Chiropractic Care: Hand in Hand with Massage

I've been asked many times by clients my opinion on whether they should see a Chiropractor and what the benefits.  My opinion is that Chiropractic care goes hand in hand with massage.  Chiropractic and massage therapy used in combination, form a powerful healing approach that addresses your pain on many different levels. Whether your pain is the result of traumatic injury, overuse or stress, these two therapies can speed your return to a pain-free and productive life.

Back pain, neck pain and headaches are just a few of the painful and most commonly seen conditions that send most people to a chiropractor.  Misalignment's in your body, called subluxations, can pull on your muscles and disrupt the nerve transmissions, especially in the spine which houses nerves affecting the entire body.  The resulting pain can be at the site of the subluxations as well as places elsewhere in your body, which can also include numbness and tingling in various areas.  Many clients who I see at the chiropractic office I work in will complain of one area of pain and when I massage another area of their body are surprised to feel tension and soreness in other areas.  What they don't realize is when the body is out of alignment this pulls on many of the surrounding muscles as well as causing havoc in the nervous system creating the pain in the body.  Over time these tight, inflamed muscles and fascia (band of fibrous connective tissue enveloping, separating, or binding together muscles, organs, and other soft structures of the body) suffer poor circulation which prevent muscles from lengthening completely.  Sometimes these tight muscles can compress the nerves and cause severe pain.  Plus your tight muscles and shortened fascia can pull your joints right back out of alignment again and this puts you right back to where your started.  In pain!

In general, massage increases circulation to the whole body as well as to the areas of pain. This reduces painful swelling and inflammation and promotes healing by removing waste products and bringing nutrients to your tissues. Like a sponge absorbing water, both fascia and muscles begin to soften and lengthen.  Which in turn helps hold your adjustments in place, decreasing your pain and putting your body back towards a state of health.

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website or follow me on Twitter.

Post-Op Massage Rx

According to the Archives of Surgery, they have concluded that "Massage is an effective and safe adjuvant therapy for the relief of acute and postoperative pain in patients undergoing major operations."   The controlled study showed that patients in the massage group experienced a faster rate of decrease in pain intensity.  They also found that massage therapy improves postoperative anxiety and pain management.  After surgery a patients muscles become very tight and sore for a variety of reasons.  The main reason, of course, being the surgery itself.  Rather graphically, the body is cut into and things are spread out and moved in ways most of us don't want to think about.  This puts a lot of pressure on the whole body, not just the area that is having the surgery.  There is also the recovery of laying around being dormant in a hospital bed that can play havoc on your body.  The muscles can start becoming atrophied, even in small ways that will make you sore.

So the next time you know someone getting ready, or who has had recent surgery, consider getting them a massage instead of the get-well cards, balloons and flowers.  

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website or follow me on Twitter.

What Size Are You? It doesn't matter!

We all have our own body issues, things that we don't like about ourselves that we see differently then everyone else sees.  And when it comes to massage and having to expose those areas that we don't like to our massage therapist can be very hard for some people.

As a massage therapist, I look at and treat the body differently then you do.  I do not notice that you might be overweight or that you have cellulite in various areas or that you think your legs or butt are to big.  All complaints I've heard from clients who don't like their various parts.  For me, I look at the body and how I can help heal it.  I really don't notice cellulite if I'm working on your legs, or if you have cankles, or if you think you're too thin or too heavy.  These are all things we criticize enough about ourselves.  My focus is your whole body!  What can I do to make you feel wonderful and comfortable and help you relieve any pains that you might be having!  Though this might sound a bit weird, I visualize the muscles under the skin and whether I can 'get rid of' the knots that you have or how your body is reacting to the massage and the pressure I am doing.  Again, I do not care what body issues you have or what size you are.  I care about you the person, your body and how I can help heal it and make you feel that your body is perfect just the way it is.

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website or follow me on Twitter.

Natural Relief for Constipation

Getting our stomach massaged is not something we usually think of when we think of massage. Even for my own style of massage, I don't usually include the stomach unless asked. There are some clients who regularly want their abs massaged and some who have asked about it yet never want their stomach touched. Despite the lack of clients who do want abdominal massage, it can have a significant affect on your body. Abdominal massage does help increase bowel movements, especially when constipated, as well as helps decrease gastrointestinal symptoms.

With all the ads for laxatives, it seems we have a problem with this not so much talked about syndrome. Yet, obviously there are many people who have constipation. Constipation usually means you've been depriving your body of essential things such as water, fiber and adequate exercise. A long-term remedy to constipation can be as simple as a daily walk and a few dietary changes. However a short term remedy could be your own hands. You can self massage your stomach for a bit of relief (as well as asking your massage therapist to include your abdominals as part of your next massage).

To massage your stomach make sure to use some type of lotion or oil. Very little is needed. Lie on your back and use your palms or fingertips. Press in lightly and stroke down the left side of your abdomen towards the feet, continue around to the right side and stroke up towards you head. Basically you will start in a large clockwise circle and continue this path into smaller and smaller circles. Do this for about five to ten minutes. If you have an ulcer, hernia, or high blood pressure it is best to not do this.

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website or follow me on Twitter.

Touch: Our Basic Need

I think we all know that we have five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. Sometimes all these senses come into play for things such as eating. Sometimes we only use a few of these at a time like when we drive. We know that people can live their lives without sight, without sound, or a sense of smell. However, touch is a essential part of our human existence, our human need that we require to help sustain our lives.

Touch is a an often an unappreciated sense that can be excluded from our daily life. There is a quote I saw from Margaret Atwood's book The Blind Assassin: "Touch comes before sight, before speech. It's the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth." If you think about it touch is the first thing that happens when we are born and it's the first thing that new parents want to do: touch and hold their beautiful newborn. It has been proven that with premature and underweight babies that touch will help them grow and sustain life at alarming rates. And as parents, when our children are hurting through either physical or emotional pain, again what do we want to do? Touch and hold them and make it all go away.

Many people do go without touch on a daily basis which to me is a sad thing. I used to have a client that would get massaged just to be touched. For whatever reasons this need was not met in her life so she found the way to get it met. It really did sadden me that she didn't have this basic need met enough in her daily life. I know for me, I'm what would be called a touchy-feely person. Besides what I do for a living of massaging and touching people, I am always touching my friends when I talk or when I see or leave them through hugs and kisses. Personally this is my biggest sense that I like to have full-filled and that's probably why I am so touchy-feely. Touch evokes emotions. It evokes feelings and communication through pleasure, through pain, through sensuality. It is a basic form of human interaction no matter what race, nationality or language that you are. Touch brings us all together.

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website or follow me on Twitter.

Myth of Cancer Massage

There is a myth out there that a person who has cancer should not be massage. And I said this is a myth. Many massage schools teach their students that massage promotes the spread of cancer by increasing circulation. This included the school that I attended just a few short seven years ago. This myth of course is carried over into the mainstream with doctors, patients and other health-care providers to believe this is true. If this were true then health-care providers would also discourage exercise and other activity for people with cancer as this increases circulation also.

Since my initial classes, I have found through medically funded research that this myth was based on old understandings of how cancer spreads. Thankfully, for cancer clients newer and new research has shown the benefits of massage. Per research done at the Sahlgrenska Academy at Goteborg University in Goteborg, Sweden, they showed that massage relieves nausea in breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Many major hospitals have formed an Integrative or Alternative Medicine department such as Beaumont Hospital in Michigan.

Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy have strong effects on the body such as severe pain, nausea, fatigue and depression. Massage can help lessen those effects and give a client some much needed pain relief and anxiety relief. We all know how devastating chemotherapy is to the body as well as to the soul. If a client can gain benefits from massage such as pain relief, stress relief, lessened depression, as well as increase levels of dopamine, serotonin, natural killer cells and lymphocytes then that is an amazing thing. Plus massage is natural. And for many clients even just the simple act of touch is an uplifting thing.

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website or follow me on Twitter.

The Self-Indulgence of Massage

Do you feeling guilty about getting a massage? Does it seem self-indulgent and selfish? Massage actually has many important benefits to your physical and mental health. It can help you maintain your emotional, mental and physical well-being, especially when it is part of your health plan. It addresses a variety of health conditions, with stress-related tension being the most common. Massage therapy offers a natural, non-invasive, drug-free and humanistic approach based on the body’s natural ability to heal itself.

Benefits of Massage

• Relaxing: Massage calms the nervous system and promotes a sense of peace.
• Soothing: Massage eases tension and anxiety.
• Healing: Massage stimulates the lymphatic system, which carries away the body’s waste products.
• Improves breathing: Massage calms the body as a whole, which in turn quiets the lungs into its more natural state of breathing.
• Improves circulation: Massage improves blood circulation which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the cells.
• Eases tension, stiffness and pain: Massage prevents and relieves muscle cramps and spasms.

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website

Soothing Meditation

I decided that I wanted to create a guided meditation and put it on YouTube and Facebook. This was just because it seems to go along with massage...quieting the mind. The idea was to take a few minutes during your busy day and refocus, relax and quite the mind. And then whenever you needed a quick break to de-stress you could watch it over and over.

I had the idea of how I wanted it the meditation to look and I had a simple program on my computer that I had never used before. Luckily, I'm pretty computer savvy and was able to figure out the program quickly, it just took some time to piece it together and to get the timing in shape. So after playing around with it and figuring out the pictures, the written content and the timing it's completed. I had fun creating it and will probably do more things in the future. Most of the pictures in the video are ones I took, with a few taken by a friend on a vacation we took to Turkey. I hope you enjoy it and please pass it on to all your friends. :)

Water: The Elixir of Life

Water is used throughout the world for its physical and spiritual healing properties both inside and outside the body. So many of us know how good it feels to take a warm bath or hot shower after the end of a long day. Or if we've been in the heat for a long time, how wonderful that glass of water tastes. Water is used in religious ceremonies. And there are even massages that are performed in water. It is the elixir of life.

The organs associated with water are the kidneys and bladder. Yet water affects our whole body. The amount of water a person should drink varies according to size, physical activity and other factors. Not getting enough water can develop into bladder and kidney disorders, due to problems associated with dehydration. Waiting to drink until the sensation of thirst appears is not a good indication of proper hydration. Thirst is actually a symptom of mild dehydration. People who are well hydrated are rarely thirsty and have urine that is colorless or only slightly yellow.

Water can be as healing when used on the outside of the body as it is when taken internally. Water is still among the most-popular mediums for promoting overall health and healing. When used on the outside of the body, water has an analgesic effect, creating a sense of relaxation and well-being. Water temperatures higher then normal body temperature can help manipulate blood flow and shift fluids from one part of the body to another. Water in the form of ice or heat is used by every major healing modality to ease stiff, tense muscles and promote healing from all types of injuries.

There are many ways that you can increase your fluid intake. You can start by drinking water with at least least one meal per day and increase to each meal. You can add a lemon, lime, or cucumber slice to your water to give it a bit of flavor. If you carry a bottle of water with you you're more likely to drink more water and not grab a soda. Cut back or cut-out on carbonated beverages such as soda as this may cause bloating or a feeling of fullness and prevent adequate consumption of fluids. Avoid caffeinated and alcoholic beverages as they can help dehydrate the body. And lastly, eat water-rich fruits and vegetables.

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