Making time to stretch
Whether you’re 17 or 70, when you come to see a massage therapist, the problem is usually muscle tension.
You may have over exercised, or exercised without a thorough warm up,
you may have pulled a muscle doing a movement you dont usually do, or when your body is under excess tension,
you may have been standing, sitting or walking without your posture being aligned, or
your stress levels may have increased and the potential energy has been stored within your muscles ( often neck and shoulders).
Massage helps to reduce the pain by soothing and stretching the muscles. A good massage therapist will spend time conducting an in depth consultation prior to treatment. This will include your medical history, your lifestyle, and habits. In addition to the physical therapy, I often provide ideas on how to adapt aspects of lifestyle to help alleviate these muscle strains in the future.
One of the most common ailment I see is pain around the shoulder blades ( trapezius and rhomboids).
This is common for many people due to sitting in a slouched position with shoulders forward. Think about this for a minute. …. yes that’s most of the time for lots of us. Activities such as sitting at a computer, using mobile technology devices, driving a car all typically see us in this position.
When our shoulders roll forward, our rhomboids stretch and cause pain. At the opposite side, our pectoral muscles contract.
In order to alleviate this pain, We can stretch our pectoral muscles which will allow our shoulders to sit more squarely and balanced.
Simple Pec stretches:
Stand in a doorway with one leg in front of the other.
Place your hands in the frame at right angles to your body.
Turn your hips away from one arm and then the other. Only stretch a little more than is comfortable. Hold for ten seconds each whilst breathing in and out. ( Don’t hold your breath).
I have found that most rehab exercises only work if we remember to keep doing them every day. This can be most effective if you choose a doorway that you see daily, say the bathroom or the bedroom. And every time you move through the doorway you stretch.
Good luck .
Lower back stretches.
The second most common difficulty that I see at Indigo Spring, is Lower back pain. This can stem from a number of sources. Weak core muscles, bending and lifting and poor posture, are just some of them. Whilst I recommend seeing a massage therapist to assess the specific problems, working on your core muscles will always help.
Here are a few to get you started. My favourite entry level strwetch for those of you who rarely strtch at all, is the Cat Cow . Here they call it Cat / Camel.
On hands and knees, align knees elow hips and hands below shoulders.
Breath in and look towards your knees, squeezing in your tummy and pelvic floor (the muscles used to stop you wetting or messing yourself ) and arching your back. Breath out and lift your chin to the sky.
Repeat these slowly , paying attention to you spine as it rocks back and forth.
Good luck.
What Id like you to take away from this article, is that you can help yourself alleviate pain by stretching. It can be simple and effective if done daily. MAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF @ INDIGO SPRING
Hope to see you again soon at Indigo Spring.
Remember if you are too far from our clinic, I do offer an online consultation service.
Vocal Strain
Are you a singer? Or maybe a teacher or a coach? Do you use your projected voice? Then this blog may be for you.
As part of my series of blogs “Massage for Musicians” This item looks at tension in the neck, throat and voice.
When we use a projected voice. (Imagine your teacher shouting “Hey! you there”) We place strain on our vocal chords and all the muscles around them. our head neck and throats will all be put under tension. If this action is prolonged and repeated, over time you could notice damage to your voice.
Musicians and teachers alike, come to me to address this problem as they feel this, and ask for proactive care before they damage their voices with nodes or nodules.
The first stage of my assessment looks at posture. Ideally, the neck should be relaxed and central to the shoulder cradle, the spine falling loosely below and the knees soft, acting as a shock absorber in movement.
Some people like to visualise a golden thread suspending them from the crown of their heads to the sky (suspended in perfect balance like a marionette). This technique, a mainstay of the Alexander technique, enables the body to find it’s natural resting postition.
You may find that you are raising your chin and pushing your head forward. This places strain on the sternocleidomastoid muscle at the sides of the neck and the upper trapezius at the back. Try realligning your spine with the golden thread exercise. Note the difference.
Is there additional tension in the jaw or soft palate? Why not focus on these muscles, encouraging them to “Soften, just a little”
Observe your breath. Not trying to change anything, observe, the cool fresh air coming in to your body, and as you exhale, soften the muscles, just a little.
A difficulty some find is that they are always used to being active. It is necessary for us to sometimes be inactive. To actively do nothing. To just BE. Make time at the beginning (not the end) of your schedule each day to Just Be.
Observe your breath.
Soften each muscle group.
Feel aligned
Vocal strain can be alleviated before the onset of nodes through relaxation , breathing exercise and massage.
Do get in touch if you would like more details, or would like a personal consultation.
One thing at a time?
Happy New Year folks. If you’re even a little like me and those around me, you’ll be starting up new projects, or picking up the threads once more to continue weaving life’s rich tapestry. As I hear and tell these tales, I notice that many of us are doing lots of things at once. Multi-tasking seems to be a badge of honour and achievement. But at what cost? It used to be said that women are great multi-taskers. But I see men women, young and old living in this frenetic hi-tech, multi-screened world, doing many things at once.
But is it really good for us? To work at this fast pace, making decisions without thinking things through? Searching for answers whilst communcicating with no-one. Relying on Google in place of research. Sometimes we need to slow things down and take one thing at a time. Reach out to others and practice gratitude for the small things.
One of my favourite Meditation Exercises is the 5 finger Gratitude.
Five finger Gratitude
- On each finger of one hand, count somthing that you are grateful for.
- Each day (or week) choose 5 new things.
- It can be difficult to think of new things, especially if life is tough right now.
- Remember it could be that its not raining, or that you can rest.
- It is impossible to feel depressed in the same moment as grateful. The more you practice this, the more positive you will become.
- Sometimes the simplest of ideas are the best.
One Year after I launched Indigo Spring, I am delighted by its success, and surprised at the turns it has made in response to it’s guests needs. Massage Therapy has been the foundation of the business, but increasingly it is becoming about holistic care and wellbeing. The stories people share with me and the advice I pass on are often things we learn from others around us; treating ourselves as we would others, taking time to heal, compassion and understanding for ourselves and others.
So this Year I am launching our Wellbeing Journey. By commiting to regular appointments, we will be able to track your development both in mobility and pain management, and overall wellbeing.
This package comes with membership at Indigo Spring. You can visit once a month for our RELAXED membership or twice monthly for our BLISSFUL package.
Membership enables you to:
- Have priority Booking
- Reduced charges
- Emergency Appointments
- Wellbeing tracking
A 30 minute appointment once a month (R30) is £27.50
A 60 minute appointment once a month (R6o) is £55
A 30 minute appointment twice a month (B30) is £54
a 60 minute appointment twice a month (B60) is £105
Please call 01183320300 0r email [email protected] to join our community.
Get in touch.
Come and visit.
Take one thing at a time.
Meditation for protection
Every few weeks, I notice that I see a pattern in the stories my guests tell me about their lives and their well being. It would seem that these difficulties raise their heads for many of us and that we can be learning from eachother about techniques which alleviate.
Recently I have spoken to lots of people about the golden egg meditation for Protection. “You what?” I hear you say. Do you ever feel like all your energy is being drained by others around you? Do you absorb negative energy that is directed at you? Do you feel others’ pain with an empathy beyond usefulness? Then here is an exercise for you.
Some visualise a golden egg, and others a shining bubble ( in the style of Glinda the good witch from the Wizard of Oz). I’m sure other imagery that resonates for you will work just as well, so long as it surrounds you entirely and is a little distant from your skin.
Here’s how to do it.
Sit comfortably. Close your eyes and begin to observe your breath, going in and out.
Not trying to change it, just observing as it travels in and out.
Imagine the air you inhale is light and cool and fresh and nourishing.
Imagine the air you exhale is dark and warm and stale, and leaving you.
Now imagine a golden egg or bubble surrounding you, an arms length away from you. It completely covers you. This is your protection or shield. It shines and is positive. In here you are calm and feel at peace.
The egg keeps out all the negativity coming from others and the space around you. It also keeps out the negative feelings from within us, negative thoughts and harmful self talk.
As you breathe, in and out, you can visualise the negativity bouncing off the surface of the egg.
This space only contains positivity, compassion and kindness.You are safe.
You can use this technique whenever you need to and by practicing it before it is needed, will strengthen its power.
This and other mindful meditations are available as part of the holistic therapy offered at Indigo Spring.
Gritting my teeth
People have different ways of dealing with conflict. They may live in the moment, allowing words to tumble out uncensored, full of the raw emotion they feel. No thought for the feelings of others or the consequences of those sentences. Others may seek for common ground, finding compromise and negotiation, the only way to move forward. Some will use violence and misappropriate percieved power. And for some, their response is to do nothing. To suck up the opposing view, store it away for later, and not deal with the conflict at hand. Be it large or small. This can lead to tension in the head, face and neck or to stress and anxiety.
Have you ever wondered what happens to energy, to emotion when it isn’t expressed at all? Like all energy, it can never be destroyed, simply converted into another form. When we fail to communicate in such situations, we might say we are “gritting our teeth”. Holding back words for another time. So this energy, often negative and frustrated, is squeezed between our teeth, locked into our jaw and neck, and is held.
When I massage people’s necks I sometimes feel these lines of tension, making vertical stripes around their necks like metal collars. I’ll touch the hinge of the jaw and feel it locked. I ask if they are gritting their teeth, maybe trying to hold their tongue in conflicting situations, and they seem surprised that I know.
Our bodies are maps of our lives and the muscles reveal tales that we don’t always see ourselves.
Gentle massage is required to aid this tension. Drawing on the lymphatic system we can softly draw away tension through the auricular and clavicle nodes. Softly releasing and enabling people to let go and find a different resolution. Some people may find themselves grinding their teeth at night or tension through their jaw. Gentle face and neck massage combined with breathing and relaxation techniques can significantly improve these symptos and often leads people to make simple but important changes in their lives.
I recommend booking in for an Indian head massage to alleviate these tensions. In the meantime try following these instructions for gentle self face massage.
Facial Massage
- Using your ring fingers, gently place either side of your nose under the eyes.
- very lightly stroke to temples
- slightly lower at nose move again to sides of ears and again a little lower
- lightly stroke downwards just infront of ears down neck to collar bone.
- Repeat
- use forefingers and middle fingers, draw small circles at the join of your jaw.
- Yawn widely and feel how open the back of your throat is.
- Try to keep that open relaxed position s you continue your face massage.
- draw light zig-zags across your brow.
- Lastly using your ring fingers press and relase each of these points:
- chin, sides of lips, beneath nose, by the inside corners of your eyes, forehead, hairline.
- Stroke your hair gently away from scalp
Hope this helps.
Hidden Feelings- one perspective for mental health awareness week
Hidden feelings
To start with, I would hide my feelings of not being able to cope, Deny them and throw myself into the next big thing. Distraction was sure to be the solution. “Think positively” “time to move on” people would say with best intentions. But mental health problems don’t simply go away .
Next was the shame. Why can’t I cope? I’d been able to manage my life until now. I had embraced the waves of up and down that most creative people travel but never this lost. I felt so ashamed and believed that people would not want to know me if I shared how I felt. I was sure I’d lose my job. I’d create elaborate strategies to hide my state of mind.
Some days I would dress sharply and wear make up and stylish hairdo’s. Other days I could hardly get out of bed. Eventually I broke and needed lots of help.
Those times were very dark.
But you know, the people that hung around, are still here now. And the more I’ve learnt to talk about my experiences, the more people understand and begin to share their own experiences and support others .
In recent years there has been a tidal shift in acceptance of people’s difficulties with mental health. And a plethora of ideas for self-help. It is becoming much more possible to seek help and in turn help others with their difficulties.
Schools have had emotional literacy as part of the curriculum since 1999, and as the generation that has learnt it reaches adulthood, we see those people leading the way in openness, tolerance and support. We also recognise that people have many facets and that they won’t all be strong at the same time .
I see in my own children a much greater openness to emotions and mental health.
My own journey led me to finding a new career and helping others find balance in their lives. Massage might not be my only career but it helps me to live in balance. It helps me find techniques to manage my mental and physical health, and whilst I will always be managing symptoms, the balance of giving and taking, helping and being helped. DOing and just BEing, keeps me inspired and hopeful.
At Indigo Spring, massage is the access point to all sorts of services and helps others to begin their journey.
Its hookline is “Take time for yourself”.
So although I wouldn’t wish mental health problems on anyone. I have found a path, through my own vulnerability and I am happy to help others find theirs.
Hang in there folks. And talk to each other .
( If you are really suffering today please call your GP)
