Top It Up

I am constantly being asked by my clients how much therapy I receive and I always feel very blessed when I can honestly say that I have hands on treatment each week from another therapist. So today's post is a very personal response to the 15 people who asked me this one question last week, and I hope it helps you see therapy in a new light as well!

I love treatment; I think that it enables me to function fully and happily in my body. Everything from one-to-one pilates, yoga, massage, shiatsu, skin care treatments, osteopathy and haircuts. They all work wonderfully to help me help you. After 14 years of working I can honestly say that I haven't had a work related injury and I personally think it's because I take care of my body well - it's my working tool! My husband pays a lot for his work gear in the IT world, so I do the equivalent for my work.

Therapy is a bit like a gas station. You happily drive yourself around in your body, doing this and that, going from one place to the next, but you run out of gas, so you have to go to the nearest gas station to fill up otherwise you'll stop in the middle of the interstate. The best way to keep a car going is if you never go lower than a quarter tank full. So treat your body the same way as your car; keep it constantly topped up and fill it with the best gas you can afford.

I see different types of therapy simply as different types of gas station. Sometimes I go to see my Osteopath each week for a month to iron out my ongoing neck issue, but then I won't see him for a while after he has worked his magic as Pilates and yoga may be releasing it for me on a more active level.

I need haircuts and skin treatments to keep me looking at my best, and that helps with my own confidence and so I can take on the world and do amazing things! Also, if my skin is red, itchy, angry and painful I will be uncomfortable and in a constant state of inflammation, which is no good for anyone.

I realize that this constant topping up for me is quite high, but as all therapists will tell you, the gas runs out quickly when you're doing 20 treatments a week, (which is my own personal limit).

My pit stops are personal to my energy flow, but I would encourage you to work out your output and match it with the input.

The one thing that I get irritated with is when therapists don't make time to get treatments themselves. Not only does it seem a bit odd to me that they will encourage their clients to make regular visits for time on their couch, but won't do the same for themselves, but I also think that they loose the sense of experience.

I have had the dubious pleasure of lying through two really quite awful facials this month. I wanted to see what was out there, who was doing what and the level of experience that was in my town. Not only did it reassure me that the treatment I offer my clients are top notch, they also gave me new ideas on how I could improve, what I could change and thoughts started to role. Everything from clean sheets, (my pet hate is when I am offered to climb onto a couch with sheets that have been there for goodness knows how long), treatment procedure and product sales came into view and if I hadn't made the financial and time commitment to go out there and just experience it I would never have changed and moved forward.

The fantastic treatments I do get from my regular therapists keep me on my toes! They always set the bar so high that I have to totally engage with my work on a daily basis to keep mine going skyward. Without their pace setting I couldn't do what I do, which is offer amazing treatments with measurable results.

It's great to ask your therapist when the last time they were on the couch was. See what they say! It's quite telling and will show you how important they see therapy in their own lives. It's a big challenge, but one they may need.

This week's challenge for you then is to work out what you need. Do you need to join a meditation group at your local church, synagogue, temple or yoga studio to refill your spiritual depletion? Do you need cranial sacral treatment to help rebalance your spinal fluid? Is massage the gas station you need to visit or will you fill up on an awesome skin car treatment?

It takes time and money, and this may mean that you need to take a look at your diary and budget, but it's worth the investment of both. If you need to change going out three times a week to once or twice, then maybe that's not such a bad thing? Work this out for you, but I hope my personal journey can help you along your way.

Winter Training.

This blog post is a personal thought process, rather than a Body-Worker's professional conclusion, so I ask you to read it with an open and questioning mind as it sure as heck isn't a definitive conclusion to heavily researched Sports Science!

January is a dark month, heavy with Yin energy and a time when sensible bears are in their cave asleep and ignoring the grey clouds and dark mornings. So why is it that we feel pressured into going to a heavily air-conditioned, artificially lit environment during one of the darkest months of the year? When we ask the body to be pushed beyond it's limits during a season when naturally all around us is resting, why are we so shocked that we get injured?

However, lets take a look at three things that people have asked me about in the past week in the treatment room: Running, swimming and walking.

Running

As I sit at the table to write this I look out the window, the Thursday Running Group has just gone
past; A great group of woman who run each week around our road at a good pace. However they make me think - with over three miles of woodland surrounding our road, why do they run on the asphalt? They have all this wonderful nature to run through, with a river running down behind the gardens with a great trail path and yet they stick to tarmac. I often wonder how their experience could be maximized if they simply went down the foot paths and saw Nature go through her seasons one by one, month by month, week by week.
It would be better for their joints too as to be honest, running over a rugged trail is much better than pounding over tarmac. Undulating ground, to me, seems a better work out for the feet, legs and the rest of the body as it forces all of the frame to balance, strengthen in dynamic ways and create a more rounded experience. The ground is also a lot more forgiving when it isn't covered in tarmac and the flow you can get over can be wonderful.
I'm currently hearing great things about Chi Running and Barefoot Running. As a non runner myself, I leave you to look into it for yourself but as a therapist I can really get behind the concept and theory of both and would be very happy for my running clients to look into getting some proper tuition and training in either style. I like the flow, the inherent nature of getting back to a good stride and being totally involved with the body's movement.

Swimming

To me, I personally think that swimming is the most beautiful cardiovascular sport that you can do! Apart from Breast Stroke, which I would happily ban, I don't think you can get better. The water supports you, it helps your lymph to clear, you can go at your own pace and it's safe to do with so many different injuries and illnesses that I think everyone should be doing it. It's great for your heart, lungs and well-being. Try and find a pool near that you that isn't full of chemicals and over lit and you could be on to a real winner. If you are lucky enough to live near open water see if there is a open water swimming group near you to join.
With all this praise there is a cautionary word of warning - please get some lessons before your start!
So many people come to me with bad necks, shoulders, hips, lower back and knees after they have just got in a pool after years of not swimming to only get injured within a few weeks.
Technique is so important and if the last time you were in a pool was when you were 10, you should get someone to show you how to improve your strokes. I like the Total Immersion training for everyone, but especially if you are keen on doing triathlons, joining a club or want to make sure you are swimming effectively for your fitness goals. However, there are wonderful swimming teachers in the local pools that you can book in with for a few sessions to get you going and they will teach you the breathing techniques, co-ordination as well as posture in the water. So make some room in the diary and arrange time with them!

Walking

There are two types of walking; the one that you do every day and the one that you make a day out of, and you don't need a dog to enjoy the benefits of either! I love both and I think that both offer you a very well rounded way of getting fit, enjoying the environment around you and keeping you grounded.
There is no right or wrong way of walking, it's just a matter of making time to do it. I have been walking instead of driving since last May and I have to say that although I've found it refreshing and a very easy way of maintaing my base fitness I couldn't have done it without the right foot wear. Flip-flops and ballet pumps will break you! If you are going to walk, make sure you invest in two pairs of shoes; light wear for the summer and waterproof for the winter. I walk into town (about a mile each way) three times a week and I can't do it with the wrong shoes, so even for this short distance I have invested and am very pleased that I did.
For longer walks there are loads of groups to join if you want to meet new people, or you can go with a friend or partner and make a day of it. The National Trust have amazing set walks around the country if you want to visit their properties or land and they are clearly marked and maintained. There are lots of other societies and groups that support walking and it is well worth taking time and doing some Google homework to get the right walks for you.
I think if you are going to invest in this as your way of getting fit, I think you are on to the best winner. It's maintainable, the risk of injury is low and you can go as far as you like. I love it and after all, we are born to walk, where swimming and running are both slightly going against the human spirit.
Just don't start climbing mountains before you can walk to the town centre!

What ever you choose to do, and no matter how you choose to do it, don't push it! Your body will tell you where to go, what is comfortable and when to stop. Tune into the body that is below your neck line and check out what it's telling you to do.

Enjoy!

Pain In The Neck

I have often said that these blogs are written when themes evolve within the treatment space at Cornerstone Therapies , and this blog is no exception.

A few of years ago I wrote some blogs on neck pain, but today I thought we could take a look at the subject again as over the past week I have treated pain patterns for some pretty gnarly neck based trigger points, and I want to open up some understanding on a couple of muscles, massage tips and home care.

I often find that people come to me and talk about headaches and neck pain but never talk about the shoulders and how they are feeling in relation to the issues that they are experiencing. I find this interesting as the shoulders are so completely linked to the relationship we have in movement of the head and neck. The shoulders need as much time in a treatment as the spine and cranium when headaches are present in my personal experience.

Indeed there is a particular headache that can't really be helped without a good look at the shoulder. Levator Scapula is my favorite muscle in the body. I know I shouldn't really have one, but this baby is it! It's like a beautiful ribbon that unwinds itself to allow rotation of the head. It's movement is fascinating as it lifts the shoulder blades up as you shurg you shoulders and turn your head.

I was working on it yesterday for a few people and it was clear that if the shoulders were released first, they would drop down naturally, releasing the neck and allowing the head to come back and the ears come in line with the shoulders when looking from the side. There is no chance of releasing the neck and head if the shoulders were still looking like earrings!

Pain patterns are attributed to fascia and muscle tissue that have got grumpy. Trigger points send pain all over the body in specific directions and Levator Scapula's map is right into the curve of the neck at the back, and around the shoulder blade.

So, if it's not specific to the head, why spend time on it?

Levator Scapula is fascially linked up to the Spinalis Capitus and Semispanalis Capitis, and I have never been able to treat the three separately; they are married together and will always be treated as a  group in my eyes. The Capitis muscles are at the back of the head and connect it to the neck and they produce amazing pain through the head and into the back of the eye. Tender points are also found at the back of the head and travel downwards making the neck very stiff and tense. Also they produce pain in the same place as Levator Scapula in the curve of the neck. Not nice at all!

(As a side thought, there are many layers to the neck, as with any other part of the body, which means
that when I talk about treating these three tiny muscle bands their surrounding neighbors also play a part in the treatment and healing process. Muscles such as subscapularis, trapezuis, scalenes, sternocleidomastoid and the like cannot be separated in thought, work or actions.)

Posture is a big problem with these muscles as we spend so much of our time with our necks flexed - that is to say with our chins going towards out chests and eyes looking downwards. The obvious culprits to this posture are laptops and mobile phones. However, people who read a lot, knit, sew or do any gardening can spend extended hours with their heads bent over as well.

The reason why I wanted to flag the shoulders and neck up today in relation to headaches is that there is so much you can do at home in-between your treatments with me to help your headaches.

Stretch it away! The best thing you can do is stretch the muscles out on a regular basis. Maybe when you make your morning tea or coffee, when you are having lunch and again when you are going to bed. The video below will really help you stretch effectively.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9Xfmmd0Ldc

Sit and Stand Tall. So much of this is based on posture and to ease yours out, try dropping the shoulders down towards the ground, don't jam them, just allow them to drift down. Allow
the head to lift up so your chin is a little higher and then bring the head back so that your spine lengthens. Often this is helped by coming more into the heels when you are standing, rather than falling forwards onto the toes.

Breathe Deep. Fill all your lungs with air and enjoy them expanding. There is no need to panic breathe throughout your whole life.

Be Practical Your mobile devises should be in your control, not the other way around! Bring them up to your eye level, don't bend your head to look at them. If you are texting, Facebooking, Tweeting, Emailing, it all adds up to quite a bit of time with your face planted in a screen. So lift it up and release the neck. Also check how much time you are typing in tablets and laptops with screens that are too low.

Get A Massage With neck pain it is really hard to treat at home as when ever you lift your arm up to massage the neck, the shoulder gets involved and you can't get a good release. Book in for a session with your Professional Massage Therapist who should know how to passively stretch your neck safely, treat your trigger points and advise you on your posture.

I hope all of this helps and that you enjoyed the blog. I look forward to typing up the next one real soon!

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!