Massaged embodiment of cancer patients

This paper analyses the massaged embodiment of cancer patients and involves a poststructural approach. Poststructuralism as a methodology is used as it provides a way of seeing and understanding cancer patients' complex experience of embodiment. Massage promotes a quality of embodiment that involves well being, comfort and relaxation. However, massage can promote vulnerability and this is evident in some of the participants' talk. For participants, massage provides a reclaiming of 'the old body' and an experience of mind and body connection. Embodiment is theorised as shifting, discursively constituted and multi layered.