At this time in my massage therapy career, I think I have got the whole stress thing down. Then something pops up that tells me: HA! Yes, HA! A very karmic and cosmic and pulse-wave HA! My family and i have been living in a hotel for nearly a month following flooding at my home. A […]
I was enjoying the evening air, checking the massage therapy schedule book to review next week’s bookings when my 90-year-old mother-in-law asked for help. Help? I dashed in from the patio and stared. A little tsunami of water was spreading down the hallway into the living room, and all the bedrooms. Oh, and it was […]
Smart phones have created an endless employment opportunity for massage therapists – we can relieve the head and neck aches they foster and show clients how to reduce their sting. At best the glare-y screens will make a users neck stiff and tight to flexion on the side holding the phone. So many people peer […]
Massage therapists will often have clients ask about foot or finger pain, or a strip of tightness around the knees or hips, but when is this a symptom of something gone wrong? As we rub away with our talented hands, we may have an opportunity to assess if a nerve root or disc has been […]
In the early days of a massage therapist’s career, discovering which techniques work well in a treatment session can be baffling. Is it deep tissue? Soothing strokes? Is it short sessions? Long sessions? Is it movement? Breath? Is it the clients’ mindset? Perceived value? Desire? Somehow fumbling about in our dim-lit treatment rooms we establish […]
My education in massage did not stop with graduation from a massage school. If anything, it intensified. Now a practicing therapist, I was learning every day from the most prolific of authors, the best logisticians, the brightest of the best. It has been hard to keep up sometimes, but very rewarding. The classroom has been […]
My massage therapy client has been working very hard to lose weight. She is going to the gym four times a week, training under the watch of two very good kiniesiology trainers, and eating a diabetic diet. She has lost more than 70 pounds in the past year. That is a little fast to lose […]
Massage therapists know that when a client has been pulling something – wire or cable, storage boxes, dogs, etc. that they will find a host of sore and overstretched muscles. Ergonomically, it is not good to pull, but to push. Push we can do much more easily and with much less fatigue. Somehow the design […]
Massage therapists have their favorite spots to approach changing patterns of movement and improving function. Over the years, I have asked the question often: Muscles or tendons? My early experience dictated muscles. There we find bunched-up, dysfunctional fibers and endplates. Trigger point theory called for a full cleansing of these scatterbrains, along with their associates […]
One of my most fun massage therapy clients likes to update me on his activities and the connection between what he has been doing and what is going on in his neck, back, hands, etc. I don’t get a laundry list of precarious Christmas lights installations or kneecaps wondering off by themselves on Audubon bird-sighting […]