The Importance of Community in the Massage Industry

I absolutely love it when a bodywork session transforms into something unexpected and wonderful. These are some highlights of correspondence between me and a recent client of mine after our first session. Everything is shared with permission and you can see more of Tanith's paintings here.....

I used to recommend some fairly intricate kinesio taping to help with posture modification for my clients but I have found that a simple posture correcting harness/brace does a fantastic job and are much easier to use. You do not need too heavy duty of a harness unless you have extra thick shoulder musculature, are looking for a more aggressive correction or are very active throughout the day. The nice thing is that you can try as many different posture correctors from Amazon as you want until you get the right fit and just return the ones that do not work for you.

I had an experience with a client shortly after a contentious moment in my country's political discourse (how is that for PC?) where I was actually compelled to end a session because I was not able to care for my client deeply enough to work out a better solution. So I wrote my client a letter which he has graciously allowed me to share here.,,,,

I took my daughter to the zoo the other day. We waited with the other people to see the cheetah walk out and stood in amazement as the cheetah did, well, nothing really. She just walked around, looked at us and then laid down. I imagined the cheetah wondering why there were people here to see her again, She didn’t feel that special. She had no idea what she was really made for, how fast she could run, what it felt like to be free, what a fierce predator she could be. She just had some sense that this crowd of spectators was interested in her so she should show up again, like she does every other day.

I want to share something I wrote trying to say thank you to a group of people that were a major part of my becoming a better bodyworker, toucher, connector and human being. It was in a five month training program with the Institute for Phenomenal Touch. It absolutely changed my life!

I love body rolling and think it is far superior to the many popular “foam rolling” strategies that I see a lot of people utilizing. My basic premise is that using different sized balls with different densities to strategically roll on, under and around your unique, 3-dimensional body will allow you to apply just the right amount of pressure in the specific places that you need it as well as helping you do some amazing stretches. Plus you can take your body rolling equipment with you wherever you go. If you are a proverbial road warrior, just deflate to miniature soccer balls, pack a small air pump and throw them in your carry on.....