MassageFreek

Speaking of car accidents and pain

Thursday, October 18th, 2007 | Massage, healthly living, stress | No Comments

I had a car accident on the 1st of July. It took about 2-3 months for the pain to be really bad. So now, I have to share, that I am in pain because of that accident.

I can clearly see the fault in my thinking that my accident was “not that bad” even though I have treated many people who have told this same story over and over. The pain from a car accident take time to get bad. The normal amount of time that I have seen in my practice, for people to feel the most pain post-accident has been about 2-3 months.

It’s so strange how pain works. Even for me, with years of treatment of MVA’s with my clients, I still didn’t believe how it could could so long after the fact. But there is no denying that the pain I feel today is certainly because of the accident on the 1st. This is why I have a good lawyer! So that the insurance company who represents the at-fault party will most certainly be paying for my treatment.

Chiropractors I know and love

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 | Business Insights, Massage, healthly living, stress | No Comments

Connecting with others can be challenging in and of itself. Connecting with others with an agenda in mind (hopefully detached from outcome) is just downright scary for a lot of people.
In the world of health care there are many different people that could be taking care of one person for the ultimately fully rounded health of the given individual. As a health care practitioner, I have to make connections with other health care providers, and that can be super-scary and even nerve-wracking. Believe it or not, I have fears about connecting with people even thought it is central to my practice.
Today I had a wonderful time connecting with a chiropractor that practices near Madison Park. Before meeting her, the only chiropractors I have trusted have been practicing for 20 + years
And they are in freekin’ Everett. › Continue reading

Car Accidents, MVA’s and dealing with them

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 | Deep Tissue, Massage, healthly living, stress | No Comments

I have seen many people with car accidents in their history come to my massage table. A common issue is the pain and how it just seems to stay for so long. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard a client say to me “When is this pain going to go away? I have been waiting for it to dissipate since my accident but it only seems to be getting worse!”

I have had to break it to people so many times. When you get into a car accident the soft tissue damage to your body is diffuse (in a spread out area of your body) it is also almost impossible to see on your skin - there’s often no bruising. Because the pain caused by diffuse soft tissue injury seems to have no seeable cause, this situation can lead the person experiencing pain to feel somewhat out of their minds and a bit like a big fat baby.

One should just be able to bounce right back into life, right? The body has healed itself in the past real quick -why not now? Though it is hard to explain - the logic behind lots of soft tissue damage is easy to understand. With the activities of life - the body moves alot. When you have the diffuse soft tissue injuries caused by a car accident - those little breaks in the fibers of soft tissue continue to get pulled and broken again even after the initial insult to the fibers of the soft tissues.

The whole idea of this sort of injury is downright controversial. It’s kind of a bitch considering the involvement of insurance companies and the “hard proof” needed to justify payment of claims.

Get a good lawyer to fight for your right to get your massage, chiropractic, physical therapy and acupuncture paid for by the insurance companies (regardless of fault). Keep your claim open the full 3-year max and get the treatment you need to treat the injuries that you will live with for the rest of your life.

Getting in to an accident will leave a permanent mark. The injuries will become chronic and you will have to maintain your soft tissue health for the rest of your life - if you want to keep those injuries from getting harder and harder scar tissue that will leave you “feeling old” and creaky later on.

Trust

Monday, October 8th, 2007 | Business Insights, healthly living | No Comments

“Trust: this word can cause doubt, fear, and indecision in our lives. How does one trust anyone? We must first look at ourselves know who we are, what it is we want from life, our relationships, and friends. In this way we can look at the people in our lives what benefit they bring us, as well as how those relationships keep us in the reality we created for ourselves. The power of this word…”

Today I got an email from a business friend of mine. The above paragraph was the the beginning of the whole thing.

I wanted to make a post surrounding it because Trust is a very important element to take into account when it comes to massage. I also have “trust issues” that have been around since I was born. (I can thank lots of cranio-sacral therapy for that insight - seems I came into the world having doubts about my safety.)

Personal relationships and trust. In the longer version of the text I started this post with - it goes into detail about how we, more or less, lie to ourselves about how other people we love or interact with really are. I know for myself, that I have lived in many dilusional fantacies about my love relationships that eventually ended in fireworks that were not pretty. These days I tend to catch myself and have the tough conversations where I admit my folly and see if the relationship can survive without the false ideas I was once placing on them.

Trust and the Massage therapy relationship. Trust is a big deal when you are getting a massage from someone. Massage is intimate. There are no other modalities where a health care giver will give so much time and focus to your body. The massage therapist who touches you for an hour will know your body, in some ways, way better than your doctor. Trust and comfort is essential to a truly great massage experience.

I don’t care if you are the world’s best massage therapist - if your client doesn’t trust you or feel comfortalbe with you - your massage will not “sink in” People tend to think that if a professional has the great skills that it is enough to facilitate great change and healing. My experience has been that clients who have a great connection and personal trust in their therapist will have the best and most long-lasting results regardless of “how good” the therapist is.

Trust is a practice.  I think I default in saying “it’s a practice” because almost everything in life IS a practice. Life itself is not a stationary thing. People tend to compartmentalize their experiences of life so much that it is almost like it is “lost on them” that life is a changing and moving thing. Trust is the same way. There are given “states” of trust in any given relationship. These states will change with experience. Often times our behavior will say “I trust you the same as I did before” when really, this is not the case.  This is when the difficult conversations have to be had. One must look at themselves and honestly let the other person “in” on the change in trust they have for the other person. This is why I say it’s a practice. Trust can change.

If one monitors levels and changes of trust through the course of any given relationship there is less risk for fireworks. Back to that whole practice thing… Deliberate conversation about trust levels and expectations in a relationship are both hard and imperative. How many times have you seen or been in a relationship where this didn’t happen and it fell apart at the end in a very ugly way? That is because both parties avoided the truth conversations over and over untill the situation was so out of integrity that it HAD to just Fall apart? If you have the courage to acknowledge and talk about trust and how they have changed for you, you can really stop some train wrecks.

Ask yourself: where am I feeling a lack of trust with my friend, my partner, my business partner? and then ask yourself if that person is a aware of that lack of trust. Then ask yourself if the relationship would survive you telling them about it. Have the courage to “get back into integrity.” Talk to your partners and loved ones about your trust in them. Chances are, even if it upsets the whole universe of your life (or theirs), it’s just what the doctor ordered because it will cause a re-alignment of integrity and things will heal. It may not be easy or pretty but the truth will heal.

I think that’s why they say that the truth hurts.

Truth is the scouting messenger of healing

Get Healthy

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 | healthly living | No Comments

So I finally did a touch of online research for strecting and found a nice little post that gives some standard good tips on stretching.

I found this at a site called Merely-Flawed.com

They have a blog there as well as some othegoodies . Be good to poke around on the site a bit. The Article Dos and Don’ts of Stretching sweetly and shortly summarizes the essential basics of stretching.

Go ahead and chew on this a bit…

Stretching for you, self exploration for me

Monday, October 1st, 2007 | healthly living | 2 Comments

In the last week or so I have been on the subject of stretching.
I have not written but maybe one post on the subject but the posts are writing t themselves as I think about the subject using my own life and body as my research.

My previous post covered some basics- some of the foundational pieces that I feel are important to the whole idea of stretching.

As I have been thinking about stretching, I have been doing it more in my life. I had mentioned earlier that awareness is one of the first steps to incorporating it into your life.

I think that giving healing advice is something that causes healing to happen.

I use myself as an experiment. My experiences are my teacher
Stretching is a practice not only of the body but also of the mind and emotions. The connection to ones body that is created during any stretch or contortion can be anything from joyous to almost unbearable.

It can be really really hard to get into stretching. But I think that what I have been pondering on this subject, as I have been not writing anything and just thinking and experiencing can be helpful to the person who really wants to get into it but doesn’t really know how to start.

I think the first the thing to really acknowledge is that:

Stretching is a practice
Even if you never nail down a regular time in your schedule to do some stretching but you still do some here and there… that’s still “practicing.” Wanting it in your life and doing the actions that make it be a part of your mind/body experience – is called “bringing the practice of stretching into your life”
The practice of stretching is not a static thing. It’s about life and your body. Life is organic and moving – so too, it seems logical, that stretching would change and morph as a practice does in ones life.

I think the second major thing to really get would be:

Stretching can be easy or it can be very challenging –you get to choose
You really need to “listen” to your body
You need to “get in touch with it” and take stock of what hurts and what feels tight.
You need to listen to how far you can push your body and you need to really act upon those impulses to stop or slow down.
I don’t want to dis the idea of working hard or challenging the body to go further in a stretch, for example.
But I do want to get across that you can choose to do that if you want if you know it will be good for you. But there’s little gain in trying to push yourself past your limits when you may not be mentally, emotional or physically handle the effects of pushing your own limits.
Pushing your limits is a good practice in growth but you must do it with care for your body. Your body will punish you as well as your mind. Sometimes there emotional releases available in stretching that perhaps the situations in our lives cannot support the safe processing of. Take stock in what your personal inner and outer states are before your push your body to limits that are highly challenging or stressful.

I think that may be enough to chew on for now. I think I just want to get into the habit of writing blog posts that are actual useful information.
Balances out the massage freek blog expression.

In later episodes:
I will cover some more basic of incorporating stretching into your life in ways that work and make sense… at least to me.
We will talk about:
Movement and stretching
Breathing
Grounding
And mucho more.
Stay tuned