Your feelings and emotions can help you displace negative thought patterns with positive ones, decreasing stress and boosting overall health

As I have mentioned in previous posts, chronic pain - whether of the pelvis or another area of the body - is multidimensional and complex. Learning about your condition, your body, and your available tools to recover is an essential element to navigating that maze and managing your pain. That is why I place such a high emphasis on client education and teaching self care techniques for my massage clients. Health education consists of two parts to be effective. The first par

Our society is inundated with chronic disease and pain. I bet you can think of at least one person - if it isn’t yourself - who is constantly rubbing their back, checking their blood pressure, or otherwise struggling to feel healthy. Causes of nearly all of these modern pains and diseases (including cancers, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, pain syndromes, digestive complaints, arthritis, etc.) are rooted in stress and inflammation. So what on Earth does any of that ha

Breathing is up there with heartbeat and brain function in terms of necessity of life. How we breathe also affects our quality of life. Unfortunately, most of us do not breathe optimally. As we grow from toddlers and children into older children, teens, and adults our breathing patterns change from perfectly open to compressed usually in response to life experiences and social influences. For example, we’re taught that a flat stomach is beautiful, so we might consciously r

Chronic Pelvic Pain. This term encompasses conditions ranging from endometriosis to painful sex (dysperonia), incontinence to constipation, pelvic floor inhibition to over activation. These are complex conditions with a multitude of contributing factors. As such, it can a be frustrating nightmare when looking for answers. But complexity in this instance also offers those with these conditions several avenues to begin addressing the pain at home as well as gather information

Getting a massage is a wonderful, relaxing, therapeutic time in our routines! In the midst of our bliss or startling at the sound of our own snores, we can think of “getting a massage” as a completely passive act. But active participation in the experience can rev up results and add another dimension to the work. One of the most (hopefully) obvious and encouraged forms of active participation is telling your therapist when you feel especially tender or painful areas. Even

In honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month (April), I am using this post to address a topic that the majority of Massage Therapist tend to avoid. Massage Therapy and its relation to Sexual Health! With the fading but still lingering stigma of illicit services offered by shady massage parlors and the safety issues that creates for licensed therapists as well as unfortunate fact that usually massage is only connected with sex in misconduct news reports or human trafficking case

Tami Kent is a leader in women’s health and developer of Holistic Pelvic Care - a system of internal vaginal massage and energy work that helps women to restore balance to their pelvic floor and energetic root. Her book, Wild Feminine: Finding Power, Spirit & Joy in the Female Body, is considered a staple in the women’s pelvic health field. Filled with case studies, personal reflections, actionable exercises, and affirming insights, it is easy to understand why both practiti

People are like ogres are like onions. This is something I've started saying often to describe a particular aspect of pain recovery through bodywork. Moving pain. Pain that moves can be scary, frustrating, or make you feel crazy! After all, pain is supposed to be a signal that something is wrong, right? So if it starts to roam around, we can start to imagine that we are jacked up being repair or that multiple malfunctions are occurring at the same time. (Or worst case, we sta

Every day, for years, you take the same route home. (Stick with me here!) This route you follow happens to be a bit circuitous and a little arduous, but you traverse it mainly because you always - or what feels like always - have. One day a detour pops up which forces you to take an unconventional path home; a more direct, easier way! A few days later, after the detour is gone and you are no longer thinking about which way you are going, which route are you going to take h

In the care-giving world there is a term that describes the ability to be completely present for another person without judgement, open to whatever the other needs in that moment. It is called “holding space.” This is an element of therapeutic care that most professionals strive to achieve for their clients. But recently I have come to realize how important this type of openness is to give to yourself. In fact, I believe it is possibly the most essential tool we can have

Massage therapists have a saying: the issues are in the tissues. Looking at this phrase, clearly it is applicable to a profession that releases stress and relieves pain in the soft tissue structures of the body. But it is not often that we refer to physical ailments with this rhyme. Most often, we are discussing trapped emotions and memories. “Memories are stored in the brain. How in the world could an emotion be stored in the body?!” you might be wondering. In a 2014 re

Pain is complex with environmental, social, physiological, and psychological components. All of these elements come together in an effort to prevent further harm, but sometimes the body can be overzealous in its guardian duties. One example of this overprotective nature is called central sensitization. Central sensitization is defined as changes in the brain and spinal cord that create a heightened reactivity to noxious or potentially noxious stimuli. In other words, your

Erik Dalton is a respected leader and educator in the massage therapy field. In a recent article in Massage & Bodywork magazine, Dalton published an article in which he proposes massage therapists employ pain - in limited, controlled quantities - as a useful tool to the therapeutic process. This is known as Pain Exposure Therapy (PET) and is used in many rehabilitative settings and modalities. The premise behind this method is that we can decrease pain by “normalizing sen

We’ve all heard the phrase “It’ll get worse before it gets better.” Many times we apply the phrase to difficult life situations, but it can also be especially applicable to the healing process. Medically, the period of “worse” is known as the Jarisch–Herxheimer Reaction and is also referred to as a Healing Crisis colloquially. This is a time in the body’s healing where a client may experience an exacerbation of their symptoms as toxins (dying bacteria in the case of diseas

Hopefully Part 1 and Part 2 have primed us to reframe this statement. Now when thinking “I can handle the pain,” instead of hearing a phrase loaded with resignation, overwhelm, and gritted teeth, the connotation has shifted to one underlain with positivity and a clear plan of action. When that action includes massage, often clients come to looking for “deep tissue” massage because they have heard or have experienced that as the only type that provides relief. Asking for dee