Thai massage offers a wide range of benefits through its variety of different styles, techniques, and areas of focus.
“Intuition” – The Term We Use When We Don’t Know What We’re Talking About?
Intuition seems to be an all-encompassing term/explanation for anything we don’t fully understand. Anything that we can’t logically explain within our current knowledge base becomes an “intuitive-hit”. Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe in divine intuitions and gut feelings, absolutely. But I also think the vast majority of what we term as intuition is simply a set of relationships that on some level we do understand, but not well enough to be able to explain it.
“Massage-ology” … Why Learning Science Matters
Rather than modern science and intuition being opposite ends of a spectrum, knowledge of anatomy, physiology and biomechanics can help to deepen your intuition, assist in understanding “why”, “what” and “how”, improve professional vocabulary and inform treatment plans to help clients truly get better.
When Is The Best Time To Have A Massage?
The ‘best’ time to have a massage can depend on a range of things, though if you ask us…we’d say ANY time is the best time for a massage! But if we’re attempting to look at this objectively, the best time to have a massage is influenced by your overall goals for a session, if you have other activities planned, if it’s the start or end of the week, whether or not you have a workout (or some physical activity planned) or for some of us if we have some kind of performance or event coming up.
A More Balanced Discussion on Foam Rolling
There is a lot of information circulating the internet these days about foam rolling. From holy praise in one article to heavy criticism in the next, it can be a little difficult to figure out what to believe. Here’s our two-cents worth on foam rolling — when and where it can be appropriate and where to avoid using it.
Scar Massage: Top Tips to Reduce Scarring
Do you have a scar? (Yes, I’m pretty sure the answer is “yes”). If it’s from surgery, did you know that you should have massaged it? On this one, your answer is most likely “no, I didn’t know because no one told me”! So why should I massage my surgical scar and why did no one tell me?
Posture Don’ts: Crossing Your Legs
You may really dislike this advice if you’re an avid leg-crosser. It can be a tough one to accept, but ultimately, crossing your legs really isn’t very good for you.
Part of the reason why is simply the act of sitting for hours at a time during the day (which is an entirely separate discussion that I’ll save for another time). But even more so, when we try to isolate the action of sitting with legs crossed, we see that it can create some significant imbalances in the pelvis, which then gets distributed throughout the body.
The Benefits of Thai Massage
It’s an interesting question that gets brought up a lot, especially by people who’ve never heard of it before. And any good answer to that question starts with explaining a treatment’s purpose, the versatility of the practice as a whole, how often you get a treatment, how many times per week you do your assigned exercises, the different styles of Thai massage that are practiced, and the education or certification required of each practitioner. That’s a big list of things to consider, but let’s start to piece together an answer for our original question: “What is Thai massage good for?”
The Way You Set Up Your Desk Matters
As someone who consistently aims to help others release tension not just in the short term but in the long-run too, it requires that I look at daily movement patterns and posture, as well as past injuries.
RICE Method: Doesn’t Work The Way You Want It To
You’ve likely heard of the RICE method. It’s a regimen of Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation in the process of healing an injury. Even though it’s deeply ingrained in our culture, we should no longer follow these outdated (and flat out incorrect) guidelines!
Different Styles of Thai Massage
One of the beautiful things about Thai massage, that unfortunately makes it much more difficult to “standardize” in a way that ensures people know what they’re signing up for, is that basically all forms of tissue manipulation could be classified as part of a Thai massage repertoire.
Within a range of texts there are references to a great variety of techniques, ranging from the regular compressive muscle/soft tissue work and stretches, to plucking, tapping/hammering, gliding, bone-setting (chiropractic), pulling and twisting.
Some forms of Thai massage use oil, yet the most common forms don’t. Most are also fully clothed, but again some styles and practitioners perform treatments draped. Some forms also utilize herbal compresses that often involve specific blends of herbs designed especially for each patient/receiver. In this way it also uses a form of aromatherapy as herbal compresses are heated over a seat bath before use and emit a fragrance that is specific to the blends of herbs used.
Massage Deals On Groupon – Please Don’t Do It!
It’s not just Groupon, it’s any large-scale deal websites.
The reason I’m asking you all to avoid these kinds of deals is because as a profession, the long-term use of such deals devalues the entire field of massage and bodywork. Why would anyone pay full price for a treatment when you could follow the deal sites around continuously for crazy savings like 80% off?! The more we use them, the more they’ll pop up everywhere. Considering more than our wallets, we take into account the value we’re placing on our therapists/practitioners as well as our own health. Do you think the therapists get paid from a deal like that? Likely it makes them just enough money to pay the rent for their massage space – maybe not even that.
Commuting To Work? These Tips Will Freshen Up Your Daily Trip.
Rarely do I actually drive anywhere – living in the city has its perks and when someone else is willing to do the driving I’m all for that. On the occasions that I do drive, I become hyper-aware of certain tension-causing activities that must be quite pervasive amongst commuters. Because my body isn’t used to doing these functions I notice the extra work and tension that builds after sitting in traffic for even short periods of time. This presents alarm-bells for me as a practitioner of massage, as movement patterns like this tend to become heavily ingrained in our physiology.