What my cat sees…

At Brooklyn Body Mechanic, we keep our massage evidence-based. Let me explain what that means, starting with my cat…

Anthony, my cat, sees color. Just not the way I do.  It’s a narrower, slice of it, missing the reds and greens that you and I take for granted. He also can’t taste sweet things. No cats can. As obligate carnivores, it would be a useless trait.

But Anthony can hear a mouse three rooms away, has a sense of smell 40X more sensitive than mine, and can see in the dark like it’s nothing. In fact, if you have a cat, the primary way a cat “knows” you and maps you in their brain is by how you smell and how you sound. Their other senses take a back seat to those.

Anthony’s not experiencing a worse version of my apartment. He’s experiencing a completely different one, built entirely out of whatever his nervous system happens to pick up on.

I think about that cat more than is probably normal, because it’s basically the whole foundation of how I run this clinic.

Your brain is guessing…

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about being a human: you’re not perceiving reality.  You’re perceiving a projection of reality based on information picked up from a pretty limited set of receptors and interpreted by your brain. Oh, and your brain is also just trying its best to project what is “out there” because there is simply too much sensory information hitting it at one time to process it all. So it guesses a lot. If you were not previously aware of that fact, perhaps take some time to meditate on that later on.

Anyway.

Different species get different projections. A dog’s, a snake’s, a bat’s…none of them is the “real” one. They’re all partial. Ours included. And when we build instruments to measure things beyond the confine of our senses: microscopes, telescopes, whatever, we’re still building them with human brains, asking human questions, looking for things shaped like what we already expect to find. The tools are made by our nervous systems and thus inherit their limits. If you haven’t read Robert Anton Wilson’s Quantum Psychology, I highly recommend it.

What about Chi?

Which brings me to things like Chi. I’ll use this example because most folks at least have a cursory idea about what Chi is. I realize that I will potentially get dog-piled for this, but it is what it is.

I get asked about Chi a lot, usually by clients who’ve done acupuncture and want to know what I think.  My answer annoys basically everyone: I won’t tell you Chi doesn’t exist. I genuinely don’t know. Given everything above, the sensory blind spots, the instrument limits, etc., I’m not in a position to rule anything out.  

Same goes for God, for that matter. I call myself an atheist because it’s a convenient label and my honest best guess leans that way, but if you want to get technical, I’m agnostic. I don’t deal in absolutes, because the universe runs on probabilities, not binaries, so I can’t call myself an atheist in good faith.

So how does a guy who won’t rule out Chi (or Magick, or God(s), or Flying Spaghetti Monsters)  – and knows arguably too much about the Thoth Tarot – run a hands-on clinic without it turning into a free-for-all?

Simple policy, and it’s the one thing I am rigid about: if I can’t observe it or measure it in a way that actually changes what I do with my hands, it doesn’t come through the clinic door. It doesn’t matter how compelling the idea is, how long it’s been around, or how many people swear by it. Believe whatever you want to believe on your own time, that’s yours, and I’m not going to argue you out of it. But “I believe X” and “X is something I should base your treatment plan on” are two completely different sentences, and only one of them happens in this room.

This isn’t me being dismissive. It’s closer to the opposite. I take the unprovable stuff seriously enough to admit I can’t rule it out, and I take your body seriously enough not to bet your treatment on something I can’t test. Claiming anything directly causes a specific outcome, with no way to measure or falsify that claim, isn’t really a testable statement, it’s a belief wearing a lab coat. I can hold space for the belief, nd I do… I just can’t hold space for it in a treatment plan.

This is honestly the same standard I apply to the stuff that sounds more clinical, too — trigger points, fascia (don’t get me started on this), K-Tape, whatever technique is trending this year. Sounding scientific doesn’t automatically make something measurable, and being unconventional doesn’t automatically make it wrong. The question is always the same: can we observe this, can we measure it, and does it change what I actually do to help your shoulder stop screaming at you. If yes, it’s a tool. If no, it’s a philosophy. Interesting, maybe even true, but it stays outside.

People sometimes want more certainty from me than that. I get it.  it’s more comforting to hear “yes, definitely” than “probably not, but I can’t say for sure.” I’d rather be honest with you than confident and wrong. That’s the deal here: an open mind about what might be out there, and a hard line about what’s allowed to guide your care.

If you’ve ever wondered why I have a habit of answering a question with “well, it depends” instead of a clean yes or no, this is why. It’s not a dodge. It’s the whole philosophy, working as intended.

Got a question about something you’ve heard works, or heard doesn’t? Ask me next time. I promise I won’t make fun of you…just know that, more often than not, it depends.