stress
The Times we’re living in…
Sunday, May 1st, 2011 | Health, Massage, Seattle | 2 Comments
People are having tough times…for many reasons. The most obvious one being the full body slam that was dealt to our economy a few years back…and had been building up for some time. Everyone has different priorities…and we all have business lives and personal lives to attend to every single day.
I’ve written on my blog about how important massage is and how vital it is to one’s well being, because it’s what I do. If I were a lawyer or a house painter, I’d be blogging about how a fresh coat of paint or rock solid contract would sure help you out, but I’m neither of those things.
I can talk about how massage helps people by keeping their bodies stronger, and more flexible in these areas that tend to get ignored, since the stress of daily life gets in the way and you think you can just push away the low back pain and tightness in your upper shoulders. Believe me; you can only push away the pain for so long. Our bodies are these amazing machines, but without having attention and care and healing massage time often enough, your body will get stuck in the same bad posture and bad habits we all fall into.
Going to the best massage therapist you know in Seattle, spending an hour on the table, going home and having the most relaxing sleep you’ve had in weeks, or maybe even months…is so incredibly important to your continued well being. I love helping clients in this way and seeing how they respond to a deep massage treatment. Treating yourself well is something everyone should think about, especially while going through the times we’re living in now…
Getting the Massage You Need, When You Need It
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010 | exercise, Health, health tips, Massage, nutrition, Seattle, stretching | No Comments
There are a few ways people think about getting a massage:
“I have a pain in my lower back and it won’t go away. I’m scheduling a massage.”
“It’s been a few months, and I’m feeling out of balance. Getting some deep tissue bodywork done seems like a great idea.”
Most times, people wait until their body sends them a clear message, and it’s usually connected to pain.
Maybe this is the message you’d hear if you listened more often:
“I want to make sure my body is in optimum shape, and getting a massage is part of preventative medicine. I know that regular massage treatments help provide greater freedom of movement, ease pain, and help me achieve a more active life.”
Many people aren’t so fortunate, and they’re disconnected from their bodies. I want you to listen to your own body, and feel the healthy energy flowing through it. Try to stay in touch with how your body feels, not just every so often, but stop and listen at some point every day. For some people, seeing or feeling is a better way to picture this getting in touch with the body. Whatever works for you, let your mind guide you.
Listen to your body when it reminds you of the pain, stiffness, and lingering pain that it feels. Maybe you have pelvic or low back pain, or there’s stress you feel from a past injury. If it takes time to gain more freedom of movement after an injury, give yourself time, but work with your body, learn to move again and feel how your body responds as it heals. Our bodies were designed to help themselves and heal themselves, but nature can only go so far without intervention. Nature wants healing hands to help nurture bodies to a more healthful state.
Stretching before running or taking a long walk is important. Making healthy dietary choices as often as you can is vital. Choosing to receive a high-quality massage treatment to help you through Seattle’s autumn months is an idea worth acting upon.
What Are the Benefits of Getting Regular Massage Treatments?
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 | Featured, Health, health tips, Massage, Seattle | 1 Comment
I asked a few of my clients that come in for frequent massage treatments if they noticed a difference in their lives by making massage a weekly or monthly part of their lives.
For most clients, the freedom of movement and increased energy levels are enough to make scheduling a massage worthwhile, and for others it was keeping chronic muscle and tendon pain out of their lives for days or weeks, and for others, therapeutic massage adds real clarity and lets them focus on the activities they’d like to do.
As the body ages, pain management isn’t just a sometimes thing, it is something one is always concerned with in a number of ways. Maybe you have an old sports injury that flares up when cold weather returns, or chronic pain related to an ongoing physical condition. Rather than just take pills or put up with problem areas in your lower back, your joints, or neck and shoulders, schedule a professional massage and experience the rejuvenating effects of professional body work.
The benefits are clear, and the more often you receive a massage, the more your body responds. Here are just a few of the ways that regularly scheduled massage treatments can help you:
• Higher energy levels
• Greater freedom of movement
• Decreased levels of stress and anxiety
• Improved circulation
• Reduction of fatigue
We all have priorities in our lives, and taking care of our health means so many things to each person. Healing massage therapy is what I bring to peoples lives, and when clients experience the type of deep tissue work I can do, they literally breathe a sigh of relief. This is gratifying to me, since I know the increased vitality and pain relief that can come from bodywork is an important part of a health regimen.
Ask yourself if it’s been too long since your last massage therapy treatment. Think about how much better you’ll feel afterward.
Yes, we are lucky to be living in a city like Seattle, full of vibrancy, culture, and so many great people. Remember: being healthy and taking care of one’s body with a therapeutic massage is an essential part of enjoying life.
Needing a massage, and wanting a massage. Loving what you do, and liking what you do.
Friday, October 1st, 2010 | Featured, Health, health tips, Massage, Seattle | 1 Comment
You’ve reached that point. Getting a massage has become necessary. Your body already knows, but your brain tells you to put it off for a few days or weeks longer.
We’ve all been through challenging times during the past few years, but something is in the air—so many people agree—something vital has opened up again.
A lot of lives have been affected, and many people in Seattle and in our whole culture want to find a better way—they want to find a way to do more of what feeds their spirits, and what makes them whole. The ideal is to do what you love for a living.
All of our lives are busy, we’ve all got dreams and plans, and taking care of your physical being is a part of doing what you love to do.
If you need to receive therapeutic bodywork, listen to the side of yourself that wants to make time for healthful choices.
What gets you excited about getting up every morning? What makes you the completely alive self that you want to be?
Turn your likes into loves, and love your physical body by scheduling a massage that will get you on track to feeling better.
There are some definite changes in the air, and people want to feel more alive, more connected. Part of the learning and healing process is getting that therapeutic massage you’ve been putting off for a while.
Ask yourself if you want to get closer to loving what you do. If getting the deep tissue massage that you’ve been putting off is part of your healing process, I’m here.
Why Clients Are Requesting More Groin Work
Thursday, August 5th, 2010 | Featured, Groin Injury, Health, Massage, Seattle | No Comments
There are a great many reasons why new clients come to me to have pelvic and
groin massage therapy done.
But the two main reasons are to gain greater freedom of movement and to live healthier longer.
Wow. Good stuff. Right?
Think about those two health benefits and consider the less healthy options—an early hip
replacement, chronic lower back pain, and stress that can eventually lead to things like
prostrate cancer and incontinence issues.
Not so good.
Maybe you have a groin or pelvic injury, or a constant tightness in your pelvic region,
and you keep putting off having professional massage work done.
Often the clients who find me through referral or word of mouth are ready for the type
of healing pelvic and groin work I do, and are eager to feel a significant improvement
in their bodies. They may have hit a wall in treatment with other therapists and know
something was missing, and are ready to try again.
A big part of feeling better is getting massage therapy for the problem areas you know
about, and having bodywork done so you’ll prevent future problems.
Groin and pelvic massage helps to open up and create space in hip joints, and relieve the stress that’s been building up.
In Seattle and our surrounding communities, people have the same stresses and problems that everyone else does in other parts of our country.
We just happen to live in a city surrounded by nature and are constantly reminded that we’re a part of nature.
I believe it’s in our nature to be smart creatures that solve problems.
Now is the best time to discover how much better your body will feel when you’re good to it and get the massage therapy you need.
Springtime in Seattle: Connecting Massage to Daily Life and Healthy Movement
Saturday, April 24th, 2010 | Business, Groin Injury, Health, health tips, Massage, Seattle, stretching | No Comments
What do so many of my friends and massage clients in Seattle have in common?
What one activity do they spend so many hours doing during the course of a day?
Sitting in the same position, and most likely in an uncomfortable office chair. Not just one day a week or sometimes, but day after day. And to be blunt, that shit accumulates in the mid-section of the body, as well as other areas such as shoulders, hands, upper arms.
You can feel it without even thinking about it all that much. Can’t you?
Over time, the body just holds onto this stress and strain, and one day an area in your back or hip gets pushed too far.
You go from uncomfortable to truly hurting, and you wonder how it happened.
Even if you just get up and do a few easy simple stretches, you can feel a difference in your energy level.
But having some deep tissue massage work done is more likely what is needed, especially when you’ve been ignoring those neck pains, shoulder twinges, and chronic lower back pain that just doesn’t seem to go away.
Daily tension gets ignored, and pushed down and held in places like the butt and pelvis area.
And since this is such a core area that affects your whole body’s movement, sooner or later, muscle and joint tension builds up and creates problems.
Sometimes when people say things like “That really gives me a pain in the ass.” they are being more literal than they think.
Please pay attention to your body throughout the day.
Listen to what it’s telling you.
Maybe it wants to stretch, and if you take five minutes to unplug from the wired world we live in and listen to the inner world of your own body’s rhythms, you’ll get rewarded with a deeper connection to your own life energy.
And won’t that feel great?
Finding (And Healing) the Deep Center of Gravity (Part 2.)
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 | Groin Injury, Health, Massage, Seattle | No Comments
Healing massage is about many things, but there’s a basic truth: good massage requires forming a partnership. This means creating a safe space to do the deep healing massage work that you need and I can provide.
When you locate the specific areas you store your pain, you can begin healing them.
One place we store deep stress is in the pelvic region. People can gain greater movement in this amazingly important part of the body. Deep tissue massage therapy can bring some major release in the pelvis and groin area.
Take a deep breath,
and feel where it is, you store the stress and tension in your body.
If your pain is stored in the center of your body, you probably have pelvic issues that could use some work.
Working with many types of bodies and personality types at my office on Capitol Hill in Seattle 
, I understand how pain can block a person’s focus and prevent the free flow of energy that we want to always have moving through us at optimum levels.
We’ve all experienced our selves flowing and feeling so in synch with the world, just feeling great.
So we want to get to a place of feeling connected with this great sense of movement we carry within us.
I want to bring clients to that place within, and help them to be creators of their own healing. Sounds good? Right?
Anyplace a massage therapist works on, that holds deep trauma and stored pain can uncomfortable at first.
And since the tightness in an area of the body is so near the genitals, working near it can bring up all sorts of emotional and physical issues.
As I said in the first part of this article, this is a highly charged area for many reasons.
Our culture simply doesn’t support or even talk very much about the idea of healing and release work done in this area.
I want to see our blocks around this body area change, and I’m doing something about transforming this outdated mindset.
A good massage treatment for yourself is just as much a willingness to become involved in your own healing as it is a way to let go and feel healing touch that will stay with you. I partner with and join into the healing massage treatments with my clients.
We take a journey together, and the trip is about restoring energy and health to the places you’ve been storing all the lifelong pain, pressure, and problems.
Bodies are often smarter than we are. They want to be healed.
Finding the Deep Center of Gravity (Part 1.)
Saturday, April 10th, 2010 | Groin Injury, Massage, networking | No Comments
Let’s face it, we all want to feel better. As a massage practitioner I know this fact in a deep way. Clients come to me with a long list of stresses, strains, pains, aches, and just plain old built up body tension.
No only do I understand this, but the bodyworkers I often network with know this as well. People want to feel better, in every part of their body. Even in certain areas it might be difficult for them to talk about. Pain that comes up when they stretch or move a certain way that shouldn’t be so painful.
One thing that I’ve been discussing with my fellow healing profession workers is my shift in focus to groin and pelvic injury treatment.
Since this is a delicate subject, even talking about it with other massage practitioners can be like opening a can of worms that either calls for a lengthy discussion or becomes a conversation stopper.
You never know.
In our society, the genital region is taboo and working around this highly charged area is something most massage practitioners and bodyworkers just do not do. And I get it. I completely understand why groin and pelvic work isn’t all that popular with my fellow massage practitioners.
Let me put this out there: People truly need this type of elemental and integrative body work. So much of our culture’s stresses and long-term pains are held onto in the pelvic region.
Who knows if it began with the repressed way we’ve held things inside for generations, and it may date back to the whole formation of this great big crazy body of a country (the body inside our own minds, the body politic, the bodies of all these humans around us we come into contact with), but healing and release needs to happen more often.
