Now that we’ve been back at it for a couple weeks, as a massage therapist I can confidently say that your home office probably needs work. I know that in my industry we had literal hours’ notice that we weren’t going to go back to work in a typical capacity any time soon, and unless your HR department is psychic or extremely proactive you probably got surprised by a sudden work from home order. I’ve been massaging clients who have all sorts of weird WFH setups: most often a kitchen table, but some work on a couch, a few clients I’ve talked to are working at a breakfast bar and sitting on a stool (they definitely needed a massage.) We all did our best with what we had available, but now that we are settling into the distancing groove, you owe it to your body to find more comfort while at work. Below is a shortlist of tweaks you can make to your workspace to make it a little more livable, plus some low impact stretches I recommend to my clients to undo WFH tension. I know it doesn’t compare to a vacation to reverse the stress of quarantine, but working in uncomfortable circumstances will only serve to compound our stay at home frustration.
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Every conversation that lasts longer than an hour that I’ve had since Ohio opened up shop has turned to travel plans- where can I go? Am I feeling the beach or the forest? How much time do I need off? But in 2020 unfortunately we also have to consider cancellation policies since access to amenities like restaurant service and operating hotels are hit or miss all over the country right now.
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Whether you are a newbie to spa life or a veteran bodywork client, you’ve probably wondered at least once what difference there is between Swedish massage and deep tissue besides the depth of pressure. The short answer is that they are not too different overall, since both modalities work to increase circulation and broaden the muscle tissue. However, in deep tissue massage therapists often introduce other methods of pain relief like trigger point release or myofascial release in order to address specific complaints. The benefits of deep tissue massage are obvious- if your hip or shoulder has been giving you trouble, therapeutic massage can often correct it. But my feelings about the necessity of massage for holistic health changed when I decided to give medium pressure Swedish massage a shot, with no specific goal other than chilling out.
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I read almost nothing but coronavirus coverage over the last two months (haven’t we all?), partially out of necessity as it rightfully sucked all of the oxygen out of the news cycle, but mostly out of anxious curiosity. As someone who makes others feel better for a living, I not only wanted to get knowledgeable about how it is affecting us in the present moment, but also how it will inform my work through massage and teaching yoga once we all get back to our lives.
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If you’ve ever taken a yoga class, your teacher probably gave you some cues along the way to help you in your practice. Some common ones are tightening your abs to create stability in balances, engaging your pelvic floor for a firmer foundation in a pose, etc. The idea behind most cues is to add dimension to your experience of the poses, but also to remind you that you have a vast reservoir of strength and grace within you already, and your teacher is only there to help you find it. Most of yoga is a practice designed to calm the storm of our lives enough to have space to search for the anchor we have within.
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