years ago due to a damaged disc. And so without much further dramatization, this week I was roaring with pain and insomnia (a rare case that it is because of pain and not because of exes), I decided to go to a masseur who happened to be in the hotel at this time.
In short, Manuel, Spanish, 58 years old, petite, thin, dropped out of school because he considers the school system manipulative, did not get vaccinated because it is a big lie to control humanity, antennas, round and flat earth and similar views, spent several years with someone a shaman in Peru, who taught him everything. Basically, he comes to Switzerland 3 times a year to the hotel where I work, stays for about 10 days and gives a massage. I received information that he was coming, but I was not interested until my colleague told me that he is not a typical masseur, but also a bioenergetic, a shaman and all sorts of other things and that he is very good. The back was already really killing and Manuel was the last option before the doctor.
After an introduction to cigarettes and a monologue about vaccinations, the school system, the flat earth and antennas, we went to the massage room. I informed him that I had an MRI done 2 years ago and that they found a discopathy that was not suitable for surgery, but that I needed to exercise. Yeah, right! Like any typical Balkan, I exercised for 5 days until the pain subsided! He played spiritual music from his cell phone and after washing his hands for a long time, he put his hands on my head and held it like that for a few minutes, then on my neck, and then he started palpating the spine, muttering all the time. Jesus Christ!!! Dude KILLED me! The massage consisted of pressing certain muscles, accompanied by excruciating pain and jumping from the shoulders to the lower part of the spine, then to the neck, then to the head and then to the upper part of the spine, each part ended with a jerk of the hand or a snapping of the fingers, and each of my groans in pain accompanied muttering in a deep voice yes, yes, yes, yes or sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, or mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm or MRI, MRI, MRI, MRI sneering….??? Probably alluding to going to the doctor as a failure since he has never been to a doctor, as he says. Tears flow to my eyes from the pain, the tingling is so strong in my hands and fingers that it hurts, my face is covered in sweat, everyone repeats breathe, breathe, breathe, and the pain is so bad that you can’t even breathe. Every time it crossed my mind that the massage would last an hour and a half, I felt even more sick. He squeezed every possible muscle on my body: from my back, neck, face, hands, legs, feet, hips, fingers… Everything! I turn on my back…barely…he starts to pull my neck while simultaneously pressing the point under the chest, holds it for about 10 seconds, then presses on the stomach and then lets go. He covered me with a blanket and went to wash his hands and left. That’s what I heard, because I couldn’t open my eyes. I lay there for about 15 minutes with the occasional urge to vomit, then it passes, tingling in the whole body. Somehow I got up, weak that I couldn’t be weaker, I see that it all took 2 hours, took a cold shower to come to my senses, got dressed and went back to work without the ability to think.
Bottom line: Manuel killed me to the point where everything hurt more than my back, a few lumps on my body, and generally feeling great. He repeated to me several times that I have to stretch every morning (the physiotherapist told me the same thing 2 years ago after seeing the MR scan), meditate and shower every day! Shower everyday??? Well, that’s normal, isn’t it? But it was clearer to me when I remembered that I was in Switzerland, and this is not the practice of most Swiss people. Today I did stretching, meditating… I don’t know how to do it, so let’s see how long it will take for a typical Balkan man.
