Maria Ghetti
I came to Amsterdam from Italy with plans. For years I built something real: a career in photography, a city I had chosen, a life that looked exactly like what I'd wanted. Then the pandemic arrived. The magazine closed. My GP placed me on sick leave with burnout. I tried everything. And still I was stuck.
The exhaustion was heavy, like a coat that never came off. I was just waiting to come back. Not knowing if I would.
One day I tried Thai Yoga Massage. I didn't expect much. The therapist worked slowly, with full presence. I cried. Something that had been clenched inside me for months let go like a fist, slowly opening. When I sat up, I felt something I hadn't felt in almost a year. Present. A quiet aliveness I had forgotten was possible.
I went back. I enrolled in the ITM school not to become a therapist, just to understand what was happening in my body. And somewhere in that process, I didn't just recover. I healed. Fundamentally. It was the consistency of touch that did it. The body, repeatedly, being told: you are safe. You can rest.
Less than a year later, I opened a small home salon. The people who came were young, depleted, disconnected, many on sick leave, waiting months for support. They were me, eighteen months earlier. I kept asking: why are there so many of us? And why are we all trying to recover alone?
Here is something I've come to understand: massage has become a political act. When you are in pain, when stress has narrowed your world to its edges, you are not fully free. You cannot think clearly. You cannot choose with confidence. Vulnerability is something that can be exploited, and often is. We sit for hours, something our bodies have only been asked to do for fifty years. We stare at screens. We are lonely. We have forgotten what it feels like to inhabit ourselves.
Regular touch doesn't just reduce stress; it restores us to our bodies, and to each other. At a time when governments cut healthcare to fund war, caring for our physical selves can no longer wait for the system's permission. We have to start doing it ourselves. Together.
Maria
