Maintaining a healthy back is vital to your overall health. As your own “information super highway” runs through your spinal cord—sending messages that affect every aspect of your health—you want to do everything possible to facilitate its proper function.

An ancient adage from Yoga states “You are as young as your spine is flexible.” We have all seen a younger person with back pain moving along like an octogenarian, or a supple senior citizen dancing as if she were still in her teens.

It is estimated that approximately 80 percent of us will experience back pain at some point in our lives. As the most common cause of discomfort and disability for people under forty-five, it is also the main reason people miss work, second only to the common cold. Anyone who has had a serious bout with back pain knows how debilitating it can be.

Several things can precipitate back pain, among them tension, trauma or strain; improper sleeping positions; and sedentary lifestyles (lots of sitting, desk jobs, etc.). Pregnancy often is accompanied by back pain due to the added weight the mother-to-be carries in her lower abdomen. If you find your back starting to act up, being aware of potential problems and seeking to correct them is an excellent first step.
If your job requires you to sit at your desk a good part of the time, you may find quick relief in getting up frequently. An exercise regime including stretching, swimming, walking, or weight training also proves helpful in dealing with back pain.

In today’s bustling world, tension is often found to be the culprit. Whether brought about by stressful situations, poor posture, improper body alignment, etc., the result is the same. Certain muscles tense (the muscle fibers contract) and fail to relax properly. When this occurs in the back, it can begin to affect the body structurally, causing further problems.

Another typical source of back pain is muscle strain. When you overexert a back muscle, it can seize up in an effort to protect itself from further injury.

The good news is that most back pain can be prevented by keeping the muscles and joints supple and mobile, greatly aided through regular massage sessions. Through its stretching and relaxing strokes, massage is quite effective for restoring the normal range of motion and for easing muscle spasms. Sometimes a deeper massage is employed to release areas of chronic tension and to increase blood circulation to the area. Let’s work together to keep your back happy!

What responsibilities your skin has! A partial list of your skin’s duties include:

~ Providing a waterproof barrier that protects you from invasions of foreign substances and from excessive fluid loss

~ Regulating your body temperature—using sweat glands to cool you with perspiration and blood supply to raise or lower your temperature as needed

~ Playing a supporting role in your body’s immune system

~ Excreting wastes—Sharing the
functions of the lungs and kidneys, the skin expels impurities from the body via perspiration

~ Contributing to the regulation of blood pressure. The skin’s blood-vessel network, capable of storing and releasing blood as needed, is as important as the heart for proper circulation

~ Being a vital sensory organ

In the human embryo, the sense of touch is the first to develop, beginning in the sixth week. While your other senses are limited to your head (sight, hearing, taste, smell), your sense of touch is gathering information from every inch of your skin. Every minute of the day, your skin is monitoring your environment with its approximate 640,000 sensory receptors and is capable of wakening you from a deep sleep should it sense an abnormal situation. Additionally, it offers such a variety of information—your skin differentiates itchy and tickling sensations, hot and cold, various degrees of pressure, and all manner of pain and pleasure sensations.

Another of the skin’s sentry duties includes monitoring what is allowed to pass through its pores. With great selectivity your skin accepts nourishing substances while rejecting toxins, and expels metabolic waste while retaining beneficial substances—all simultaneously!

Skin is among the most adaptable tissues in the body. It can become calloused, having little feeling or remain thin and extremely sensitive.

Skin is in a constant state of renewal. A person living to the age of 70 will go through about 850 skins—each new skin reflecting the ongoing changes of aging. As the years roll by, the skin’s tissue continues to lose moisture, resulting in the thinner, drier and more wrinkled skin of the aged.

When injured, specialized cells found in the skin have the capability to begin the healing process by manufacturing strands of connective tissue that fill the wound. Your skin really knows how to take care of you!

• Assists exfoliation—
Inactive, aging skin does not shed dead cells as readily as does youthful skin
• Stimulates physiological functions–   Aids lymphatic drainage of the skin (lymph helps to cleanse the body) and increases blood flow. Also brings about a relaxing effect and decreases muscular tension

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• Benefits mature skin—Sweat gland and oil gland function tend to decrease with aging. Skin brushing stimulates these glands and helps to restore moist, supple skin

• Promotes skin beauty—By exciting the underlying skin regions that provide nutrients and moisture to all layers of the skin, regular skin brushing helps to regenerate the fibers that keep the skin healthy. It can help to alleviate cellulite as well.

Of course, your regular massages can help keep your skin healthy—and what a great way to make sure all those sensory receptors are doing their job!

Many of your health concerns may be related to how you breathe. After all, it is the mechanism that provides every cell in your body with life-giving oxygen. When your ability to breathe properly is compromised, you can expect some physical problems to develop.

In spite of the fact that breathing is an automatic function of the body, many people don’t breathe as nature intended. Often the cause is stress or tension. Such influences in our lives can become habit, leading the “automatic” process of breathing to be done improperly.

One of the most common habits is shallow breathing—breathing that focuses in the upper lungs and uses the muscles in the neck and upper chest area. In their book Breathe In, Breathe Out, authors Drs. Loehr and Migdow state, “Research has shown that slowing down and deepening our breath shifts us from the stress response to the relaxation response; this slows the heart, normalizes blood pressure, increases blood flow to the digestive system, deepens sleep, increases energy, focus, concentration, and memory—optimal breathing not only helps prevent or cure disease, it raises performance levels in school and sports.” That’s a pretty good list of benefits for just making sure that you’re breathing properly!

Why does abdominal (deep) breathing provide you with all these health advantages? Due to gravity, the lower portion of your lungs has a higher rate of blood flow. So your lungs and heart don’t have to work as hard and your circulatory system profits from this efficient means of oxygenating the blood. Deep, slow breathing is shown to release endorphins (the body’s natural pain suppressors) that bring about a feeling of relaxation and general well-being—a benefit you also get from massage.

As you incorporate better breathing into your life-style, try to do what you can to get as much fresh air as possible. In today’s society, with so many forms of air pollution, this can be a challenge. Your body will benefit from your efforts!

If you consider that muscle makes up the major part of a body’s weight (from 70% to 80%), and that there are more than 600 muscles in your body, it is not surprising that people think of bodywork as “muscle-work”. Because of this, a good knowledge of muscles should help you with an appreciation of how important a regular massage can be to your overall health!

What are muscles?

Briefly, muscles are composed of thousands (or tens of thousands) of long slender fibres. These fibres are a type of elastic tissue material (much like a rubber band). They are capable of three actions: they can shorten, lengthen or lock into place. When they don’t function properly you experience tightness, or feel stiffness, aches or pain.

The muscles duties include maintaining structural stability and just about all movements of the body, from gross body movement to the minute movement of arteries. Quite a job you would agree.

What causes muscular problems?

The most common cause of muscle problems is either over or under use, but other common causes include lack of proper nutrition, lack of oxygen, or a build up of toxins. What also happens is that although you may perceive a painful spot, other areas may be involved as well.
Imbalance can also be a cause of muscular pain. This is where one group of muscles are used in partnership with another group, and each group are not balanced. For example, when you bend your arm, and then straighten it, yor bicep muscles do most of the work to accomplish the bending, but your triceps are used for the straitening.
Muscles may reach a state of constant tension. Causes of this condition can range from stressful life conditions, to learned patterns of use such as the way we habitually stand or sit. Also we tend to store anxiety in our muscles, particularly in the areas of the neck and shoulders. This constant tension means that the muscle is constantly working producing toxins and a depleted flow of blood to that area.
A solution to muscle problems.

It is easy to see how beneficial massage can be for muscle problems. Regular massage sessions reduce tension in the muscles, improve blood flow throughout the entire body and get those muscles back to their normal functioning state.
Our massage technique includes the use of hot stones which further enhances the experience of muscular tension release and improved blood flow. Remember that the experts estimate that up to 90% of our illnesses are stress related. An while it is impossible to completely eliminate all of this stress, massage is a safe and time honoured method to achieve a marked decrease. The in turn translates into many benefits such as enhanced sleep quality and reduced fatigue.

Well – what are you waiting for? Make your booking now for a massage.