Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 

2014 is set to be a great year with lots of fresh starts. Cornerstone Therapies will be 10 years old and we are choosing this time to set up our new, dynamic section of the business - Welcome To Massage!

Offering a wide range of retreats, workshops, study groups and mentoring schemes, Welcome To Massage is offering you the chance to experience the wonderfilled world of massage before you embark on your full accredited training. If you are already a student, our half term retreats, study sessions on all topics massage and continuing mentoring could be for you. So do get in touch through Cornerstone Therapies, or WelcomeToMassage.com, we are also on Twitter and Facebook if you are that way inclined.

This blog, which seems to be ever popular and growing in readership, is still going strong and I am looking forward to embracing a much more relaxed approuch to publishing it this year. So although the blogs may be shorter, they will be more frequant and still packed full of day-to-day info on massage and professional skin care therapy with Dermalogica. 

I hope you have all had a wonderful holiday and celebrated Christmas and New Year with a bang. I look forward to writing soon and catching up with you in the treatment room! 

Take A Breath This Christmas

There is a lot of stress going about at this time of the year. The holiday season can be so much fun, but for some it's a time of mounting pressure to make it all 'perfect'.

If you are stressing out about how to make your home the model of chic style, I urge you to stop now and take a seat. Your home is not a Hollywood stage set and it never will be. The 'perfect' pictures on Christmas cards and in the movies of families huddled around the fire with a wonderfully dressed tree or eating a massive roast with all the trimmings and gifts over flowing are just that - Perfect Pictures. They have been stage set, dressed by set decorators, and costume experts have clothed the people you see and guess what; the gifts are empty boxes.

There are three tips that I would encourage you to do over the next week to help with the planning and running of Christmas time. They are what I have personally found to help myself and clients each year.

Don't believe it - it's a set, not your home!

A Plea To The Host - If you are hosting Christmas this year I would really encourage you to delegate a few things out. You still have time to do this, so get a drink, a piece of paper and a pen. List out all the things you feel you need to do for those coming to visit as well as the jobs for the meal prep. Then, next to each item write a name of one or two of the adults that are coming to visit and give those jobs to them to do. They are over 18 - they should man-up and help!

Not only does this take the weight off you, but it also allows others to feel that they are able to help and participate in a week long visit (in some cases). For example:

• Drinks - Jack
• Vegetable Prep - Jane
• Bedding - Tom 
• Kid's games - Jamie
• Table setting - Emily 
• Table clearing - Peter
• Puddings - Auntie Mabel
• Sauces - Mum

You get the picture. You have a week and a half to go, so if you email the list out to all your guests this weekend they have a week to get their items together and sort it out for you. Believe me, everyone knows Christmas is a mad rush and people need help, so allow them to do things for you. It won't be perfect, but hey it never will be, so let it go!

Present Buying - This year I banned Amazon and our big local town as sources of gift giving so I stayed close to home and spent my money in the market town where I live and made a huge amount of our gifts. It took a bit of time management, but if you can do this for next year I would really encourage it, as it not only helps your local independent businesses but you can get it done easily during your local errand runs. It's a lot less stressful - believe me! 

However, if you haven't got it sorted yet, cancel everything you have for this weekend (December 14th and 15th), and get it done now. There is no point waiting for the next weekend, which is a time to start snuggling down and enjoying the pre-Christmas Nativity concerts at your local church, meeting friends and eating mince pies. It's not a time you want to faff around in large shopping malls with stressed kids and partners. 

If you are shopping for gifts on your own, make a list of people you are buying for and next to their names write TWO options so if you don't find your first preference you can simple get the second without a thought in the middle of town. Get in to town at 7:30 in the morning on Saturday, get a parking spot and enjoy a coffee and pastry before the shops open. Then just do it - no hesitation - hit it baby! If you are shopping with a partner, simply tear the list in half so it's done in a fraction of the time and you can get back home quickly. Little stress and an easier win than last moment issues. 

Make Time - This gets a wry smile from people with large Christmas plans, but trust me, it'll do you the power of good. Phone your therapist up and choose the one kind of treatment that relaxes you the most and make an hour in your diary for next week to chill out! This investment of time will benefit you more that you can imagine during Christmas and will prep you for New Year as well. 

• Massage will allow you to calm down and your Massage Therapist can work with either soothing oils, deep fascial release and long held calming and releasing stretches. Your Thai Yoga Therapists will also be able to clear your energy flow, as will your Acupuncturist or Shiatsu Therapist. 
• Facials are amazing at calming the tension in the face, relax headaches and sort your skin out so that all you have to do is pop some makeup on at home to look as fresh as a daisy! I would recommend soothing, calming facials this time of year as there is no need to add extra energy into your system. 
• Manicures, Pedicures and Waxing allow you to feel 'sorted' as well as give you time to relax whilst someone looks after you. There is nothing nicer than looking at neat, short, freshly painted nails with no chips whilst preparing the Christmas turkey, and no one wants to see the New Year in with hairy armpits. 

I hope this has given you three ways to ease the stress out this holiday season. Enjoy it to it's fullest extent and if you are feeling the pressure, go to a quiet room and take ten deep refreshing breaths, swing your arms around and then head back into the frey. 

Happy Holiday love to you all xXx

Natural Selection - The Stuff Of Life 3

I have been chatting with friends, family and clients over the past couple of weeks about natural selection. Seeing that there is a break in the proceedings to being Stoned At Home due to technological issues (lack of camera man during the day), I thought I would expand on the natural flow of the conversations.

Many of you have read The Stuff Of Life blogs that were written over the late spring concerning how we are looking after our bodies and our planet, and I feel that this runs along with the themes that were blocked out there.

I was at my slow running kitchen sink a month ago. Again the water was not rushing through at a good speed and my heart sank as I thought of all the little bits of grated carrot that must be blocking the pipes. That self-annoyed feeling is normally the que to do the six month sink flush in which I reach for a plastic bottle, pour junk down the sink and try not to think about the toxic shock I have just leveled through the water system.

But this time I had finally had enough. Why are there plastic bottles around my house that have pictures of dead fish on the back of them with massive warning symbols? At what point was I deluded into thinking that cleaning my house with chemical based products was normal? I never thought I was a sucker for advertising, but at some point in my life there must have been a slip through my mental barricades.

There is enough science based evidence to show that essential oils cannot only be nice smelling, but also provide anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties and they are very potent natural offerings. (Just do a Google search if you doubt me and you'll come up with a whole life time of studies to read through.) So why aren't I harnessing their power and using them in my home instead of unblocking my sink with toxic bombs?

If I am to write blogs that are aimed at encouraging you to grow a little organic salad at home, hydrate your body with filtered tap water and ban the plastic bottles and get to know the people who bake your bread, there has to be some joined up thinking in the place I rest my body - My home.

The point about Organic and Bio-Dynamic food production is that when you invest in it you are putting your financial vote behind the ideas, ideals and practiced methods of looking after our home planet, which is the only one we have. Especially with Bio-Dynamic farming, you are voting to say that you are looking after the planet in harmony with not only the seasons, but also accepting that farming can happen along natural rise and fall of the Earth's natural magnetic energy (and that's just for starters!).

So I walked away from the sink and let it gurgle through the carrot filings and got on the phone to my Mum, who along with Dad brought us up so that we could be as aware and as close to the earth as they could with three kids and about five full time jobs. I asked Mum where I was going wrong and as she gently smiled and with a laugh on her lips, she told me to get a lemon!

The power of lemons, tea tree oil spray, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar are stupendous! I have been boring Mum with emails about how shiny my shower is, and there are FaceBook photos of my sparkling oven doors, and there is no mildew around the tiles of my bath. Plus, my water is running perfectly down the plug hole. It took a bit of Google searching, chatting and some embarrassing questions on social media, but after four weeks I think I may just be getting to the point where I can get away without all the bottles and sprays that I used to depend on each week.

The funny thing is this; not only do I feel like I am no longer killing fish down on the south coast of England, but I am liberated even more from the advertising drivel. Plus, I like the fact that I am no longer cleaning with rubber gloves on - I dread to think which landfill they ended up in!

People have asked me a good question; Does it take longer to clean now that you don't have spray bottles?
The answer is not now. It took me three weeks to get it all going including sourcing recipes, (the Tea Tree Shower Spray is fantastic: 2 cups of water to 2 tablespoons of tea tree oil) but now it takes the same time as it ever did.

Today for example I did a liter of vinegar to a liter of water, in a bucket, shoved the shower head in it and left it for three hours. Then just wiped all the crud away from the shower head and it looks like new. Easy!

I am clearly not perfect and there is still a few bottles that I use (washing up liquid, laundry softener etc), but it is less and that it what matters the most - a constant lessening so the planet around us, as well as our bodies, can breath easier.

My next project for spare time over Christmas holidays is making my own beeswax furniture polish!

Stoned At Home - Part 1

I have been using hot stones for the past eight years at Cornerstone Therapies, and I love my set of 50 basalt stones and 30 marble beauties. They work with me every day and I couldn't be without them! A common question from clients is 'did you name the business after them?'. The answer is no, I didn't, the business started two years before hand, but I am ever grateful for finding LaStone Therapy, Jane Scrivner and latterly The Jing Institute of Advance Massage, all of whom showed me how to use my stones to great effect within my treatment room.

Now I want to pass on my personal knowledge, passion and interest in stone work to all you guys at home!

My clients are wonderful; ever creative, interactive and switched on to their own personal journeys to find great ways to support their own full body wellness. Lately a few have been letting me know that they have picked up their own basalt stones from places they have travelled to; either seeing beautiful stones in rivers or on beaches, that they have taken home to use in-between treatments but once back they don't know where to start. Others have invested in stone kits from the internet and have not been happy with the stones or heaters that they have been sent.

So, this new mini-series is set out to help all you guys at home with your stones. It's time to get you stoned at home!

I am going to endeavor to create a couple of YouTube posts to go along side these so that you can follow along the set up of your stones at home as well, so hopefully these blogs and the videos will give you all the information you need to get cracking. But first we need to know why hot and cool stones are used in massage therapy both at home and in the treatment room so we know why we are looking at them as an important tool.

HEAT

I use these black beauties - Baslat Stones
for my hot stone massage. 

Classically we use heat to help chronic soft tissue based pain ease. Chronic simply means that there has been pain experienced for more than three months. Heat allows a flow of blood, lymph and nutrients to rush to the site of pain and allows a flush into to the area. This means that the stagnant old scar material that may have collected there can be refreshed and taken away to the lymph nodes or broken down by the blood cells. The garbage collectors can take all the rubbish away. Also, heat is very nurturing and can be a soft analgesic to the muscle, so if you are wanting to ease the joints and tissues, it can feel wonderful and aid in taking the bruising pain down to a manageable level.

In practice -  I have found that heat also helps with fascia release, so I use hot stones on the body as placement tools to allow the fascia to melt and release a little before I actually get my hands in there. There is also a great effect in my massage as the stones create a lot more flow in a short period of time than my hands ever could. This means that I can get a lot more work down in an hour than if I didn't use the heat. You guys come to me for effective and personal measured results, not for me to simply spend ages rubbing some heat into you! I have also developed ways of working with trigger points and stretching with the use of my hot stones and I find they give me space in my client's bodies when I work.

At Home - There are many hot tools that you can use at home, (not least a hot water bottle), but for those who like to incorporate massage into your close knit relationships with family and friends, stones can help bring warmth and nurturing effects by just being placed onto the body. Clients of mine also enjoy just heating their stones up and using them as hand warmers in their pockets on walks, and placing them around their bodies as they watch TV rather than a wheat pillow.

COOL

I use cool marble to help not only calm acute injuries,
but also to energize and refresh the mind. 

I often feel sorry for cool work as people tend to shy away from it as they think it only means freezing acute injuries with ice pack. It's true, for an instant treatment to injuries ice is great as it contracts everything and keeps the injury safely in control, reducing pain and decrease the amount of swelling. However after the first five days, people enter the vague and grey area of Sub-Acute, which means that there is still tissue pain, but the scaring needs to be flushed away.

The text books say that Sub-Acute is three months, but seeing as I have never had a client that resembles anything the text books say, in my experience sub-acute can last for any amount of time. My shoulder is a great case study for this. I injured it years ago and sometimes it's a chronic pain and heat really works, but after a day in the garden it can nag me as is it's a fresh injury; so I grab some heat on chronic days and then cold on others.

The point is that you can use cool stones either on their own or with your hot stones. Only use them for 3 minutes at a time, but do embrace them!

• You can use them in water with ice in it for the really cool work, 
• in cold tap water that has been in the fridge, 
• or just tap water for a not such a big freeze. 

Also, if you are in sub-acute you can mix and match your heat treatments: 

1. 3mins of heat
2. 3mins of cool
3. repeat up to five times and end with heat (because it's nice!). 

Why use stones at all? Why not just use a hot-water bottle and a bag of peas?

Stones are always used when they have been in water and are thus seen as a 'wet' treatment. Whitney Lowe's book 'Orthopedic Massage Theory and Techniques' has a great reason for using heat treatments to stimulate the healing process, which can be read and applied to the concept of stones: 

"Regardless of whether the thermal modality is producing its effects from heat or cold, it is important to understand heat transfer. Heat is a form of electromagnetic energy, and when this form of energy moves from one location to another there is a transfer of energy regardless of whether the end goal is production of heat of cold."

"... Moisture in these heat packs helps improve the conduction of heat from the hot pack to the body". 

To help bridge the gap between the treatment room and home, I hope these two videos help you! 

http://youtu.be/yn-Sg7KfdKI

http://youtu.be/bMUGex9jjGU

We are all set up with the theory of Stone Work, so in the next blog we can start looking at great kits to use at home so you don't waste time and energy on investing in products that may not work quite so well. 

Enjoy! 

Welcome To Massage Workshops

I thought it was about time for a small round-up of  all that is going on with Cornerstone Therapies at the moment as there have been quite a few changes behind, and in-front of the screen lately.

The biggest news is that Cathi Wye has joined our tiny team. Now being heralded as the new Creative Director for Cornerstone Therapies, Cathi is helping to develop the ideas that my clients bring to the couch as well as the ones I dream up in the shower!

Cathi is helping to create a whole new part of Cornerstone Therapies. I have been asked by many people over the years if I would show them how to 'do massage' for family and friends. There is a huge need to start a non-accredited workshop that can show how massage at home can help those who need basic massage on a regular basis. The aim is to show you how to offer a safe and effective massage for those with aches and pains in-between their sessions with their Professional Massage Therapist (MT).

Welcome To Massage Workshops

The great news is that we are well on the way to creating a five session workshop series for you! Over the five weeks, or during our weekend retreats,  you will be shown everything from setting up your massage couch and working out how to manage your sheets, to completing a full body massage.

I am really excited with the prospect of handing you the all information I wish I had had before I went to massage school! I am writing the workshops with the specific question: 'What do I wish I was shown before I got started?'.

Cathi has been sourcing some wonderful venues for you to come to and experience the Welcome To Massage Workshops, along with Earth sensitive massage couches, sheets, oils and baskets so that we can be as kind to the environment as we are to our bodies.

We will be hopefully getting to the photographers before Christmas so that the manuals can be
illustrated and then sent to the printers for January.

Cathi and I are working hard so that we can offer places on the first Welcome To Massage Workshops during February 2014 here in Godalming.

Do keep in touch via Twitter, Facebook, as well as the Website for all updates.

I look forward to meeting you on our new Welcome To Massage Workshops in the new year!!

Depth Charge

It has been a busy time at Cornerstone Therapies over the past few weeks, which I love! I have noticed over the years that clients come and see me with questions that appear to come up in waves in the treatment room, with topics being talked about by a few people rather than just one or two. I have a feeling that this often happens when areas around treatment approaches need to be addressed; and the answers and ideas that flow from that point dear readers, I bring to you on this blog. 

Over the past two weeks I have been asked by many clients; 'How do you know how deep you need to work?', which is closely followed by, 'Why don't you press harder?'.

My views on these subjects are personal to my practice and my journey, but here they are! 

How do you know how deep you need to work? 

For me, my sense of touch has been built up over 14 years of work. My hands are quite sensitive to touch and I 'practice' touch each day. If I am out for a walk I will run my hands lightly over a stone wall and ask myself what I am feeling. Is the stone brittle, soft, pointy, wet, dry, is there moss on it and are there cracks running past my hands? The same goes for iron railings, hedges, you name it! I like this exercise as I have to make quick interpretations and then move forward. I will also use different parts of my hand; finger tips, the sides, palm and 'top' of the hand and see if they pick up different aspects of the same substance. 

Bread making is also great as I can play with the weight I can work with that is directed through the body and I work out which part of my feet, legs, hips, back, neck, head shoulders, arms and hands need to relax and engage for different results in pressure all whilst I knead dough. This is a big reason why I bake so much bread! 

With around 20 clients a week, I also touch a lot of skin! Each person is different every time I see them and for this reason they will need to receive a different type of touch during each session. Indeed, different parts of the body need to be worked with varying touch. What is common to see in the U.K is thin dry skin - This skin may need more oil around the forearms and shins as touch can be quite painful there and the oil allows the nerve endings to dissipate and not jangle and the touch may need to be lighter. However, I maybe able to work with no oil, deep intention and quite a bit of pressure on their back. It's all a matter of moderating. 

The other aspect is when clients come to me after living life! I may have a client see me one week who is relaxed after a good lunch with friends who needs work done on her shoulder. She is open to deep work at this time and works with me through dynamic stretching and allows her body to go heavy and relax as her pain areas are treated on a deep level. The next week she sees me and she is fraught after a fight with her husband during the school run, has been late for an appointment and her kids got a bad school report the night before! During her session with me that day a more sensitive touch, with aromatic oils, and a sense of nurturing all need to be combined to allow her adrenalin to calm and her body to receive a treatment. I can't use pure deep intended strength during her treatment after she's been through a morning like that.

So many things come in to play with knowing how deep I can work on with my clients. Touch is important, but it's also vital to listen to how they are feeling emotionally before I design the treatment on the day. 

Why don't you press harder?

I was asked this yesterday afternoon and it was a very difficult question to answer on the spot. I was thinking about it even today as I was eating breakfast and I realized I had to go back to the question that started my deep burrowing into the field of massage seven years ago.

Back then I was a youngster! I had been working for seven years and I had been taught 'Sports' massage at my local college. I hated doing it to the point where I didn't even put my certificate up as I didn't want my clients knowing I had qualified, sticking instead to the classical Swedish form with a lot of oils and a lot of light strokes. The reason I hated Sports Massage was that it hurt me, (mainly my thumbs and back), and it hurt my clients. I remember the lecturer I had at college telling me that I should aim to cause a bruise during a Sports Massage as it meant that I had caused trauma around the area and the body would then rush to that place and heal it. 

I'm sorry - but really?!

When reading through history, looking at Jesus' miracle, signs and wonders, reading about amazing healing in the past and people walking out of temples with new bodies free from pain I didn't find any recorded evidence that Jesus, or any other Healer, invoked pain on the people who needed freedom in movement. It was a gentle touch that helped them. Oh, and often the power of God Almighty! 

Gentle Touch with measurable results as what I began to crave in my practice, with the firm belief that  what I had been taught at college was wrong. That is when I started slowing down my massage, finding techniques to sink down the layers of the body, create space within the tissue so that the body has room to heal itself and then soften the areas that are in pain. Which is the approach I basically apply to every person I treat and I now call it the Triple 'S' Rule: Slowly Sink and Soften.

Many clients do report personal measured results after they have seen me and I am very pleased that I can drop the 'Sports Therapist' title. If I want to pigeon hole my work Advanced Clinical Massage fits the bill much better! 

I personally feel that this is the right approach to Massage Therapy for me and the clients who meet me each day in the treatment room. We work together, often quite slowly, building up the foundation blocks that we can build on over time. The quip 'Fix In Six', which many Sports Therapists bandy around, is not something I personally agree with or understnad how it can work. I may be able to help ease a client's pain pattern in that time, but the core problem will not be sorted out that quickly in my experience. 

So; I hope you enjoyed this ramble through the depths of massage pressure, and I hope it answers two of the big questions that you may have thought about during your treatments. 

The Anatomy Of Movement

Today we are looking into the Anatomy Of Movement; an over reaching title, but one that sums up
what we have been doing over the past few weeks. This takes us back to where we started last month with Rotating Shoulders when I got stuck writing a blog series about shoulder pain and movement as I couldn't find the words to describe the anatomy in an integrated way. Our forms are too complex to isolate them into singular muscles, and so the past few posts have been exploring a little bit of the history of anatomy and how we see it today. No longer do we have to box the systems up and put them in pigeon holes; now we can see how we move in fluid flow.

The whole reason why I wanted to look at the movement of anatomy was to get away from the rigid terminology that Anatomy has been shrouded in over the past few centuries. I don't believe that we were created to be stuck in a mould that could be described with generalized, isolated movement testing. The clients that I see move! I move!

With 3D scanning and printing giving us such unique ways of looking at (and hopefully treating) the body, it is no longer appropriate to look at ourselves in such caged viewpoints of nerves, blood, lymph, muscle etc. We now see muscles contract and relax, massaging the lymph around the body and giving stimulus for the blood to keep going round. The joint capsules have direct relationships to all aspects of tendon, bone, ligaments, nerves and blood. Viscera, which is ignored by so many massage therapists, cannot be cut out of any equation. The body really does interplay between the sum of all parts.

The best part about the viewing technology is that we can see it all in real time as the clients/patients move and we can view them in all planes of movement. Feet can now be scanned in a 3D scanner whilst wearing heel and then the layers are taken away on the screen revealing the bones and the job they have to do to keep us balanced.

The Greeks, Romans, painters in the Renaissance, nor the Doctors 50 years ago could have dreamt that we could see the body in movement through cameras that can take away layers to see the reality under the skin. This means that we have to start playing catch up in the way we view the relationship between anatomy, language, movement and the treatment room. We simply can't afford to stick with a language that was developed to describe theories that are becoming outdated.

So, we need a way of describing anatomy in movement during massage and body-work and that is where I see Integrated Anatomy really helping us move (!) our work closer to a more realistic conversation between the clients and the therapists.

I also hope that integrated anatomy becomes a bridge builder between the differing types of Holistic Therapy, but also within the Medical world. I long for the day my clients can go to the 'Knee Surgeon', and they will take the whole body posture into account, video the gait movement, talk to the Lymphatic and Vascular specialists and take an over all picture of the background of the patient before simply going and 'tidying up' a bit of ligament or cartilage here and there.

I hope that the YouTube video helps explain this a little better and that you find it helpful. Excuse the scary face - I'm still working out how to use Google Capture! I'm sure there will be a re-take soon.