There’s a lot they can tell about you, from your occupation to your stress levels — and even serious health conditions.
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Do you take breaks? Real breaks? Many of us take coffee breaks or food breaks, but what about a real body-mind break? Here are some more self-preservation techniques you can try. When it’s time for your next break, go outside, get a few minutes of sunshine, exercise your eyes by looking into the distance, and breathe clean air. Consider taking a short walk. Walking backward and sideways can help loosen muscles we don’t regularly use. Move your arms up and around in a rotating motion, stretching backward. That’s a real break for your body, mind, and spirit. If all we have in front of us are the same four walls or a massage table all day, it is no wonder that the eyes begin to stiffen and the body quickly follows. Here are two specific exercises to help rejuvenate your body and mind: The Sunning Exercise At my school, we love to take people outdoors and do an exercise called “sunning.” We use the sun to relax our eyes and bodies and, thereby, prevent strain and injury in our backs, shoulders, and necks. To do the sunning exercise, we close our eyes, face the sun with our noses pointed directly toward it, and slowly move our heads all the way from side to side, shoulder to shoulder. It is important not to tense or lift the shoulders. When the head moves all the way to the left and away from direct sunlight, the pupils expand. When the head moves to the middle, facing the sun, the pupils contract. And when the head moves all the way to the right, they expand again. When my students practice this, we create a kind of loop—while people are moving their heads from side to side, they massage each others’ shoulders. As we sun, we allow our partner to relax our shoulders by doing a deep | and relaxing shoulder massage and we reciprocate to the next person. That sounds easy enough—there’s nothing challenging intellectually about moving the head from side to side while massaging someone’s shoulders, but 90 percent of the people have a difficult time doing it. Most of us tense our shoulders while moving our hands, because we never learned to separate and relax the shoulders or the neck from our hand movements. Sunning, done in partnership this way, not only relaxes the eyes, but also helps increase awareness of muscle isolation and reinforces that concept. Give Your Eyes a Break, Too As a result of nearly 45 years as a bodyworker and teacher of my Natural Vision Improvement method, I am keenly aware of the connection between our eyes and the rest of our body. One of the first places strain makes itself known is in our eyes, but most people don’t make the connection. For example, we don’t notice how much effort it takes for our eyes to look at close objects or how relaxing it is to look far away. We also don’t notice how we strain to pay attention to our central vision and neglect our peripheral vision. These imbalances lead to stress throughout our bodies. The simplest way to overcome these imbalances is to take breaks and look into the distance at least once or twice an hour. It’s best if you can go outside and look at distant treetops, over the ocean, or at the sky. If that isn’t possible, look out a window at whatever there is to see. Don’t try to focus on anything. Just let your eyes gently scan. Wave your hands at the side of your face to wake up your peripheral vision while you use your central vision to look long distance, which allows the lens of the eye to assume its relaxed position. This gives the tiny muscles of the eye a chance to rest, while improving |
You didn’t know we had secrets, did you?? Well we do. And because it’s a holiday week, I’ve decided to write a fun and easy blog post this week. So I picked the top 5 secrets I sometimes share with my clients and today I share them with you as well.
1. Don’t apologize for falling asleep during the massage. It means that you were comfortable and relaxed enough to drift off to sleep. We take it as a compliment when you fall asleep, whether you mean it as one or not. Please don’t burst our bubble by telling us you only fell asleep because you were completely exhausted.
2. Don’t apologize If you forgot to shave your legs today. I will personally guarantee that far more women than you’d suspect don’t shave their legs every day either. If they did, I wouldn’t massage nearly the amount of stubble that I do. I massage so much stubble, in fact, that I barely register it anymore.
3. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, but you can take it too far. Please don’t shower right before walking out your door and come in with wet hair. You see, the moisture gets pulled out of your hair, into the sheet, AND into whatever additional padding that we’ve added beneath the sheet to increase your comfort (often this a lambswool-type padding). This padding stays wet for a long time. We probably only have 1 spare pad. If it gets wet we have to change it. And because many of us don’t have laundry facilities in the spaces that we rent, if two people come in with wet hair in the same day, the remaining clients may not get the additional padding at all if the first pad hasn’t dried yet.
4. It’s possible to smell too good. Believe me. Please refrain from applying perfume or cologne until after your session. Most massage rooms are small and with the door shut for 60-90 minutes, the smell concentrates until we can taste it. We really don’t like the taste of perfume. If we’re trying to ignore the taste of your perfume, you won’t get the best massage out of us no matter how hard we try to do so.
5. Timeliness is next to Godliness. It’s obviously not cool to be late; we operate a time-based business. People sign up for a timed session and we’re not going to be late for the next client, who showed up on time, just because you were late. Most therapists will still end the session at the original time and require you to pay the full fee. It’s also not cool to be more than 5-10 minutes early. Again, this is because we operate on a time basis. After each client, we have things that we must do to “finish” the previous session and get ready for the next. These include: Charting on the session we just finished (a massage isn’t finished until it’s charted), changing the table linens, resetting the room so it’s ready for us to begin a new session, drink some water, use the bathroom, have a bite to eat, and return voicemails/emails received while we were in with the last client.
So there you have it. 5 of our most important secrets.
Do you have a question that you’d like answered, but can’t quite bring yourself to ask your therapist face-to-face? Leave it in the comments and I’ll either answer it in the comments or in a blog post of its own.
Are you a massage therapist who has another secret you’d like to share? Please leave it in the comments.
And of course, don’t forget to like, share, pin, retweet, etc. You all know the drill. The handy buttons below ↓↓↓ make is super easy to do so.
By Anita Boser
Originally published in Body Sense magazine, Spring 2011. Copyright 2011. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.
Sharon shuffled into her massage therapist's office wondering what was wrong with her muscles. After two weeks of working overtime at her job, she had resumed her normal exercise routine. Instead of the relief she expected, she left the gym with more pain and even developed a disturbing complication: tingling in her fingers. Fortunately, her therapist knew the root of the problem was the fact that Sharon's fascia was distorted.
Few people know about fascia, a three-dimensional web of support that facilitates, or inhibits, movement. Like a movie director who influences every scene, fascia coordinates every move of the body. Fascia is a thin connective tissue that wraps every muscle fiber, every muscle bundle, every individual muscle, and every muscle group. It becomes the tendon that knits into the connective tissue covering the bones. For extra coordination and strength, it forms sheets to transmit force between muscles. Nerves, blood vessels, and organs also have fascial coverings.
Healthy fascia is smooth and slippery, so muscles can slide like silk. When gummy, dense, and contorted, unhealthy fascia binds muscles and limits movement. Collagen fibers give fascia its shape and structure, which organize along lines of tension in the body.
In Sharon's case, long hours sitting at a computer shortened and thickened the fascia in the front of her chest and neck, causing fascia around the muscles in her back and shoulders to create additional fibers. Her shoulders felt tight, not because they were shortened, but because they were encased in stiff, misdirected fibers.
Common exercises--such as using elliptical and weight machines, and traditional stretching--are two-dimensional. They focus on contracting and lengthening muscles, like clenching your fist and then opening your fingers wide. This is good for muscles, but ignores the complexity of your fascial network.
Sharon's muscle-focused exercise routine reinforced the misalignment and tightness in her fascia. A more helpful approach would have been to pay attention to her posture and choose non-repetitive movements, such as adding angles to weight exercises, stretching in multiple directions, and using balance equipment.
Exercising in a three-dimensional, non-repetitive way engages more of your fascia, so the different layers can slide more freely. The Octopus Undulation exercise is an example for your hands, try it to feel the effect of non-repetitive movement and to relieve repetitive strain.
Without the coordination of an adept fascial network, movement is like a B-rated movie: stiff and awkward, lacking smooth transitions and subtle inflection. Over time it leads to dysfunction and pain. Bodywork can return fascia to a more fluid and flexible state. Showing Sharon these techniques brought her relief, as did adding variety to her exercise routine. As a result, she has regained the flow in her body.
Anita Boser, LMP, CHP, RYT, is a certified Hellerwork Structural Integration practitioner, registered yoga teacher, and author. You can download a free booklet of exercises to relieve body tension at www.undulationexercise.com.
While massage may have developed a reputation as a decadent treat for people who love pampering, new studies are showing it has a wide variety of tangible health benefits.
Research over the past couple of years has found that massage therapy boosts immune function in women with breast cancer, improves symptoms in children with asthma, and increases grip strength in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome. Giving massages to the littlest patients, premature babies, helped in the crucial task of gaining weight.
The benefits go beyond feelings of relaxation and wellness that people may recognize after a massage. The American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society now include massage as one of their recommendations for treating low back pain, according to guidelines published in 2007.
New research is also starting to reveal just what happens in the body after a massage. While there have long been theories about how massage works—from releasing toxins to improving circulation—those have been fairly nebulous, with little hard evidence. Now, one study, for example, found that a single, 45-minute massage led to a small reduction in the level of cortisol, a stress hormone, in the blood, a decrease in cytokine proteins related to inflammation and allergic reactions, and a boost in white blood cells that fight infection.
There's been a surge of scientific interest in massage. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, is currently spending $2.7 million on massage research, up from $1.5 million in 2002. The Massage Therapy Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds massage research, held its first scientific conference in 2005. The third conference will be in Boston next year.
The research is being driven, in part, by massage therapy's popularity. About 8.3% of American adults used massage in 2007, up from 5% in 2002, according to a National Health Statistics report that surveyed 23,393 adults in 2007 and 31,044 adults in 2002, the latest such data available. Massage was expected to be a $10 billion to $11 billion industry in 2011 in the U.S., according to estimates by the American Massage Therapy Association, a nonprofit professional organization.
"There is emerging evidence that [massage] can make contributions in treating things like pain, where conventional medicine doesn't have all the answers," said Jack Killen, NCCAM's deputy director.
The massage therapy field hopes that the growing body of research will lead to greater insurance coverage for its treatments. Washington is the only state that requires insurers to cover massage therapy.
- A full-body massage boosted immune function and lowered heart rate and blood pressure in women with breast cancer undergoing radiation treatment, a 2009 study of 30 participants found.
- Children given 20-minute massages by their parents every night for five weeks plus standard asthma treatment had significantly improved lung function compared with those in standard care, a 2011 study of 60 children found.
- A 10-minute massage upped mitochondria production, and reduced proteins associated with inflammation in muscles that had been exercised to exhaustion, a small study last month found.
Massage therapists charge an average of about $59 for a one-hour session, according to the American Massage Therapy Association. Treatments at posh urban spas, however, can easily cost at least three times that amount.
Most of the research is being done on Swedish massage, the most widely-available type of massage in the U.S. It is a full-body massage, often using oil or lotion, that includes a variety of strokes, including "effleurage" (gliding movements over the skin), "petrissage" (kneading pressure) and "tapotement" (rhythmic tapping).
Another common type of massage, so-called deep tissue, tends to be more targeted to problem muscles and includes techniques such as acupressure, trigger-point work (which focuses on little knots of muscle) and "deep transverse friction" where the therapist moves back and forth over muscle fibers to break up scar tissue.
Massage is already widely used to treat osteoarthritis, for which other treatments have concerning side effects. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2006 showed that full-body Swedish massage greatly improved symptoms of osteoarthritis of the knee. Patients who had massages twice weekly for four weeks and once a week for an additional four weeks had less pain and stiffness and better range of motion than those who didn't get massages. They were also able to walk a 50-foot path more quickly.
"If [massage] works then it should become part of the conventionally recommended interventions for this condition and if it doesn't work we should let [patients] know so they don't waste their time and money," says Adam Perlman, the lead author of the study and the executive director of Duke Integrative Medicine in Durham, N.C.
Scientists are also studying massage in healthy people.
In a small study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine last month, a 10-minute massage promoted muscle recovery after exercise. In the study, 11 young men exercised to exhaustion and then received a massage in one leg. Muscle biopsies were taken in both quad muscles before exercise, after the massage and 2½ hours later.
The short massage boosted the production of mitochondria, the energy factory of the cell, among other effects. "We've shown this is something that has a biological effect," says Mark Tarnopolsky, a co-author of the study and a professor of pediatrics and medicine at McMaster University Medical Center in Hamilton, Ontario.
A 2010 study with 53 participants comparing the effects of one 45-minute Swedish massage to light touch, found that people who got a massage had a large decrease in arginine-vasopressin, a hormone that normally increases with stress and aggressive behavior, and slightly lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in their blood after the session. There was also a decrease in cytokine proteins related to inflammation and allergic reactions.
Mark Hyman Rapaport, the lead author of the study and the chairman of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, says he began studying massage because, "My wife liked massages and I wasn't quite sure why. I thought of it as an extravagance, a luxury for only people who are very rich and who pamper themselves." Now, Dr. Rapaport says he gets a massage at least once a month. His group is now studying massage as a treatment for generalized anxiety disorder.
Knead to Know Tips
• How can you make sure you get a good massage? Most states regulate massage and require therapists to be licensed. This usually requires a minimum number of hours of training and an exam. There is also national certification. Members of the American Massage Therapy Association must have 500 hours of training.
• Ask how many massages a therapist gives a day—and make sure you're not the 10th or even the seventh. 'It takes a lot of physical exertion to deliver a therapeutic massage,' says Ken Morris, spa director at Canyon Ranch, a health resort in Tucson, Ariz. Canyon Ranch limits its therapists to six massages in a day.
Write to Andrea Petersen at andrea.petersen@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared Mar. 13, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Don't Call It Pampering: Massage Wants to Be Medicine.
Owner
Ryan Sealy is a graduate of Sterling Health Center in Dallas, Texas. He
is licensed in the state of Texas and is a longstanding member of the Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals(ABMP). He received his Massage Therapy license upon completion of over 600 instructional hours as well as 120 internship hours.
Ryan’s work incorporates Swedish massage, deep tissue massage, pre-natal/
pregnancy massage and myofascial release techniques with effective trigger
point therapy to help clients attain balance and well-being. His touch is highly intuitive and each massage is tailored to meet his client’s needs. Ryan continually seeks opportunities to work with motivated individuals who are
empowered to use their inherent potential to make a difference in their own
fundamental health. Helping others understand the human body and body patterns is his passion.
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