Prenatal Massage: What The Expecting Can Expect

Being pregnant brings with it all kinds of changes and stresses on a woman’s body. At The Good Life Massage, we’re proud to offer prenatal massage. This specialized approach to massage gives pregnant women all the benefits of massage as they get ready for delivery.

We sat down with Michelle Green, LMT to talk about some of the differences between prenatal massage and regular massage. Prenatal clients are among our favorite clients to work with, but there are some things you should know before you come in for a prenatal session.

First, whether you’re a returning client or you’re new to The Good Life Massage, you need to inform your massage therapist if you are pregnant. As healthcare providers, this is something we need to know to keep both you and the baby safe, so please be sure to mention your pregnancy on your intake form. If you are pregnant, the front desk will give you an additional intake form with questions relating to your pregnancy. We understand that you may want to keep the news to yourself, and that’s understandable. But we really do need to know, and are bound by law to keep your medical information private.

How massage can help you cope until delivery day
Whether pregnant or not, regular massage therapy helps with a number of issues, including muscle soreness, posture issues, and chronic pain, as you might expect. But it has also been shown to help with depression, digestive issues, and sleep. All of these are things pregnant women could use extra help with, but there’s even more to it than that.

In Michelle’s experience, pregnant clients have particular needs that massage can most directly address. “Prenatal work can really help with a lot of those pregnancy aches and pains whether it’s low back and hip pain, to pain in the knees and feet. I’ve also come across a lot of women who have had some upper back and shoulder pain as they get a little bit farther along, and some of the massage techniques used can really help to relax those and kind of stretch things back out to keep you comfortable during the length of your pregnancy.”

Getting you comfortable
Baby bumps don’t fit on a massage table in the traditional way, and massage therapists need to adjust their modalities and techniques to accommodate pregnancy. This isn’t just a nice adjustment–it can be critical to the safety of the mother and unborn child.

“The massage therapist is going to take a little bit of extra time and care with the massage,” Michelle says. “They’re going to set the table up a bit differently, depending on how far along you are in your pregnancy, usually keeping you on your side and making you really comfortable with bolsters or pillows that we’ll put underneath the legs.

“We’ll give you a nice little pillow to snuggle with as well. It kinda helps to keep your spine and your shoulders as well as your low back in alignment to keep you comfortable while you’re on the table. And just like any other massage, you can undress down to whatever your comfort level is and really get a chance to relax.”

Your therapist may also use specially designed support cushions to allow you to lay face-down on the table as with a traditional massage. This is one of the reasons it’s important that we know about your pregnancy in advance of the session–so we can be sure we’re prepared with the necessary equipment on the day of your session.

The right massage at the right time
How and where you’re massaged depends on where you’re at with your pregnancy. Very early on, there are few noticeable differences in how we’ll work on you. “A massage therapist will do the majority of the work while you’re on your side. And this is for a little bit later into your pregnancy,” Michelle explains. “A lot of the times when you’re early on, you can still lay comfortably on your back so that some upper shoulder and back work can be done from that position as well.”

If you think you may need assistance getting on and off the table, our therapists would be happy to help. For this reason, you may feel more comfortable working with a female therapist, so please note that when you book your massage. While we are happy to accommodate any request regarding the gender of your therapist, you should know that all our therapists of any gender are well-trained and qualified to give our pregnant clients a safe, comfortable massage experience.

Can massage induce labor?
This myth seems to have legs, and it’s not hard to understand why. Who would want to give birth on a massage table? But massage professionals like Michelle know this just isn’t true. “You don’t really need to worry about early labor being induced during massage. The techniques that are used are very safe and won’t affect that at all.”

Pregnancy is difficult enough. Let us help you get through it. Book your prenatal massage now.

If you want to buy a massage for someone special in your life who might be expecting, you can purchase a gift card here in any amount you wish.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and marketing director at The Good Life Massage. You can reach him at marketing@goodliferenton.com

Michelle Green is a licensed massage therapist at The Good Life Massage. You can reach her at support@goodliferenton.com

5 Ways Everyone Is Doing Relaxation Wrong

Unwinding–A Master Class, Part 1

“Relax!” verb, directive – a phrase you say that will almost guarantee the person being addressed will never, ever be able to relax.

We throw the words “relax and unwind” around too easily. We tell people to do it as though it was as easy as breathing (well, it kinda is, but more on that in part 2). This casual tossing around of these words has damaged the concept in our minds. We’re too quick to think we “don’t have time” to relax (lie), or more commonly that what we are doing is relaxing when it’s absolutely not.

Relaxation isn’t the same thing as “fun”. Relaxing things can be fun, but not all fun things are relaxing. We live in a busy, distracted world, and the best most of us feel we can do to “unwind” is to get some TV in before bed, maybe go out for dinner from time to time and take our annual vacation.

How is that working out for you?

Can we do better?

In this two-part post, we’ll explore what relaxation isn’t, what it is, and ask ourselves some tough questions about how to do it best.

Your body: temple or amusement park?
Be careful about using food as entertainment, especially if it’s cheap, fried, sugary, or some combination of these things. These kinds of foods hack the pleasure centers of the brain, overwhelming your sense of being satisfied with a need for the explosive dopamine hit to continue. This is why “you can’t eat just one”. It’s a food hijacking your brain and using the mechanisms designed to help you to survive to help you gorge.

Foods high in sugars kick up insulin production in your body, which in turn puts stress on your circulatory system and your heart. Over time, this can aggravate the negative effects of daily stress on the body. A diet high in saturated fats and trans fats can have a similar effect. Excess, with food or alcohol can also do a lot of damage, even when it’s done in the name of fun or relaxation.

There’s nothing wrong with a little indulgence now and then, but just know that you’re trading some mental and psychological pleasure for some bodily stress that can accumulate to a deadly result over a long period of time. We’re not saying “no dessert!” (God forbid!) Just use moderation and understand the trade-off you’re making. If bodily stress is a major concern, don’t neglect this aspect of how you treat your body.

Mind games
Real unwinding is not just about your physical well being–the tension in your muscles, etc. It has just as much to do with your mind.

It’s easy to confuse the mind with the self, and so we forget that the mind is a tool. It helps us make decisions, interprets our experiences, and produces our feelings. Since it’s a tool, we need to keep it working well. This means you need to regularly rest it and sharpen it. But too often we abuse it by overindulging it with sensational experiences, cheap thrills, and shallow, fleeting pleasures.

Screens
We can hardly get away from them. An outside observer might guess that we’re slaves to these flat, glowing surfaces. They’ve filled our living rooms, bedrooms, classrooms, workplaces, and even our pockets, purses, and cars. A lot has been said to question the wisdom of this cultural shift, but let’s focus for a moment on how it affects your stress and relaxation.

The light from screens can actually cause stress. Sleep studies have shown that the stimulation caused by the bright LCD and LED-style screens that fill our lives inhibit the production of melatonin, a hormone that signals to your body that it’s night and that it’s time to sleep. If you’re having trouble sleeping you might consider keeping the screens off for an hour or two before going to bed and see if that helps at all.

And what about social media? Studies have shown conclusively that the most social media you use, the less happy and healthy you are. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram, while fun and useful at times, can also breed envy and depression as we compare and contrast everyone’s best days with our worst and get drawn into unproductive political debating and ruminating. Even the “news” we find there turns out to be less than reliable.

Porn
Long gone are the days of a guilty pile of mags stashed in the woods or the furtive trips to the adult video store. The device you’re reading this on right now is a private, anonymous conduit to see more naked bodies than a Victorian libertine could’ve seen in a lifetime.

Cultural enthusiasm for this stuff has given way to a justified backlash as critics point out exploitative norms in the industry, and psychologists critically interrogate porn’s value in enhancing our sex lives. Porn use can cost you your job and cause public humiliation, not to mention the damage it can do to your libido, your relationships, and your ability to enjoy healthy sexuality.

Porn is like a mental junk food, hijacking your senses and your brain to keep you riding high on oxytocin and dopamine while it reroutes your sex drive to fleeting, superficial experiences. In most cases, these experiences, while they can be intensely pleasurable in the moment, only serve to isolate you rather than build a lasting bond with another person.

Bingeing
Let’s be honest: if it were healthy, we wouldn’t call watching hours of television on end “bingeing”. Letting yourself get swept up in a drama can be cathartic. There’s nothing wrong with some escapism now and then. But is there any drama that’s worth the loss of sleep and every negative consequence that flows from that?

Entertainment, but for zombies
Going out for drinks, watching TV, video games, movies–we all have a set list of the things we do because it’s the weekend, or it’s time to relax, or it just seems like the thing to do. But does that mean it’s relaxing? Does that mean it’s worth your time?

Examine your recreational choices and question them–really put them under the hot lights and interrogate them–for what they’re actually giving you. Are you really getting out of them what you think? Is it time to break the mold and try something new?

In part 2, we’ll talk about healthy ways to unwind that are truly relaxing and life-enhancing long term.

Choose the good life.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and Marketing Director for The Good Life Massage. You can send you comments to him directly or ask him how he can help you build your brand through content marketing by contacting him at tomgunn@gmail.com

Get Out: How to Refresh Your Well Being With the Power of Nature

When was the last time you spent more than a few minutes outdoors? If you’re like me, you prefer to stay inside, surrounded by a few nice people and your favorite things. But recent studies suggest you might be harming your mental, and possibly even your physical health by staying in too much.

And it’s not just about staying indoors, it’s about city life in general. If you’re reading this, you most likely live in a world full of electronic and mechanical noise, artificial light, metal, plastic, and pavement. But it probably wasn’t like this for your grandparents, or their grandparents.

The urban experiment
In the roughly 10,000 years of human civilization, it’s only relatively recently that a critical mass of humanity has begun living in cities, foregoing rural or nomadic life for freeways, big box stores, and high speed internet. It may seem like it’s been the way life is for most for a long time. But it’s really an experiment in human living that’s only just begun.

How’s it going for you so far?

In spite of the many benefits of living in cities, people are reporting high levels of unhappiness, malaise, and dissatisfaction. Does that mean we should sell our possessions and live in the woods? There may not be any need to go to such extremes.

Take a hike
One study showed that even minimal exposure to nature can make a difference in happiness and well-being. Short walks in the park, keeping potted plants around, or even gazing at landscape painting made a difference in the subjects. Another study showed that when potted plants were present in an office environment, overall stress was reduced, employee sick time plummeted, and productivity improved.

Consciously adding some outdoors time to your self care regime is easy, fun, and relaxing. Even if you’re out in not-the-best weather, you might be surprised how much better you feel afterwards.

Even some artificial nature is better than nothing. At The Good Life Massage, our waiting area has a pleasant waterfall and handsome potted plants, and every massage treatment room is equipped with a white noise machine, usually making the sounds of rain or ocean waves to help deepen your relaxation.

Add a little nature
The preponderance of evidence that suggests that exposure to natural settings and a general sense of well-being and happiness has been overwhelming to the psychological community. So much so that a new field of ecopsychology has arisen, in which mental health professionals are looking further into the ways our happiness, health, and relationship to nature intertwine.

In a sweeping happiness survey of American cities, some interesting patterns showed up. One of the significant factors that connected America’s happiest large cities (Seattle among them!) was proximity to natural or green spaces, along with easy access to large bodies of water. These were only a few of several factors, but it’s interesting in light of the studies about the relationship between happiness and regular exposure to nature.

So turn off the TV, leave your phone off, and get out there. Don’t let a beautiful day, or a beautiful life, go to waste.

Choose the good life.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and marketing director for The Good Life Massage. You can hire him to help build your brand and reach your customers by emailing him at tomgunn@gmail.com.

How to Help When Things Get Real

There’s been much made in the news about terrible things happening around the world, and rightly so. Families are displaced by wars, genocide goes unchecked in Asia and the middle east, and natural disasters cripple entire societies. When disasters like this strike, aid is organized, charities and religious groups scramble to the rescue.

But what about the smaller tragedies, those disasters that feel enormous and earth-shaking only to that one person or that handful of people you’re close to? The loss of a spouse through death or divorce, incarceration, separation from children, death of a loved one, violent crime, or even the loss of health or employment? Mental health problems can be simultaneously shaming and debilitating, with stigma driving the sufferers and their loved ones deeper into isolation.

When these things happen to someone you know, it’s hard to know what to do or what to say. The best most of us can do is politely offer help (knowing they won’t want to impose by actually asking us for anything), try to “be there” for them (whatever that means). We wish we could do more. We mean well. But we feel paralyzed by fear of doing the wrong thing, of maybe making things worse.

You can do something. It won’t change their life or make everything okay, but it also won’t be impossible for you to do, an they really will feel their burden being lightened, even if only a little. What follows are some suggestions to consider when someone you know has been through something traumatic or devastating.

All of these suggestions are just that, and you should use your own judgement to tailor these ideas to the circumstances.

Dancing hotdog
Give Hallmark the day off. Nobody really buys the schmalzy messages in overpriced gift-cards, anyway. But you’d be surprised what good a little laughter can do.

Send them something funny, something that might draw out a smile–a dancing hotdog GIF, a link to a cat video. But whatever you send, make it personal and private. Use a text message, Instagram, Facebook, whichever platform you prefer. Send one every day, or at least a few times a week. It lets them know you’re thinking about them without getting all sappy about it, and without drawing any possibly unwanted attention to their misfortune.

Logistics
Treat them to some food. Sure, it’s cliché to bring a casserole to the doorstep. But clichés are clichés for a reason. Someone who’s going through something terrible may struggle to do the basics. Modulate your strategy to suit how close you are to the person, but it might be greatly appreciated if you can help with the small stuff.

Have a load of groceries or toiletries delivered to their home.

An Uber gift card, or a parking garage membership can make all the difference, especially when someone is facing frequent hospital trips or have some other crisis that’s making transportation more complicated for them. Even if all you got them was a small pre-paid gas card, the gesture could make a big difference.

It’s easier than ever to send care packages to cover the little necessities of life. It’s both a thoughtful gesture that lets the person know they’re not alone while also relieving some of their troubles.

Shut up
Try to resist the urge to offer advice or be the shoulder to cry on, be someone to vent/rage to, be the one to offer advice. Numbness is a defense strategy that shouldn’t be trifled with, and might result in the person pushing you away–possibly even violently.

Besides, this isn’t about you and your role, or how you see yourself. Make it about them and what they need. Make yourself available and be ready to respond to their needs without needing to be asked, and without drawing attention to the generosity of your offer. Just be present and responsive to what they need.

Be present in every sense and just listen to them. It’s amazing what people say when you just sit quietly and let them express whatever they need to say at their own pace. This is harder than it sounds, so bring some imaginary duct tape to put over your mouth.

Thoughts and Prayers
Now this one kind of is about you. Pray about them. Think about them. You can tell them you’re sending them thoughts and prayers if you want to, but don’t just say it. It’s better to do it and not say it, than to say it and not do it.

Pondering their difficult situation will increase your compassion for them in a deep and genuine way. You’ll be more emotionally responsive to their needs. Side benefit: exercising your compassion in this way could even make you a better person long-term.

Life is hard, as you’ve probably figured out by now. No matter how immaculate our own choices may be, bad things will happen, even to you. If you’re paying attention to the needs of those you love, and are attentive, that builds you crucial social capital–a social savings account of sorts. You’ll build your network of emergency responders of your own, and make you better prepared to survive the encounter when death knocks on your door.

Choose the good life.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and marketing director for The Good Life Massage. You can hire him to help build your brand and reach your customers by emailing him at tomgunn@gmail.com.

 

 

 

 

Gratitude: The Gift You Give To Yourself

 

We tend to think that gratitude is a feeling that just happens to you–a reaction, like laughing at a joke. The problem with this idea is that it makes us victims of our own ability to adapt. Even if the circumstances we live in are extremely good, we may not have any awareness of it. We’re just focused on the next threat to our existence. This is a good strategy for staying alive, but it doesn’t work so well for feeling like life is worth living. We get used to how good things are, and before we know it we’re sneaking envious peeks over the fence to admire the neighbors’ grass.

Gratitude works like magic in the way it can transform the hum-drum world around you into a place of wonders: a place where miracles are happening all around you at every moment. You can see this transformation in even the most mundane and onerous aspects of modern life (including commercial air travel).

Not only does gratitude make you feel better about what you have, it can open the door to even more good things in your life.

For your health
Being grateful for your body and your health increases your body awareness. Your body may not look just the way you’d like; it’s current condition may reflect either poor choices on your part or circumstances beyond your control. But consider what an amazing mechanism your body is! Millions of years of evolutionary growth have gone into it, and before that, the very stuff you’re made of was a part of the stars in the heavens. Your body, whatever it’s condition, is a wonder to behold. Keeping these beautiful ideas in your heart and mind will do more for your happiness and health than you may realize.

In fact, studies show that people who are grateful are more likely to attend regular checkups, have fewer aches and pains, and suffer from less depression. What’s more, a default position of gratitude will help you enjoy your body more and deepen your happiness and sense of well-being, helping you feel better both mentally and physically. And who couldn’t use more of that?

So exercise! Enjoy affection and intimacy with someone you love. Get a massage from time to time to give your body a little treat.

For your relationships
A study published in Emotion in 2014 showed that saying thank you to someone you’ve just met increases the likelihood that the person you’ve thanked will establish an on-going connection with you. When the people around you feel appreciated, they tend to want to do more of the thing you thanked them for. As you continue thanking people and as gratitude becomes the default for your personal and working relationships, more and more people gather around you, offering up their best selves as you keep rewarding them with recognition and gratitude, often without even thinking twice about it.

For your soul
Are you feeling ground down all the time, defensive, victimized? Do you lash out at people who probably don’t deserve it, or feel like a slave to your own tempestuous moods? Consider cultivating more gratitude.

A 2014 University of Kentucky study showed that people who rated higher in gratitude were less likely to retaliate when given negative feedback, and showed greater empathy towards others over all.

With greater gratitude, you’ll have higher self-esteem because you’ll be able to recognize your own gifts, and so won’t feel the need to resent the achievements or accomplishments of others.

What more reasons do you need? Cultivate gratitude in your life. Treat yourself like someone you’re trying to take care of and work gratitude into your public and private life. Pray or meditate daily. See how many times you can say “thank you” to the people in your life in a given day.

Get curious about it: hat would happen if you tried it?

Choose the good life.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and marketing director for The Good Life Massage. You can hire him to develop your brand and social media strategy by contacting him at TomGunn@gmail.com

6 Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Wellness Goals

The Good Life Massage would like to commend you on trying to live a healthier lifestyle! Even simple things like reading this blog post are steps in the right direction. But is every step you take a step forward?

We’d like to point out a few things people commonly do in the interest of taking care of themselves that are actually counter-productive and even self-sabotaging. Do any of these describe what you’ve been doing?

“Diet” Soda and other pre-packaged “Health” Foods
To be sure, diet soda is not as bad for you as regular soda, but it isn’t doing you any favors, either. You’ll tend to drink more of it than you think you are, which can damage your teeth and marinate your nervous system in caffeine! Regular consumption can even increase appetite, especially if you’re used to drinking it with meals or snacks. Low fat/carb “treats” from companies like Weight Watchers also tend to deceive you into thinking you’re eating well, when in fact you’re eating very poorly. Read labels! They may have reduced the fat, but they also may have increased the sugar to balance it out.

Leave it to Western consumerism to create a cycle where what you consume (low fat, high sugar food products), creates a problem (weight gain), which in turn has to be solved by some other product. It’s a cycle of madness that stops the minute you stop thinking you can buy your way into eating better. The science is clear: a diet consisting mainly of whole foods–whole grains, nuts, lean meats, vegetables, and fruits–is the key to good nutrition. Don’t be seduced into thinking some magic product will remove your responsibility to make better choices.

Being your own trainer
Sorry, but you really can’t be your own trainer. It’s an appealing idea, especially in American culture, that you can bootstrap yourself into physical fitness and lifelong habits of activity and health. Unfortunately, this isn’t usually a realistic expectation.

You’re a more complicated, more social animal than that, whether you want to admit it or not. Don’t believe me? Those mostly-wasted gym memberships of years past and the lightly-used abdominizer which you bought from TV and that now languishes under your bed are all the evidence you need that I’m right. That’s not to say a more detailed explanation isn’t merited.

There are just some things you can’t do all on your own. Even if you have the athletic experience and history on your side, your own will power is a finite and unreliable resource. You just can’t depend on it alone. You’ll need several levels of redundancy to account for it’s inevitable failure. These can include sheer habit–a powerful tool–or building in some kind of accountability. If you can’t afford a trainer and can’t find a workout buddy, consider joining a team or taking a class, preferably in-person so someone will hold you to your commitment.

Skipping meals
Sure, you’re motivated. You want to eat less, hoping that it might give your metabolism a kick in the butt. And besides, you’re busy! Who has time to eat anyway! So goes the logic. But skipping meals is a big mistake if better health is your goal. It actually slows your metabolism down! Regularly stressing your body like that signals your metabolism to store more calories as fat in the interest of long-term survival. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between a famine and being busy. Don’t send it the wrong message by skipping meals!

Eating small meals high in protein and complex carbohydrates will keep your appetite at a moderate level, while reassuring your body that it will get all the fuel it needs to survive.

Going it alone
We get it: health is a personal thing, and not everyone wants to share their progress towards their health and fitness goals on social media. (And truthfully, most of your followers probably don’t want to follow you *that* closely!) But that doesn’t mean you’re on your own. Invite those closest to you–those people you know in three dimensional meat space–to be your cheering section. And get your doctor, massage therapist, and other health professionals in your life in on it! They’ll be able to help you measure your progress, set realistic goals, and give you expert advice on diet and exercise tailored to your body’s needs.

But above all, having people support you feeds your progress! When you have people interested in your progress and in seeing your wellness improve, you won’t want to flake out and let them down. And when you succeed, it feels even bigger and more significant. Because it is big. It is significant. Your life matters, and we all want it to continue as long as possible.

Getting lost in the stats
Data can be helpful… to a point. Knowing whether or not it will rain today: helpful. Knowing exact rainfall stats for this day for every year in recorded history? Consuming all those numbers might be interesting, but ultimately doesn’t help you decide how to dress. All the information you get from your food scale, measuring tape, wearable fitness tracker, nutrition labels, and your bathroom scale–numbers, numbers, numbers–can create an unhealthy obsession.

Not convinced? Consider this possible scenario:

You’ve been good! Excellent, even. You’ve been pushing yourself hard on your workouts, and you’ve been eating well (which is more enjoyable than you ever could have expected). You rise one glorious morning feeling fantastic–healthier than you’ve been in years. You do your workout, and feel pretty good about it.

But your wearable fitness tracker gives you results far worse than you were expecting. Kind of frustrating, but no big deal, right? Surely the results will show on the scale. But no! Betrayed there, too! What was the point of all this? Why have you worked so hard, made so many big changes if this is the result you could expect?

Remember, you woke up feeling great, feeling healthy. But the only conclusion you can draw from all that scientific data is that you were wrong about that–that you aren’t as healthy as you felt. And while you may know logically that what you’re doing is fine, that the way you feel about your progress is valid, that you just have to keep at it, the emotional signal you’re giving yourself is the opposite: you’re defeated. You’ve been wasting your time. You should quit. You might not be committed to that defeatest way of thinking. No! you say to yourself defiantly. This is good. I will persist! And while that war is raging inside you, someone brings a big bag of candy bars to the office to share with everyone. It’s pouring rain and freezing cold for your jog the next morning. What do you do? Chances are, your efforts have just come to a quiet, ineffectual close. Why? Because the data psyched you out.

You’re always telling yourself a story about yourself. To persist as the hero of that story, you need to be able to trust your own gauge on how you’re doing in moving forward with it. Data can be very helpful! It can even be essential, not allowing you to fool yourself about what you’re doing or how well you’re doing. Just don’t forget to think long-term. The game isn’t won or lost with one days’ data. Take control of your narrative by taking that data with a grain of salt. Try working out a few times with the wearable left at home. The results you want will, in time, be fully measurable and satisfying, but don’t let those numbers stop you from moving towards that goal.

Ignoring your body, because “the program”
This is common early on, especially when you’re determined to make a change and you’re feeling zealous. If you’re too hard on yourself, you could actually injure yourself, sabotaging the whole project. Educate yourself on what kind of pain you should be feeling and when! If it’s the day after your first heavy activity in a long time, don’t be surprised if you feel sore. But don’t dismiss all pain!

Contrary to that meme, pain is not just weakness leaving your body–it can also be health leaving your body and being replaced with pain–terrible, agonizing pain. So be smart! Get in for a massage after your first few workouts, or after a particularly tough session. See a doctor if you have pain that persists for longer than a few minutes. Get your form down so you can up the intensity without hurting yourself. Yes, progress matters, but don’t damage your body in its name.

Don’t quit! We’re pulling for you.

Choose the good life.

Tom Gunn is the marketing director and blog editor for The Good Life Massage. You can hire him to develop your brand and social media strategy by contacting him at tomgunn@gmail.com

 

How Massage Can Benefit Digestion

Massage has a whole range of benefits–so many in fact that a rapid-fire listicle just won’t do it justice. After three or four bullet points, the eyes glaze over and you say “Okay, I get it. Massage is good.”

But no, seriously: Massage. Is. Amazing.

We’re so committed to sharing our wonder at the benefits of massage that we want to dive deep over the course of several posts on this space to share those benefits with you.

Today we’re going to talk about a massage benefit most aren’t at all aware of. Massage can actually aid the functioning of your digestive system.

It’s not a cure for any serious illness as far as we know, but it does reduce symptoms and provides relief for debilitating and embarrassing digestive problems.

Keeps things moving
You don’t usually have to think about it, but digestion is complicated. The reason you don’t usually have to think about it is because it’s a part of the autonomic nervous system–that aspect of your nervous system that controls all the bodily functions you can’t control. When you get a massage, your massage therapist is moving blood and hormones, releasing tension in muscles, and warming and relaxing soft tissues. All this aids in the functioning of your autonomic nervous system. Think of it like an oil change for your car–it keeps things moving. This effect has a direct impact on your digestion, which is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. The improved circulation helps with waste removal and the production of enzymes essential to digestion.

Keep your cookies
Did you know that massage can reduce nausea? It’s particularly beneficial for morning sickness in pregnant women. This works because massage relaxes the muscles over-all, and increases the flow of blood and hormones. All these have the added benefit of reducing nausea because the muscles of the stomach are more prone to relax. Massage has been clinically proven to help reduce stress and aid sleep for pregnant women, both of which help reduce nausea.

Keep in mind, though, that if you have a stomach flu, clinical massage is not the answer. In the short term, we’re likely to make you feel worse. If you feel sick on the day of your appointment, please give us a call and cancel immediately, for your own sake.

Clear your plumbing
Massage helps stimulate and facilitate peristalsis in the large intestines. Peristalsis is the odd, snakelike motions your digestive system goes through to move food and waste through your system.

Here’s an animation to show you how peristalsis works:

#GrossbutCool

What does this do for you, exactly? To put it delicately, it helps clean you out. When you live a relatively sedentary lifestyle as most of us do, the contents of your intestines can settle and gather, causing gas and colic. (And yes, that means that children and babies can benefit from some light massage just as much as adults.)

This increased peristalsis also helps prevent constipation.

Having stomach issues? Come see us and see what massage can do for you.

Book now.

425-243-7705

On a related note, if you regularly have muscle pain in your abdomen, we strongly suggest you learn more about our visceral manipulation massage. This is a specialty treatment of ours you won’t find anywhere else, and it’s worked wonders for our clients, including our own staff. Check it out.

As with everything on this blog, none of this information should be construed as medical advice or care. The employees of The Good Life Massage, including the writers of this blog, are not medical doctors. Consult with your physician before making any changes to improve your health.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and marketing director for The Good Life Massage. You can contact him to help build your brand and develop your content marketing strategy by emailing him at tomgunn@gmail.com

 

 

Know Yourself: 5 Body Myths

We talk a lot in this space about forging a strong mind-body connection. But an important part of that connection involves educating yourself about what your body really needs and how it really functions. Here’s a little uncommon sense about your body.

Sorry, but eating carrots doesn’t improve your eyesight
This is a bit of propaganda form World War II that worked a little too well. Great Britain had actually developed night vision, so the government spread the word among civilians that they could enhance their vision at night by eating more carrots. It’s not true, but the myth has persisted. Sure, eat your carrots, just don’t expect it to bestow super powers.

Stretching before a workout doesn’t prevent injury
Injury is may be less likely if you stretch before athletic activity (though even that’s still in dispute), but don’t let stretching make you think you’re invincible. Don’t get us wrong, stretching is good! It gives you optimal range of motion and ensures your muscles change and adapt with the most benefit and the least pain.

Fever? Cold? Feed both
The rationale behind the old saw “feed a cold, starve a fever” is that your metabolism is the source of a fever, which isn’t wrong. But when you’re sick, whether you’re suffering cold symptoms or a fever, feed you body with vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. Eat when you’re hungry, and drink plenty of fluids.

Nosebleed? Don’t tilt your head back
It’s almost instinctive to throw your head back during a nosebleed to keep the drips of blood from falling, but resist the urge, and recognize that your mom as human and fallible as the rest of us. Tilting your head back can actually cause you to swallow or even choke on your own blood! Instead, hold your head level while pinching your nose just below the bony part until the bleeding stops. If the bleeding persists for more than a half hour or gets worse, get immediate medical attention.

Laugh at Star Wars and Victorian novels all you want, but you really can die of a broken heart
According to the American Heart Association, the links between mental health and heart health couldn’t be stronger. Broken Heart Syndrome is real, so act accordingly. Sure, eat a good diet, stay active, get plenty of sleep, but also nurture you closest relationships. They might just mean the difference between life and death.

Question your assumptions! Interrogate “common sense” just to be sure, especially when it comes to your health.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and marketing director of The Good Life Massage. You can hire him to build your brand with logo design and content marketing by contacting him at tomgunn@gmail.com

 

 

How to Prepare Now for Holiday Stress

“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.” -Anonymous

Holiday stress is coming! Are you clenching up inside? Stop! You’re not naive. This isn’t your first holiday season. You have a good idea of what stresses you’ll face, how your life will be disrupted. And yet so many of us talk about the coming holidays like it’s a natural disaster that couldn’t possibly have been predicted.

Why feed the drama? You’ve got this.

Get your priorities in order
You may have asked yourself, after a particularly harrowing holiday season “Why do I put myself through this?” It’s a valid question. Maybe the holidays hold great meaning for you. Or maybe you feel obligated because of family custom or social pressure. In either case, remember this: resentment is poison.

Whether you love the reason for the season because of family or religious commitments, or couldn’t care less, resenting the holidays will only punish you. It will sap your emotional stamina, and might even become the source of unnecessary family drama. We’re here to tell you that you have a choice now. You can just react to stress as it comes, or you can plan for it now and go into this stressful time of year prepared–and not only that, happy and ready to fully enjoy everything the holidays have to offer.

If you want no part of it, draw healthy boundaries for yourself and, without antagonism or anger, let your loved ones know you hope they have a great time, but that you have other plans. The worst thing you can do for yourself or others is to go into holiday events grudgingly or with a resentful attitude.

Plan for happy
Think ahead about the most busy times of the holiday season. There’s a list of things to do, events to attend, gifts and food to buy. It seems to go on and on. But why? Maybe it’s a good time to promise yourself to say “no” or “not this year” to a few things. Commit to bowing out of some things now before the social pressure is on; you’ll be surprised how easy it is to back out of some things you just don’t have room on your plate for. And as you go, remember: “no” is a complete sentence.

You can also plan to take care of yourself now! Scheduling your massages early and often is always a great idea, but especially during the holiday season. Our clinic gets busy this time of year just like any business, so seize this chance to grab the times you know fit into your schedule. Book online or give us a call: 425-243-7705. Set your reminders on your calendar. Then take a deep breath, and know that your self-care is one less thing to worry about squeezing in.

Maintain healthy habits
Now may not be the best time to pick up a new habit, even if your intentions are great. Your will power is limited, and there’s no sense in setting yourself up for failure during the holiday season.

By all means, though, maintain the good habits you’re already doing! If you already work out, get regular massage, do yoga, meditate, or eat healthy foods, it’s more important than ever to stick with it. Letting go of your good habits will throw off your equilibrium on days when you’ll need it more than ever.

So what’s it going to be? Are you going to polish your “BUSY” badge of honor and go into the holidays proudly miserable? Or are you going to plan ahead and be thankful for whatever comes?

I know what I’m picking.

Tom Gunn is the marketing director and blog editor for The Good Life Massage. You can hire him to build your brand through social media design and strategy by contacting him at tomgunn@gmail.com

What Is Mousing Shoulder?

What is mousing shoulder?
If you spend a lot of time at a desk using a computer, you may already be familiar with mousing shoulder, even if you don’t know what to call it. Mousing shoulder results from using a mouse on a computer held away from your body for prolonged periods, repetitively. This strain results from your muscles having to tense to hold the weight of your arm as you hold it out away from you.

The pain that results radiates down from the neck and spreads to the upper back and shoulder. You might just feel a mild ache in these areas from time-to-time. You might feel an odd sense of weakness in these areas. Maybe you’re not thinking much of it–just routine aches and pains. But is it coming from only one side of your body–the side of the arm you use to manipulate your mouse? Remember that all your muscle groups are fully connected and effect each other. When one is over-worked, the others try to compensate. This is a miracle your body performs with zero effort on your part! But the corollary of that miracle is that when there’s trouble in one area, there’s often trouble in the others.

What should I do?
If you’re in pain, go ahead and address those symptoms. Treating this kind of pain involves a number of different solutions. Go ahead and try one, see how it goes, and employ different combinations to find out what works best for you.

Stretching
There are three key stretches you can do throughout your workday to mitigate mousing shoulder. The first is the doorway stretch, demonstrated here.

The second is the tricep/lat dorsi stretch.

The third is the deltoid stretch. Both of these two are demonstrated here:

Whenever you have occasion to get up from your desk, just take a moment and do all three. Ideally, you should do these for 2-3 seconds each, 10 times a day. Not only will these stretches help reduce the pain and strain, you’ll feel more relaxed and less tense over all. You might even see a bump in your productivity.

Massage
This is exactly the kind of pain that can be relieved and healed with therapeutic massage. Massage can stop the immediate pain, but you may need more than one treatment to completely heal. Your massage therapist will be able to evaluate your particular case and recommend the best course of treatment.

We’d be happy to help you with that! Book a session quickly and easily online now, or just give us a call during our regular operating hours.

Meds
If the pain is really that bad, you can take over-the-counter anti-inflammatory meds like Ibuprofen or Naproxen.

Not a cure
Where are you going? Not so fast! Stretching, pills, even massage can not cure this! These are only treatments for the pain. What you really need is to stop the repetitive motion and awkward posture that’s causing the problem. It’s time for a change.

No, don’t quit your job. There are several ways to take care of yourself and reduce the risk of mousing shoulder. The key to keep in mind is that holding your mouse out too far in front of you all day is what’s caused the problem. The solution, then is to change it up! Consider replacing your mouse with trackball or marble mouse that you can hold closer to your body. Less than 10° is ideal. You can also try switching to a wireless mouse to give you the freedom to change your position with it through the day. You might even want to try switching to your left hand for a little balance.

Exercise of your back, shoulders, and arms can also help considerably to strengthen those areas and make them more capable of handling the strain you’re putting on them each day.

Bottom line: repetition is the source of your pain with this. Do what you can to change it, or you’ll just keep treating the symptom forever.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and marketing director for The Good Life Massage. You can hire him to help build your social media presence and develop your brand by emailing him at tomgunn@gmail.com