Double the Pleasure

5C Massage Club

Lauren Eckler / Claremont Student

By Serena Larkin
Staff Writer

It’s 4:30 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon. The room is poorly lit. Hands roam curiously over neglected body parts, mimicking techniques just observed in an instructional video. Partners engage in an intimate dialogue with their hands, eyes, and words:

“Mmmmmmmmm…”

“How’s that?”

“Yeah, right there . . . harder . . . harder . . .”

“Like this?”

“A little more pressure . . . that’s greeeeaaaaaat.”

I know what’s running through your mind. This scene can really only suggest one thing:  Massage Club. 

Yet this is no ordinary massage club. This is a massage club with a heart, as its origins would suggest. Pomona sophomore Ian Sawyer started this club after running a successful fundraiser last semester. When the Pakistan earthquake hit, he decided to combine his casual interest in massage therapy with his deep concern for the victims of recent natural disasters to create a new style of fundraising - offering cheap and quick massages to students wanting to donate to relief organizations.

Ian approached Ty Ramsower, Director of Health Education Outreach (HEO), about the idea. (Ty has been a certified massage therapist for thirteen years, having initially entered the practice to volunteer with the terminally ill when he realized “what a difference touch makes in someone’s life.”) Ty helped Ian by holding a training session for those who wished to volunteer at the benefit and lending Ian the use of HEO’s massage table and chair.

Ian recognized the difficulty in giving to numerous distant causes, so he decided to combat campus-wide empathy fatigue with what he realized was an invaluable resource: the 100% free power of touch. He asked a mere five dollars for each ten-minute massage and, in just five hours, he raised $200 to donate toward quake relief.

Ian liked the idea of “being able to give something that doesn’t cost money.” This semester, he hopes to establish the club with a two-fold purpose. First, members will learn the basics of various massage techniques under the instruction and guidance of Ty Ramsower. Members can choose to stop there and simply use their massage knowledge for personal purposes, or they can participate in the secondary purpose of the club - the volunteer side. Ian plans to hold club classes every other week and massage fundraisers on the weeks in between. The money collected from donors will go to different on-campus organizations, helping to raise awareness about various causes and remind students of how they can get actively involved.

The ingenuity of Ian’s plan lies in both the immediate and delayed gratification benefits for all involved. The sequence of benefits is as follows: The masseuse gives the massage and enjoys the warm fuzzies that result from volunteering. The donor drops an Abe Lincoln in a jar and acquires vast satisfaction from the masseuse’s skillful hands. Then Ian runs the collection jar to the appropriate campus organization, which is both grateful for the publicity and knowledgeable about how to spend the donation best. Finally, the money reaches its ultimate destination, whether it’s a community of quake survivors, Katrina victims, or famine sufferers. Of course, there exists the overarching fulfillment for all those who partake of Massage Club’s volunteer efforts or services of having assisted a far-off community in need.

Several of the club’s members joined up just for that reason.  Amy Kahn, a Pitzer first-year, said, “I joined Massage Club for the volunteer options it would open up for me.” Jenna Goodward, a Scripps senior, joked that she wanted to “spread the love.” More seriously, she added, “I like the idea of being able to simultaneously make people happy both right here in Claremont and elsewhere in the world.” On the other hand, Aaron Hosansky, a Pomona first-year, joined Massage Club simply to have “massage knowledge in life,” as he believes it is “something good to know.”

Ty Ramsower agrees with Aaron. He wholeheartedly supports Massage Club’s philanthropic intentions, but he adds that it is just as important to know about massage for oneself. Citing the 2005 National College Health Assessment Survey taken on campus last year, he remarked, “Stress is the number one academic impediment at Claremont. Massage not only offers stress reduction, but also eases, for example, muscle tension, back pain, and congestion.” He reaffirmed the real power that touch has to heal, calm, or stimulate a person.

Ty urges anyone who is interested in massage to head over to HEO even if they can’t make the meeting times. Periodically, he holds workshops to instruct students in stress-reducing massage therapy. Students can also borrow from a variety of books on massage technique. In addition, the HEO office suite contains a room with a high-tech massage chair, CD player, and television, which students can reserve for a given amount of time. (Trust this writer’s diligent research: the massage chair is brilliant.)