The First Time I Was Truly Oiled

On abhyanga, and the strange relief of being nourished…

I don't remember exactly what I was expecting. Something efficient, perhaps. Something that would help.

I had been practicing massage therapy for a many years when I first received a proper abhyanga. Not the watered-down version — the full traditional treatment. Warm sesame oil. Two hands. No agenda other than the body itself.

What I didn't expect was how quickly I would start to cry.

Not from pain. Not from emotion I could name. Something else — something that happened beneath the level of story. It was as if the oil itself was asking a question the rest of my life had been too loud to hear.

The body had been waiting. I just hadn't slowed down enough to notice.

Abhyanga is an ancient Ayurvedic practice. The word itself means 'oil massage,' but that translation does it a disservice. In the classical texts, it is described as one of the most important practices for longevity — not because it relaxes you, though it does that too, but because it speaks directly to the dhatus, the deep tissues, and through them to the nervous system itself.

The warmth of the oil carries the herbs inward. The rhythm of the strokes — long, continuous, unhurried — communicates something that words cannot. It is not fixing the body. It is listening to it.

I have thought about that first session many times since. About how much I had been operating from the neck up. How disconnected I had become from the signals my body was sending — the tightness across my chest, the way my shoulders lived somewhere near my ears, the persistent low hum of doing too much for too long.

The oil went in. And something in me went quiet.

I have been working with abhyanga ever since — both giving it and receiving it. I understand now that what happened in that first session was not unusual. The body, given enough warmth, enough sustained attention, enough of the specific intelligence that traditional oils carry, does what it already knows how to do.

It returns.

Abhyanga is available at Soma as The Classic session. Ninety minutes. Warm organic sesame oil. No agenda but the body.

In vibrant health!

Natalie