Make Exercise a Dance

Anecdotal, scientific, and observational evidence align at one incontrovertible conclusion, music affects exercise. More than 250 million iPods deliver the beat. If you’ve ever exercised to music you’ve felt its affect. Just sitting in a chair music, tends to make you move. Even mass market science has taken note. Every study done on the subject concurs, exercise is easier to music. Studies have also found:
*Music distracts you from some of the unpleasantness of exercise
*Runners go longer at a higher intensity with a lower perceived rate of exertion
*Athletes listening to music are less stressed, release less cortisol, the stress hormone
*Heart rate and breathing correlates with a tune’s tempo
*Music influences an athlete's mood as well as performance
*Exercise and music commingle to boost short term cognitive skills like verbal fluency
*Body rhythms such as breathing and heart rate tend to take on the rhythms of the music
*Exercise intensity correlates with music intensity, a fast song helps you move faster
*Music stimulates the neocortex and verbal centers of the brain
*Music is motivating

Music turns exercise into a dance.

photo by marksebastian

Self-Massage: Doing It to Music

Music improves athletic performance and will power your massage. Millions of runners, cyclists, and gym rats move better with their ear buds plugged into a tune. Running with an iPod has been shown to improve athletic performance, while reducing perceived exertion, amping enjoyment and upping motivation. As usual scientists are baffled by the phenomenon. The dance between exercise and music touches on biology, psychology, and kinesiology. One theory is that music affects our ability to withstand pain. But a more compelling one is that it distracts our mind and let’s our body do its job. If we let our mind focus on the music and our body just act, we perform better. Or at least that’s the best explanation to date on why, in one study, basketball players who were prone to choking under pressure shot better after listening to upbeat music and lyrics. Most athletes acknowledge music helps them train and perform. While the neocortex helps us do many things, physical activity is not one of them. DIY massage, a powerful form of physical activity, is greatly enhanced by music. So the next time you sit down to massage your quads, neck, or feet do it to music. photo by mark sebastian

Massage Yourself to Sleep

Have trouble falling asleep? Try massaging your body to sleep or, if you wake up during the night, back to sleep. Just choose a single muscle, maybe your delts or pecs on one side of your body and massage the muscle slowly and deliberately as hard or as soft as feels good. Focus an easy attention on how the massage feels until the muscle relaxes. This will serve as a meditation, the only thing to think about is how the massage feels. Pretty soon you’ll become aware that your whole body has relaxed and with any luck, the next thing you’ll know it’s morning.

photo by planetchopstick
Suggested musical accompaniment: Brahms Lullaby

Barefoot Running Revisited

Chris McDougall, author of Born to Run, spoke at the Boulder Bookstore last night. It’s been a few years since he wrote the book that started the barefoot running craze. He’s refined his thinking a bit. Here are the highlights:

*If used properly shoes beat no shoes
*Running shoes should be protective not corrective
*Running barefoot is an effective way to correct injuries caused by poor running form
*There’s a right way and a wrong way to run
*To learn to run the right way, run barefoot and adopt that stride to a minimalist shoe
*Running evolved as a cooperative social activity, a group hunt
*Humans are slow, even the fastest one, Usain Bolt can’t outrun a squirrel

Seated Massage on Tennis Balls

If you want to relieve muscle pain in your butt while giving your upper hamstrings and seat a treat and try this youtube video. This massage may help relieve pain you're experiencing in your lower back or knees. It will also serve to revive you if you feel your energy stores waning or if you need to get your upper leg muscles charged before a run.

This no hands self-massage routine lets you experience sensations you never thought possible. Every active person can benefit from this improbable combination of seated massage and dance. Try it! But before you do locate a couple of tennis balls and your sitz bones.

Sitz bones, or sitting bones, are the bones in your pelvic girdle that help support your body when you sit. If you study anatomy you probably know them as the ischial tuberosity. They’re the lowest of the three big bones that are your pelvis. When you’re sitting up straight you’ll feel one on each side of your seat. To locate them try placing the tennis balls directly beneath them. You’ll know them when you’re sitting on them because they’re the only bony structures in your butt. Don’t massage them but use them as reference points when working the muscles around them.

For a balanced massage synchronize each tennis balls in relationship to its sitting bone so that each ball is just to the outside of its sitz bones, or just in front, or where ever you like just as long as their relative distance from their respective sitz bone is about the same. Ok try it!

Balls on Butt Massage: Do It while You View It

Self-Massage for Fitness Professionals

If you’re reading this you probably need a massage. Or maybe you have a client or student who does. Most people aren’t aware of their need for massage but you are. As a fitness professional, you’re attuned to your body’s needs. You work with the bodies of clients and students, you observe them, evaluate them, and train them. You understand, better than most people, the regenerative and therapeutic powers of massage. But if going to a massage therapist every time a muscle tightens up is not an option; you might try self-massage.

Self-Massage Therapy
Self-Massage can improve your health, mood, and athletic performance. It’s handy, easy to learn, and you can’t beat the price. As a fitness professional, self-massage may even improve job performance, and it’s something you can teach your students and clients to help them feel better, and train more effectively.

Everyone uses self-massage to some extent. You’ve probably used it yourself to relieve a stiff muscle, work a kink out of your shoulder, or rub your feet after a hard day. Most athletes use it unconsciously, and often ineffectively. To get the most from self-massage you should use it with intent and effect by adopting some of the same techniques professional massage therapists use. All massage is therapy if performed properly.

Athletic Benefits
In addition to relieving muscle pain and soreness, self-massage therapy provides athletes with a plethora of benefits. It speeds recovery between exercise, and reduces the likelihood of injury. It improves circulation and warms muscles making them more fluid. Most of the performance enhancing affects of massage are obvious. That’s why athletes have used massage for thousands of years, since before the first Olympic Games in ancient Greece.

Improved Health
Not all benefits of self-massage are self evident. Recently, researchers discovered a host of health related benefits associated with massage. Clinical tests show that when massage is received at least twice a week for thirty minutes it strengthens the immune system. It’s also been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Stress not only effects mood but is a major cause of illness and injury. Massage, therefore, does double duty to improve health by strengthening your resistance to illness and reducing a cause of disease and injury. Of course, if your health and mood improve, you will be able to train more effectively and your athletic performance will benefit.

Stimulating and Relaxing
Massage has the ability to both energize and relax depending upon the stroke you choose. In that sense, it is like music for your body. Just as you would use gentle music while teaching yoga to relax your students, you would use gentle massage strokes to relax your body. However, if you were teaching a spin or kick boxing class you’d play more intense music at a higher volume to energize your students. Likewise, if the goal of your massage were to invigorate, your strokes would be intense and energizing.

Self-Massage and Professional Massage
Self-massage is not a replacement for professional massage therapy. The two are not mutually exclusive. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Self-massage provides almost perfect feedback. While a professional massage therapist can only guess how each stroke feels to you, with self-massage you get immediate feedback. Self-massage is convenient, it teaches you about yourself, and it’s empowering. On the other hand, assisted massage can be much more relaxing than self-massage. Professional massage therapists can go deeper and can better treat injuries because of their training and experience.


For You and Your Students
Use self-massage regularly to ease sore muscles, improve your health, mood and athletic performance. After you’ve learned first hand, how effective self-massage can be, feel free to teach it to your students and clients when they have a sore muscle or a hard workout.

Learning It
Self-massage therapy is easy to learn because it’s practically instinctive. There are only a few technical strokes to master, which, actually, aren’t all that technical. They include gliding, squeezing, squeezing and rolling, pressing, pressing and rolling, and drumming. Once you’ve learned these strokes, it’s just a matter of combining them and varying their intensity to suit your immediate needs.

Let’s try a few strokes. Glide your hand over your legs a few times. Vary the speed, pressure, and location of each glide. Next, press a few fingers into different locations on your shoulder with varying intensity. Then try squeezing your triceps. Slightly vary the intensities and location of each squeeze. Close your eyes and feel into each stroke. If you can perform these basic strokes and they make sense to you, learning effective self-massage will be easy.

Self-Massage for Runners

Every runner has a different reason for needing a massage. Maybe yours is your feet or your calf muscles? Or maybe it’s your knees and hips that need attention? Perhaps your quads or hamstrings are too tight? One thing is certain though, if you run often, or you run hard, your legs and possibly your whole body needs frequent massage. But are you getting it regularly?

While sports massage therapy has grown rapidly during the last twenty years, it can’t meet the needs of millions of runners. Just as a professional chef isn’t available every time you get hungry, a professional massage therapist can’t be on-hand every time a muscle tightens-up. One solution may be self-massage. Don’t snicker; self-massage is an effective way to relieve muscle soreness, prevent injury, and just plain feel better. It’s also easy to learn and simple to do.

Most runners know sports massage can improve athletic performance. What they don’t know is how to apply the benefits of massage to themselves. That’s where my new book Self-Massage for Athletes comes in handy. It teaches the same basic massage strokes professionals use. While not everyone can attend the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, everyone can learn a few simple massage techniques to help themselves feel better fast.

Let’s Try It
There are only three strokes you need to know for now: gliding, squeezing, and drumming. Once you’ve learned them, and some simple variations, you can apply them anywhere between your head and toes, and voila, free massage. So roll up your sleeves, get your running shorts on, and keep reading. You won’t need massage oil, massage tools, or malpractice insurance; just a sense of touch and a willingness to use it.

Stroke #1: The Glide
We’re just going to massage the legs, or to be more accurate: You are going to massage your legs. Begin with, the stroke that most sports massage therapists begin with, the glide stroke. Professionals call it effleurage. But by any name, it’s a glide, slide, or skimming motion. Get seated, get comfortable and try it. Just glide your hand over your thigh for starters. Use this stroke to warm up your body before the more intense massage strokes to come.

As a general rule, when applying deep pressure, your hand should move in the direction of your heart to help blood flow back to your heart. Try ten gliding strokes up and down your right thigh. Use light pressure away from your heart and deeper pressure toward your heart.

OK, now that you’ve got the idea try gliding your hand over your entire leg, from your ankle to your seat. You can use both hands if you like. Try ten strokes varying intensity and velocity. By reaching for your toes, you should get a gentle stretch as well. When you’ve sufficiently warmed your first leg move onto your second leg, again covering its entire surface. This should feel good, if it doesn’t, fake it for now, it will get better with practice. Let’s move onto:

Stroke #2: The Squeeze
This is a compression stroke called squeezing because it compresses the muscles you’re squeezing. It should be pleasing; let’s see if it is. The purpose of the stroke is to warm your skin and muscles, and improve your circulation. Improved circulation brings fresh nutrients and oxygen to your cells and forcefully ejects the toxins that have accumulated during your run. This is powerful therapy for runners because it feeds and cleans the very muscle cells that took it in the shorts during your run.

Try squeezing your calf muscles. Start at the bottom of your calf and work your way up in the direction of your heart. While keeping your calf muscles relaxed, vary the intensity of your squeeze. Try varying the volume, i.e., the surface area that you squeeze. Perform a minimum of ten squeeze strokes. Then massage the calf muscles that live in your other leg.

Now try squeezing your entire leg, begin at your Achilles heel and move on up as far as you can go. Use two hands if you want. Go slowly; it’s not a race. Stop at your butt. Massage your other leg using this squeezing stroke. Just press and compress the muscles as you gradually squeeze up your leg until there is no more leg to squeeze. Then you can either do it all again or move onto:

Stroke #3: The Drum
This stroke is called drumming for reasons that will be clear in the next sentence. It’s a stimulating stroke in which you use your hands to actually drum your body. Think of your body as percussion instrument with a low pain threshold, so don’t drum too hard or loud. If the neighbors complain, it’s too loud. A soft easy tapping will do. You can use your fists, flat open hands, the sides of your hands, or really any part of your hand that feels good. Begin at your feet, and move toward the largest muscles in your body, the ones you’re sitting on. Try drumming your other leg. Get a good rhythm going, and when you’ve had enough, stop.

Just Getting Started
Congratulations on completing the beginning of a powerful new practice that will improve your running. Massage will get easier and more effective with repetition. So practice it regularly, directly after running. You’ll find that your muscles are less sore and you’ll recover more quickly between runs. With time, you’ll also notice that your health has improved; that’s because frequent massage strengthens the immune system. It also reduces stress, anxiety, and depression which will improve your mood. And if nothing else, your improved mood will make your running partners happier as they desperately try to keep up with you.

Most of all have fun with it. If it feels good, do it. Self-massage is not an exact science. It’s user friendly and doesn’t require the precision of stretching. Eighty percent of self-massage is just showing-up and practicing it regularly. If after every run, you massage your legs for ten minutes, your running will improve, your health will improve, and your mood will improve.

Self-Massage for Massage Therapists

Massage Therapist Jessica Gumkowski
http://www.massageboulder.com/

Why Self-Massage?

You may be wondering why, as a massage therapist, you should practice and promote self-massage. Maybe it’s because self-massage can do things for you that nothing else can. Self-massage can make you a more effective practitioner by improving your body, your practice, and your profession. Of course, all massage therapists use self-massage, if only unconsciously, to relieve minor aches and pains. The intent of this article is to encourage you to go deeper, to receive more.
You already know the benefits of receiving frequent massage: it improves your health and mood, reduces your likelihood of injury, and allows you to become stronger and more active. But if you’re like most practitioners, it’s been a while since you had a massage. Just as the shoemaker goes without a new pair of shoes, the massage therapist too often goes without a massage.
With the possible exception of elite athletes, practitioners have more to gain from receiving massage than any group. Your occupation requires physical exertion and repetitive motion, which often is intense. In many ways your job is similar to that of an athlete’s, you both repeatedly work a specific group of muscles to the point of exhaustion. You both compromise your health with the physical demands you put on your body. As you read this article, you may begin to think of yourself as an athlete of massage.
In many ways, a career in massage therapy is similar to that of an endurance athlete. Both require long hours of daily physical exercise, both are physically and psychically rewarding, both are likely to suffer overuse injuries. Such injuries are inevitable in any physical practice in which the same muscle groups are continually stressed without sufficient recovery.
If practiced regularly, self-massage will allow you to practice massage therapy longer and more effectively while reducing the likelihood of suffering overuse injuries. It will also provide you with a host of unexpected benefits as it becomes one of a handful of powerful massage tools at your fingertips.

GENERAL BENEFITS
Self-massage, like massage therapy, benefits all those who receive it. As a practitioner, self-massage will do even more for your well-being than it will for most people. Your health and mood will enjoy an even bigger boost than most people’s because yours are at greater risk as a result of your profession. Self-massage will reduce the risk of injury for everyone. But it will provide you a greater benefit than most because, as an athlete, you’re more prone to injuries. While self-massage is convenient for non practitioners, it is even more accessible to you because you already have the knowledge to deliver the goods. And while everyone can learn about their body from self-massage, you’ll learn more because you’re already more in touch with the human body.

Health
As a healthcare provider, you must work especially hard to maintain your own health. Not only are you an example to clients and friends, but your health is at greater risk than most people. It’s at greater risk because of the physical stress you put on your body, particularly your upper body, and because you deal with clients who are often ill and sometimes contagious, though they rarely admit it. So your immune system needs to be stronger than most people’s.
According to clinical studies conducted by Tiffany Field at the Touch Research Institute, massage strengthens the immune system when it is received at least twice a week for thirty minutes. With more frequent massage, it is likely that the immune system will be strengthened even more. Self-massage is one way to strengthen your immune system as often as you like.

Mood
As a massage therapist your mood needs to be better than most. You often see people at their worst, under stress from illness or injury. They’re likely to be depressed and that may negatively affect your spirit. According to clinical studies, again, conducted by Tiffany Field at the Touch Research Institute, massage reduces stress, anxiety, and depression when it is received at least twice a week for thirty minutes. Thus, massage is likely to improve your mood. With more frequent massage it is likely that your mood will improve even more. Self-massage is an easy way to boost your mood as often as needed.

Muscle Soreness
Everyone gets sore muscles but, as an athlete, your muscles get sorer than most because of their continual use. In seeking to relieve your client’s muscle pain and soreness you often take on muscle soreness. As you know, massage is an effective way to treat sore stiff muscles. With self-massage, you can relieve sore stiff muscles easily, anytime you need to.

Injuries
As a massage therapist, you’re subject to injuries at a rate similar to that of other endurance athletes. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way to prevent those injuries or to at least catch them when they’re small? Self-massage is an effective way to do just that. Not only will it help you recover more quickly after a hard day of massaging others; working on your own body forces you to focus your attention on small problems before they become large ones. You will use your own hands to improve circulation and stretch your own muscle fiber so that you will be less prone to injury.

Immediacy
Other important features of self-massage are immediacy, accessibility, and convenience. Like anyone else, massage therapists can’t always get to another practitioner when they need a massage. Time, money, location, and practitioner availability may all be limiting factors. Practice self-massage and these problems disappear. Of course, it is a good idea to schedule a weekly session with a colleague, and if you could do it daily that would be better still. But most practitioners are lucky if they exchange massages with a colleague more than once a month.

Self-Knowledge
Everyone needs to know their own body. Athletes who depend more on their bodies have a greater need than most people. With self-massage, you are likely to gain a better understanding of your own body, its strengths and its weaknesses. Self-massage is a form of self exploration. Among other benefits, knowledge of your body will enable you to better control your energy level and your ability to relax.

Special Skills
As a massage therapist, you possess special knowledge and experience that make self-massage even more beneficial for you than it is in the hands of the general public. You have a knowledge of anatomy that most people don’t possess. You have a highly developed sense of touch. You are comfortable with massage, its theories and ideas, and you believe in its efficacy. You know the techniques and have been trained to feel the human body and understand what it is telling you. Because you know the language of medicine, you are better able to consult with other medical professionals when needed. In your hands, self-massage truly is massage therapy.

Performance
With improved health and mood, and with fewer injuries, is there any doubt that your performance as a massage therapist will be better? If these were the only benefits of self-massage, they would be sufficient reason to practice it regularly. But there are more, so many more.

EXCLUSIVE BENEFITS
The aforementioned benefits of self-massage apply to everyone, although they’re arguably more relevant to practitioners. Improved health and mood, reduced muscle pain and soreness, injury prevention, improved energy and physical performance are all benefits that everyone, not just massage therapists, can enjoy.
The following benefits of self-massage apply almost exclusively to practitioners. They involve using your body as a canvas to help perfect your practice, developing a better understanding of the differences between assisted massage and self-massage, preventing burnout, teaching self-massage to your clients, and, minimizing overuse injuries suffered as a result of practicing massage therapy.

Self-Experimentation
While helping you feel better, self-massage gives you an opportunity to hone your skills and develop new routines to help your clients. By using your body as an experimental canvas, you can try new techniques. You’ll get new inspiration and ideas by using yourself as a test model, and if they make you feel good, they will make your clients feel good. Self-experimentation is good practice, and one of the bases of homeopathic medicine. Wouldn’t it be just if more healthcare professionals experienced the effects of receiving the therapies, medicines, and treatments they provide, and often inflict on, others?

Teaching It
You may be surprised by how much you will benefit from teaching self-massage to your clients. While not everyone is a candidate, some clients will want to learn self-massage. Practicing self-massage will help you teach them to effectively use it.
Teaching clients the basics of self-massage will extend your reach beyond your office and into the homes of your clients. By empowering them, you will become a more effective practitioner. Self-massage lets you become a co-creator with your clients and will give them a greater appreciation of all you bring to the table.
Taking five to ten minutes at the end of a session to teach an interested client a few strokes that he or she can use to feel better at home will be appreciated. While the benefits of self-massage are not age dependent, you may find that self-massage is of greater benefit to your older clients. It’s been observed that older people are less likely to be touched by another person.
Just as you may give your clients stretching and strengthening exercises to practice at home, you may give them self-massage exercises. Through practicing self-massage yourself, you will be better able to tailor those exercises to your clients’ needs and abilities, and you will be better able to design your massage sessions to cover what self-massage cannot.
Some massage therapists worry that teaching self-massage will hurt their practice by reducing their clients’ need for massage therapy. While that may be true; it may also improve their practice by allowing them to concentrate on what their clients cannot do for themselves. By so doing they will be putting their good where it will do the most.

The Toothbrush
The relationship between massage therapy and self-massage may be compared to that between dentistry and home brushing. It wasn’t until after World War II that most Americans began regularly brushing their teeth. During the war, soldiers were required to brush, and they continued the practice after they left the service. At the time, some dentists feared that brushing would hurt the practice of dentistry. In fact, home care has helped the practice of dentistry by making Americans more aware of oral hygiene and the importance of good dental care. As a result, dentistry has flourished, and the American mouth has never been healthier.
While self-care is an important part of dental care, dentistry is more than that. And while self-care is an important part of massage, massage therapy is more than that. If it were not, there would be no sense in practicing massage therapy; just as there would be no sense in practicing dentistry if it could all be done with a toothbrush. By forming a collaborative relationship with patients, dentists have prospered as has the health of their patients’ mouths. Dentists have generally encouraged their clientele to become responsible for their own healthcare. Contrast this behavior with that of medical doctors, who have generally encouraged their patients to become dependent on drugs and surgery to cure their health problems. Is it any wonder that we’re facing a healthcare crisis in this country?

Important Differences
There is value in understanding the significant differences between massage therapy and self-massage. Practicing self-massage will show you first hand what they are. It will allow you to identify the unique benefits you can bring to clients. Practicing self-massage will help you understand how you can better treat your client’s issues in collaboration with your clients.
Practicing self-massage will not only show you what self-massage can effectively be used for; it also reveals what self-massage cannot be used for. For example, practicing self-massage may show you that it’s not effective for deep tissue work, nor is it a particularly effective way to relax. Practicing self-massage may demonstrate the disadvantages of working on yourself and highlight the benefits of a collaborative relationship with a skilled professional. You may also learn how ineffective self-massage is for dealing with certain injuries and illnesses.

Burnout
Self-massage may help prevent you from burning out. The burnout rate is believed to be high among massage therapists, although there is no reliable measure of how high. According to massagetherapycareers.com, more than 50,000 massage therapists leave the profession annually.
Burnout is a severe mental, physical, or emotional fatigue usually caused by stress. Self-massage may reduce the likelihood of burnout in a couple of ways. First, massage has been shown to reduce stress when received at least twice per week. Because stress is one of the primary causes of burnout, self-massage is an effective way to prevent it. Second, and perhaps more important, self-massage is a simple way of renewing and reinforcing through physical experience the benefits of massage and the effectiveness of massage therapy. By regularly experiencing self-massage, you’ll feel the benefits of your own hands which will remind you of the good your touch brings to your patients.

Learning It
There aren’t many things, maybe just two, a massage therapist must learn to practice self-massage. You already know the strokes, the techniques, the science, and the art of massage therapy. All you have to learn is to let your hands communicate directly with your own body. Self-massage is a self-contained empirical sensory experience. As such, it doesn’t necessarily matter what you’ve learned from text books and instructors, what matters most is how it feels to you. You know how effective your therapy is with your clients, and you believe in the power of your own hands. Now you just have to apply your touch to your own well-being.

The Sport
Marathon runners stress their lower bodies; massage therapists stress their upper bodies; shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, and hands. Because you’re on your feet all day, your lower body gets a workout as well. Given the physical demands of the practice, it’s a wonder that the average massage therapist lasts more than a year.
Most practitioners, though, want to spend their life in the profession. Thinking of yourself as an athlete will help you do that by allowing you to connect with the ideas and literature that have developed to help athletes train and stay healthy in their sports. Optimum Muscle Performance and Recovery by Edmund Burke and Serious Training for Endurance Athletes by Rob Sleamaker are two good places to start.
Massage therapists like all endurance athletes are subject to overuse injuries, also known as repetitive motion injuries. As the name implies, these injuries are the result of overusing a particular part of the body, a muscle, or a joint. Practicing massage therapy places a unique set of physical stressors on your body. Think of delivering massage as a form of exercise. Like all exercise, massage if properly performed will strengthen the muscles being stressed, but only if they are allowed to sufficiently recover. Exercise itself weakens muscles, it’s only in the period after you exercise, if your muscles are allowed to rest, that they can recover and grow stronger. This process is known as adaptation.
Most athletes know that to get stronger they must allow their muscles to recover after hard workouts. If you work with athletes, you already know that massage speeds recovery. It therefore makes sense to apply massage to your own muscles after a tough day of exercising them at work.
When applying self-massage, a practitioner should use different strokes, techniques, and intensities than those she applies to her clients, so that she does not further overuse the very muscles she is helping to recover.
Most massage therapists find self-massage especially effective on their neck, thumbs, hands, and forearms.
Most practitioners, enjoy their work and wish to continue practicing indefinitely. Most massage therapists know colleagues though, who after practicing only a few years may be physically unable to continue. By paying attention to your body’s needs you will avoid the injuries that most practitioners suffer.

For Every Body
Massage therapy is a far more effective medicine than most Americans realize. Most people are unaware of the very real benefits of massage therapy. In theory, an ill or injured person should first see the least invasive medical practitioner who is likely to resolve their problem. In some cases that person is a massage therapist. Because of consumer ignorance, health insurance bias, and a healthcare system that values cost over efficacy, they don’t. Making the public more aware of self-massage may be an effective way to introduce the medical benefits of massage therapy to the average person. Self-massage serves as a good introduction to massage therapy because it is accessible to everyone. Wider use of self-massage is likely to increase the use of professional massage therapy for medical purposes. As John F. Kennedy observed, “A high tide raises all boats in the harbor.”

In Summary
Self-massage is good for you, your practice, and your profession. Here are some of the ways you can benefit from self-massage. First, practicing self-massage will improve your health and mood. Second, it will help you prevent and treat overuse injuries. Third, practicing self-massage will decrease your likelihood of suffering burnout. Fourth, by using your body as an experimental canvas, self-massage will enable you to discover new techniques and routines to further help your clients. Fifth, teaching your clients self-massage will empower you to improve their well being beyond your physical reach. And finally, self-massage will make massage more popular and point more people toward your practice for professional medical care.

FAQ: About YoMaMa

What is YoMaMa?
YoMaMa is the union of yoga and massage, actually self-massage. By incorporating a massage tool as a yoga prop, your yoga students receive the benefits of massage and yoga. YoMaMa brings a new awareness to an ancient practice.

Who practices YoMaMa?
People who want to experience yoga and their bodies in an exciting new way.

Why Combine yoga and massage?
Merging yoga and massage delivers a deeper physical experience and a healthier practice. The combination of benefits will empower old students and attract new practitioners to your mats.

What are the advantages of YoMaMa?
Your students will receive all the benefits they’d normally get from yoga plus many of the most salubrious perks of massage, including:

• Relief from muscle pain and soreness
• Improved health and mood
• Increased energy
• Reduced likelihood of injury
• Improved knowledge of your physical nature
• Improved athletic performance and fitness
• Faster recovery time between workouts
• Reduced muscle tension and stress
• A trigger point release to your entire back body and feet

To learn more about the benefits of self-massage, see Chapter 2 of Self-Massage for Athletes, a book that serves as a resource for YoMaMa practitioners.

Does YoMaMa provide any other benefits?
In addition to the long term benefits of a yoga practice, YoMaMa packs a sensational short term benefit, an immediate sense of physical well-being. This benefit is measured by how much better practitioners feel leaving the class than entering it. Your students will walk out of class feeling as if they’ve experienced a full body massage and a yoga practice.

Is YoMaMa a form of therapy?
YoMaMa heals the body, mind, and spirit in a new immediate way by mating two of the oldest therapies in the world.

What form does it take?
YoMaMa is both a preventive and a remedial therapy. All active people sustain tiny injuries, of which they are largely unaware. Because yoga and massage can both prevent those injuries from growing, they are excellent preventive therapies.

How does YoMaMa work as a remedial therapy?
The goal of preventive and remedial therapies is similar. Both therapies prevent a medical problem from growing larger, while allowing the injury to heal. Preventive medicine corrects a problem before you’re aware of it. Remedial medicine is a post awareness therapy. As such, both yoga and self-massage help you stay healthy and become healthier.

How much class time will the massage component take?
As little as ten minutes or as much time as you like. The massage component is time well spent because it delivers benefits that would otherwise only be available through a massage therapy session.

Why is it called YoMaMa?
The practice is named YoMaMa because it combines one part traditional
yoga with two kinds of massage. The first massage component is the implicit massage that is traditionally part of yoga but is rarely noticed. For instance, in a seated pose when weight is brought to bear on your glute muscles and the muscles are moved they’re massaged. Many yoga asanas impart an implicit massage to your internal organs, especially twisting poses. The second massage component in YoMaMa is explicit and is delivered by a yoga prop or massage tool.

What does the massage tool look like?
The massage tool looks like a big blue “S,” standing for Super Yoga. It’s molded from a durable polymer composite and measures twenty inches long by ten inches wide, and weighs two pounds. At each end of the “S” is a small ball or knob which serves as a powerful massage tool. In fact, the entire prop can be used for massage. The serpentine piece between the knobs can glide over and compress muscles, to improve circulation and energy.

How does the tool work?
You can use the massage tool much as you’d use any other yoga prop to assist in asanas. The tool also gives you the power to deliver a complete back body massage in about ten minutes. Lying supine, your body will naturally relax letting you release trigger points and neuromuscular tension while restoring balance and energy. You’ll feel an intense and immediate release and will leave class feeling a sense of well-being bordering on euphoria. Students will attend yoga classes more often and bring friends to experience the wow effect of YoMaMa. Teachers will find their classes grow in size and will have to schedule more private sessions as more people are attracted to this new style of yoga.

How can I use the massage tool?
Lie on your back and allow your body to relax onto the yoga mat. Then place the end of the tool under your back body. Allow gravity to press your muscles onto the knob. The pressure releases muscle tension, stress, and trigger points while promoting chi balance. Then by moving the knob along the muscles in your back body a couple of inches at a time, first on one side of your body and then on the other, you’ll gradually massage points along your entire back body releasing waves of tension and stress. YoMaMa puts the power of massage directly in your hands.

How about my feet?
You can massage them using the little knob at the end of the tool. This too provokes a powerful release of energy. YoMaMa gives you the benefits of a foot massage without the costs.

When can the massage tool be used in class?
It may be used anytime but it should be used at least twice, once to massage your lower back body and feet, and a second time right before shavasana to massage your upper back body from your head to your glutes, along your erector spinae muscles, and the muscles around your scapula.

Can the tool be used at other times during class?
Yes the massage tool can be incorporated into yoga asanas just like other yoga props at your discretion. For instance, when balancing on one leg and extending the other leg straight-out in front of you, the tool can be used to both massage the foot of your extended leg, and support it. By pressing the knob into different points on your foot, you’ll get an intense foot massage and yoga stretch. The tool can also deliver a potent glute massage by balancing on one leg while folding the other leg on top of your knee and pressing the knob into your glutes. YoMaMa delivers an exciting new dimension to the physical experience of yoga.

Is the massage tool easy to use?
It’s easy to learn, and simple to use. Any yoga teacher trained as a YoMaMa instructor can lead you through the massage component effortlessly. YoMaMa is extremely easy to teach. If you teach yoga and are interested in teaching YoMaMa,contact us.

What does it cost?
You can get it online for between $30 and $40, and by delivering a constellation of massage benefits, it pays for itself in no time. So it’s cheap if you use it and expensive if you don’t.

Where can I get it?
The tool, called the Backnobber II is made by the Pressure Positive Company, can be purchased at their website www.pressurepositive.com or at Amazon. You can also use the Thera Cane® or Body Back Buddy™ massage tools.

Why teach YoMaMa?
It’ll attract more students to your yoga classes and private sessions because it provides a new and exciting experience for everyone. You’ll feel improvement in your own body and see it in your students. YoMaMa delivers the goods to students and teachers. For more information on YoMaMa contact Rich.

Hamstring Massage Video

This post is intended to be read before, during, or after watching the hamstring video Balls on Hamstring Massage with Tennis Balls: Do It While You View It.

Recommendations: You may want to warm up your hamstrings before trying this massage, it can be intense. The first time you attempt it, go easy. If your hamstrings are weak or injured try one of the alternative massages described below.

Accessories: You’ll need a chair with a hard seat and two tennis balls.

Objectives of the video: The goal of this massage, as always, is to feel better when you finish than when you started. To achieve that goal you’ll want to identify trigger points, areas of sensitivity, in your hamstrings and release them. It may take more than one session and more than one day. Be persistent. By releasing the latent trigger points that form in your hamstrings you will allow your muscles to regain their full strength and range of motion. That may not be the goal of your massage but it will be the result.

Trigger Point Advisory: Look for trigger points which have been described as points of exquisite tenderness when pressed. When you find one you’ll know it. You may want to stop the video and release it. If you continue with the video make sure you go back and work out the trigger points you discovered.

Alternative massages: Instead of doing the entire massage presented in the video, try applying just one of the five strokes shown at the beginning of the video. Choose the stroke you like best then begin massaging near your knees and work towards your glutes. Or if one leg needs more attention than the other massage it alone and devote all your attention to that leg. Or just put the tennis ball under a tender spot in your hamstrings and place your hand on your quads above the ball and move your hand in small circles applying pressure and massaging the trigger point until it releases.

Hamstring Described: Your hamstrings are made up of three tough muscles, more like thick ropes than strings, that live in the back of your thigh. They extend from your hips and seat to your your knees. They originate at your sit bone and the top of your femur and insert at the tops of your tibia and fibula.

Hamstring’s Purpose: Our hamstrings allow us to perambulate, without them we couldn’t stand, walk, or run, and the first 18 holes of golf would be even more painful than they already are.

Activities: When you bend forward from your hips to touch your toes, it’s your hamstrings that limit your motion and keep your head from hitting the floor. You can feel your hamstrings tightening when you attempt to perform a split. Your hamstrings are the muscles in the back of your legs screaming “STOP!”

Hamstrings and Trigger Points: Think of trigger points as another name for muscle dysfunction. Latent trigger points regularly form in the three muscles making up your hamstrings: biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembraneous. Unless you regularly release these trigger points with massage they will weaken your hamstrings. If unreleased, trigger points accumulate over time and slow your running, shorten your jumping, and eventually make even walking painful. They have the affect of shortening your hamstrings which may be felt as knee or hip pain. You can see their affects on your parents and grandparents when they try to get out of a chair or walk. 


Hamstring Injuries: Hamstrings with accumulated trigger points are more likely to suffer tightness, strains, pulls, and tears. See http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00408

Benefits of Massage:
Massaging your hamstrings regularly will release latent trigger points and make your hamstrings less susceptible to injuries. Massage will result in stronger hamstrings and naturally faster legs.

Chronic Hamstring Problems: If trigger points are not released, over the course of a long life, they can produce severe muscle dysfunction which may be mistaken for arthritis. The weaknesses in elderly legs are often attributed to aging and are accepted as a natural part of the aging process. Most often it’s an accumulation of trigger points that are causing these problems, and as such it is a natural condition of aging that can easily be remedied through massage.

Trigger Point articles you might find helpful:
http://feelbetterfast.blogspot.com/2010/03/trigger-points-are-they-in-you.html
http://feelbetterfast.blogspot.com/2010/03/treating-your-trigger-points.html

Treating Your Trigger Points

by Rich Poley©

“The key to treating trigger points is to lengthen the muscle fibers that are shortened by the trigger point mechanism.” Travell & Simons’ Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, Volume 2, page136.

Gentle stretching lengthens muscles and removes many latent trigger points; but not even the super heroes of stretching, yoga and Pilates, will get them all. Trigger point therapy, which can be a powerful extension of yoga and Pilates, will eliminate the most dangerous ones. This simple remedy can be incorporated into most fitness classes.

Finding
Because you have many trigger points, they’ll be easy to find. Just press different places on a muscle until you hit a tender spot. Trigger points are more likely to be found in the areas of your body that are stiff and tense. Your upper back is a good place to look. If you run, you’ll find trigger points in your leg muscles. If you swim or play tennis, you’ll find them in your shoulders. Almost everyone has them in the bottoms of their feet.

Releasing
Once you’ve located a trigger point, continue pressing it until the tenderness goes away. Pulsing or slightly changing the angle you’re pressing usually helps. Mild trigger points should resolve within five breaths. After releasing a trigger point, slowly move the muscle through its full range of motion three times. An extremely tender point may take more than one session to dissolve. Use a body marking pen to tag it and come back to it on succeeding days.

Relaxing
Relaxation facilitates stretching and is the secret to releasing trigger points. To relax a muscle, you must relieve it of its work load. Muscles perform two jobs: they stabilize and mobilize. If your muscles are working to stabilize you, they won’t be able to relax. To relieve your muscles of this burden, lie down, preferably on a yoga or Pilates mat. Here are some more tips to help you deactivate triggers:

• Warm your muscles with exercise, a shower, a hot tub, or by gliding your hands over them.
• Use a massage tool to extend your reach and power to press deeply with less effort.
• Let gravity do the work by placing the tool between the mat and your trigger point.
• Tensing a muscle before relaxing it, will identify the muscle and help it release.
• Straighten the muscle and direct your full attention toward feeling it let go.
• Breathe slowly and deeply into your abdomen, exhalation is relaxation.
• Relaxation is an active process.

Benefiting
Trigger point therapy will remove the knots from your muscles. To find out how much better you’ll feel and perform, try it. It’s the difference between yes and no.

Trigger Points: Are They in You?

Photo by a2gemma
Article by Rich Poley

Debilitating Little Buggers
Trigger points weaken muscles, reduce range of motion, and drain endurance. While you may not have heard of them, you’ve experienced them. Everyone who’s had muscle pain and stiffness has experienced trigger points. They are the tender spots or knots that grow in your muscles. They’ve been written about in thousands of articles in medical journals and authoritatively described in Myofacial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, by David G. Simons, M.D., Janet G. Travell, M.D., and Lois S. Simons, P.T.
You’ve seen the long-term effects of untreated trigger points in the elderly, their bodies twisted and reactions slowed. Gradually, over many years, knotted muscle fibers reduce people’s range of motion and sap their strength until they have trouble getting out of a chair. Decrepitude is thought to be part of the normal aging process. When caused by trigger points, which it usually is, it’s preventable. Trigger points are the most easily treatable significant muscle problem that you’re certain to face.

Tiny Knots
Medical doctors believe trigger points form naturally as a result of muscle abuse. Over and under use of muscles causes the ultra thin fibers that make-up muscles to tangle into the tiny knots that are trigger points. The knots cause muscles to shorten and tense.
Trigger points are of two types: latent and active. Both cause all the muscle dysfunctions described above but only active trigger points spontaneously emit pain. Active triggers are relatively rare but everyone suffers latent ones. While trigger points appear naturally, they also disappear naturally when your muscles are stretched.

Stretching Them
Here’s the rule: elongating muscles removes trigger points. Gentle natural stretching that’s part of normal daily activities eliminates most small triggers. Yoga, Pilates, and fitness classes resolve many of the more stubborn ones. Unfortunately, the toughest trigger points persist and require a more precise controlled stretch that comes from pressing directly on the muscle. This form of massage, known as trigger point therapy, elongates the muscle and removes the knot.

Do it Yourself Trigger Point Massage
The good news is that trigger point therapy is easy to do. With a little knowledge and the right massage tool you can restore muscle strength, flexibility, and endurance to your own body. You can remove all your latent trigger points simply by pressing them. Ninety-percent of trigger point therapy is just pressing muscle tissue. You can tell you’ve hit one when the spot you’ve compressed is exquisitely tender. Stay with it for about five breaths or until the pain subsides.

Pressing Them
Yes, trigger points are in you. If you want to improve muscle performance and avoid the physical frailty of old-age, you have to get them out and keep getting them out. Fortunately, it’s easy. Just press them and they’re gone. Doing so, improves the way you look, feel, and perform.

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Check out my latest YouTube video: Balls On Quads Massage: Do It While You View It. It's fun action. The intent of the video is not to teach you anything but to help you to feel something, to help you feel better when you finish than when you started. If it does that it has succeeded, if not it has failed. Give it a try let me know how it does.

Stretching It: The Truth about Stretching

Stretching by Tobyotter

The perceived benefits of stretching are that they make your muscles more flexible and will protect you from injury. The truth is that they do neither. According to a recent New York Times article, old fashioned stretching just doesn’t deliver the goods. When the Times talks about stretching it’s talking about the kind of stretching you probably learned as a kid or at the urging of a coach or from a book on stretching. It’s the kind of stretching that you felt obligated to do but didn’t continue because you didn’t feel it did you much good. It was generally painful, unpleasant, and failed to make you more flexible. The good news is you were right to stop because it didn’t work.

This old fashioned stretching was over sold before it was understood.

New York Times reporter Gretchen Reynolds wrote an interesting piece on stretching Phys Ed: How Necessary Is Stretching? If you don’t have time to read it in its entirety, here are some of the highlights.

Women are more flexible than men.

Flexibility is not “a cornerstone of health and fitness.”

“It’s been drummed into people that they should stretch, stretch, stretch — that they have to be flexible,” says Dr. Duane Knudson, teacher of biomechanics at Texas State University in San Marcos, and an expert on flexibility and muscle reaction. “But there’s not much scientific support for that.”

The newest science indicates that excess flexibility is undesirable, unnecessary, and unachievable.

“To a large degree, flexibility is genetic,” says Dr. Malachy McHugh, director of research for the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital and an authority on flexibility. Either you’re born supple or stiff. “Some small portion’ of each person’s flexibility ‘is adaptable,’ McHugh says, “but it takes a long time and a lot of work to get even that small adaptation. It’s a bit depressing, really.”

Stretching after a run or workout won’t lengthen your muscles making you more flexible, nor will it increase your range of motion.

There are two pieces to stretching a muscle, according to Dr. McHugh: first the muscle, second the mind. It’s not your muscle that becomes more flexible over time, it’s your mind and the message it sends to the muscle telling it to stretch a little further. The structure of the muscle will not change but your tolerance to pain will. Thus the illusion of a gain in flexibility with stretching, is just that an illusion. “You’ll start to develop a tolerance” for the pain of stretching, Dr. McHugh says. The fact that you can hold a stretch longer over time is a function of your mind accepting the stretch and not your muscles or tendons growing permanently longer. Sadly even this illusion of flexibility is fleeting says Dr. McHugh.

Changing the physical structure of a muscle takes months of hard painful work and sessions lasting hours. Still the changes you can expect are small.

And for most of us there is no reason to. “Flexibility is a functional thing,” Dr. Knudson says. “You only need enough range of motion in your joints to avoid injury. More is not necessarily better.”