Dolphin Address 4
February 3th 2005
In the previous episode I described the Dorn method as a considerable refinement of the care that I took for my spine by waterwing and monofin for many years. Just for a moment it looked like this could now be motorized.
Yesterday I had to be somewhere else, but happened to see a nude to the bone in a chance shop window. As I made a rather abundant acquaintance with spinal cords these last few weeks, my attention peaked. This one boosted an apparent high-tech bed with built-in massage. A Korean gentleman thought I flattened my nose on the glass, opened the door and invited me in. I declined with self made Asian grace and restricted myself to accepting the leaflet version.
That evening Verena said her mother had told her about this massage method and that every visitor that went there with a blanket and a sheet could get a free treatment for about 40 minutes. Only did she not know the address. Now we did.
Curiosity is wasted on us, so the next morning we entered the already overcrowded room that housed a sit-in for guidance and a kind of emergency hospital setting for the massage experience. After we were impregnated with the benevolence of the machine and repeatedly were urged to enthusiast applause and the chanting of the firms name all forty of us were allowed to lie down.
Maybe my expectations were simply too high. A composition of jade balls would take care of acupressure, meanwhile rendering healing warmth, relaxing the muscles, correcting the spinal column, unravel the central nerve system and I would not have been surprised if it would also lead to better sex.
Once I lay down I had to press a button that was indicated to me by a Korean lady. I did not like that very much. A kind of heated trolley started to drive into my back quite alarmingly. At once I flashed back to that massage chair on the third floor of book giant Easons in Dublin . Some years ago I had the worst pain squeezed out of my lower back there a few times. But there I was sitting nearly straight up, the force coming from the sides and with plenty escape.
Here my whole bodyweight was the force that addressed the torture cart. The linear trajectory that it bullydozered along was in nerve-racking contrast to the fingertip touch detection of the smallest of deviations of a far from always straight spine, as the Dorn method advocates. I thought about the exuberant propagandiste who just told us by anecdote that one had to lay upon this thing everyday and that some people even bought a second one for their holiday home for just not having to be without. It seemed pretty addictive to me.
For the last 10 minutes we turned to our stomach. Not with the rejuvenated dash that one would expect. During the belly massage I wondered what was the good of all this. Why do people let themselves tormented for a result that is merely propaganda? Do they believe it works better when it hurts? Do they want to be the hostage of their own healing? In that case they can be served promptly by their bank account as well, as this ill/usion costs as much as 2.400 Euro’s. I think you could better buy fish oil shares for that.
Jan Ploeg, Berlin, February 3th 2005
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