Article Archive

Saving Money

Business Side

Okay, here’s your choice. You could buy that pair of fashionable shoes for $200, or put the money into savings. Which seems more attractive? Well, the shoes are right there. They’re beautiful, you tried them on, and they’re comfortable as heck. All your friends would notice them and compliment you. Or you could save the money.

Saving money is one of the hardest things to do in our consumer lifestyle. By definition, it means putting things off until later. Delayed gratification. When is it right to treat yourself and when should you be disciplined and put the money in savings?

Innate Health

A New Way to Look at Life and Avoid Burnout

Massage therapy and prevention research are both professions assisting others to higher health. Fortunately for us, insights from prevention research—a field that attempts to identify the best ways to prevent negative outcomes related to social, physical, mental health, and safety issues—may also prove extremely beneficial to massage therapy. Its approach to innate health provides a fresh perspective for massage therapists that will profoundly enhance their professional and personal lives.

Miracle of Motherhood

The miracle of motherhood is eloquently expressed when observing how perfectly the female body is designed to conceive, birth, and nurture a child. Following conception, a woman and her unborn baby unite in an oceanic blend of energy and identity. Where one ends and the other begins no one knows (see Figure 1, page 38). However, there does appear to be an innate wisdom that uses the nervous system as a conduit to transmit electrical impulses of intelligence to all the body’s systems that maintain mother and fetus in a state of homeostasis and balance.

The Anatomy of Communication: How Understanding Can Transform Our Professional Interactions

Part One

Language is frequently cited as the greatest intellectual achievement of the human race. We use language every day, for a wide range of purposes—from buying a newspaper to transacting a business deal to expressing our deepest feelings. In the field of massage therapy, our verbal communication has a tremendous impact on our clients, as well as on other professionals we encounter. Yet all too often, the ways we communicate don’t quite work.

The Puzzle of Perfect Posture

No therapeutic approach to pain management is satisfactory until body posture is generally improved. Whatever the cause of the client’s problem, special focus should always be given to posture. Overall body alignment may seem time consuming and is therefore frequently neglected because both therapist and client are often content with immediate symptom alleviation. In recent years, however, the manual therapy community has been blessed with scientific advances spearheaded by researchers such as J.

Kinese: The Language of Movement

A number of years ago, a doctor came to my practice. After a few sessions he said, “This is such interesting work. You know, I get up every morning and go to the hospital, and it’s like I’m by a river, and there’s someone floating by, drowning. I pull them out, dump the water out of them, give them artificial respiration, and get them sitting up. But then there’s another one in the river, drowning. I pull him out, thump the water out of him, give him artificial respiration, get him okay and then there’s another one, and another one.

The Evolution of an MT

From Office to Birthing Room

I’m resting on my knees, rib cage indenting the soft lip of a plastic pool that could be mistaken for a kiddy pool. Colorful designs of cartoon animals dance around the outer circle, and a nervous husband pours water from a teakettle to rewarm the pool’s contents.

I am not outdoors under the sun, on a lawn in a backyard, but rather on a hardwood floor in the dining room of a small house in West Los Angeles, California.

It is four o’clock in the morning.

Spiraling Babies

A few months ago, I was waiting for my next Saturday client and hanging out with some friends in the common reception area of the office. Our topic of conversation was a wonderfully hyperkinetic child who was moving incessantly and testing his limits as he tried to master walking. As I watched him, I found myself asking this question: what does his system need to function better? I soon noticed a certain restriction between his upper cervicals and his occiput, a lack of rotational ease that caught my attention.

Breath Therapy: A Mind–Body Awareness Approach for Chronic Low-Back Pain

Somatic Research

Contemporary treatment for low-back pain runs the gamut, from the conventional to the alternative, with sufferers seeking relief any way they can. What if it were simply a matter of mindfulness and attention to the breath? In a small pilot study from the Osher Center of Integrative Medicine in San Francisco, California, a research team led by Wolf Mehling, MD, used just such a concept for comparison of breath therapy and physical therapy for treatment of low-back pain.

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