The Biggest Basket in the World!!

If you've never seen the largest basket in the world, it's in Dresden, Ohio and is the home of the Longenberger Basket Company.

One of my friends asked me if I'd like to take a day trip to the Big Basket and give foot and leg massages on the trip back. Being a new massage student, one of our assignments was to do 15 massage sessions outside of class...it could be a foot massage, neck and shoulders, hand massage, anything but a full-body massage.
After shopping all day, she thought her friends would enjoy a relaxing foot massage, and I was thinking that I could knock out all my outside sessions in one day!

We met at Cracker Barrel at the crack of dawn (I think it was about a 4-hour bus ride). As soon as I stepped on the bus, one woman yelled "Oh, goody! sit next to me, sit next to me!" (First of all, I don't like yelling, and I especially don't like yelling at 6am). Of course I HAD to sit with her and during the entire trip she told me about her difficult pregnancy (she was 3-1/2 months pregnant, so WHY would you take a day-long bus ride?) She told me how nauseous she was and that she felt she might throw up any minute...(oh, goody!) she told me about her scoliosis and what a risk she was taking by having a baby, etc., etc., etc....no, wait! etc., etc., etc.!!

When we arrived at the Big Basket, I tried my best to distance myself from her without being rude, but she followed me around the tour, talking incessantly and buzzing around me like a gnat!

One of the things we were taught in massage class was to prepare ourselves, or "ground" ourselves before we began a massage. It could be just a simple act, for example, visualizing ourselves as a tree rooted into the ground. My "grounding" has been and still is to simply say "give me clarity and clear intent." This is just to protect ourselves from picking up a client's negative energy, and to protect the client from picking up anything we might have affecting us negatively as well.

When we boarded the bus to come home from Basketland, the little gnat buzzed, "I want to be first. I want neck and shoulders, though, not a foot massage." My thought was to get this over with as quickly as possible so I could move on to the other shoppers on the bus. WARNING! I was so anxious to shut her up that I forgot to ground myself first. As soon as I laid my hands on her, a wave of nausea ran through my entire body. I excused myself, went directly to the back of the bus and threw up! She made me physically ill! I slept the entire way home and didn't get any of my sessions done :(

I'm sure there are many of you out there that have had an encounter with someone that you physically felt either negative or (hopefully) positive energy. Sometimes it can be immediate and profound. Again, trust your instincts...they never fail you.