Girls Spa Parties: A Positive Experience Fostering Emotional Well-Being and Social Growth

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Unending Health Quest Editor

In the Metro New York / New Jersey area and throughout the entire nation, at-home spa parties for girls have become the de facto ‘new cool’ for tweens and teens.  It’s pretty obvious why this is now the case: Parties and entertainment go together, and there’s no greater form of entertainment than something that gets the guests involved and feeling good about themselves.

Most likely, girls spa parties are not going to end up another passing fad.  Girls love spa parties, and it seems that most kids have an outrageously fun time attending and participating in spa party activities.  It’s important for children and adolescents to feel good about themselves, and spa parties invariably impart nearly every participant with a more healthy sense of self esteem.

Some have asked me if I think spa parties promote vanity and shallowness in young girls, and others have even gone so far as to voice their concerns that spa parties are not appropriate for kids.  We are all entitled to our opinions; this is a free country and that is always our right.  But my experience providing the ‘Spa Party Experience’ to young girls suggests that the truth  is actually the opposite of what such people think.

Girls get excited –  it’s a fun time and a great opportunity to foster closeness and friendship.  I’ve seen how, many times, girls start off shy and withdrawn from one another, and by the end of the session, those same girls are talking freely, smiling, and enjoying one another’s company more than before.  It’s actually something that most parents notice, too. Kids are curious, as the majority of girls have never had any sort of spa treatment.  This curiosity keeps the girls from getting bored or self-conscious.  They’re just too engaged in the activities to feel  uncomfortable.

From my experience, I can say that spa parties help every guest to feel special.  It’s important that kids value their own uniqueness, but sadly, teens and tweens often find that uniqueness a source of discomfort, and sometimes even outright anguish.  Spa parties for girls show every girl that they are special, worthy of respect,  and endowed  with their own unique beauty and grace.  Even the shyest girl lacking even a little self esteem leaves feeling like she is just as good as her peers.  And in the process, friendships deepen, and the kids forget their shyness and just have a grand old time.

 

©  Copyright 2011 H Miller

Posted in Therapeutic Massage and Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Speaking Up: Telling Your Massage Therapist What’s What

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Unending Health Quest Editor

In a past article on this site, we explored the importance of a massage  therapist communicating with their client, asking relevant questions about general health, any conditions which might contraindicate certain forms of massage, as well as where the client needs help.  Without asking questions of this sort prior to a session, a massage therapist is going to be greatly  disadvantaged.  While answering questions is helpful, offering unsolicited feedback can help you, the client, to take greater control of the session.

Usually, receiving a massage is an entirely passive act.  But when the client asserts herself and begins providing feedback without being prompted to do so, the results will be a better massage therapy session 100% of the time.  If you are concerned that this is not polite, or that your therapeutic massage practitioner may  not be comfortable with your suggestions, remember that the session is your time, and  you’re the one paying for the massage.

Sometimes your massage therapist will have a different idea than you of what a deep tissue massage with a good amount of pressure actually means.  For some, the therapist may be using too little pressure.  For others, it may be excessive.  No matter what technique or modality your therapist employs, your experience should not be torturous, though some clients can easily tolerate more pressure, having a higher pain threshold.

If  you are seeking a session with light pressure, then say so.  If your therapist is hurting you, then *absolutely*, without hesitation, say so!  If your therapist’s idea of deep tissue with ‘a lot of pressure’ isn’t even enough pressure to keep you awake, then say something.  “Deep’, ‘medium’, and ‘light’ pressure are just words.  Be certain that your definitions match those of your therapist.

Sometimes, what a massage therapist is doing is very helpful.  Why not suggest that the therapist continue to work on that area, or utilize that technique for an extended period?  Maybe what a therapist is doing isn’t helping, and is wasting precious time.  Again, a session should focus on what the individual client requires.  A focused session working on just a single, or a few, areas is also a good idea for some clients.  Just because a session has already begun doesn’t mean you should settle; change the direction of the session mid-stream if necessary.   Speak up; it isn’t at all impolite or poor form  to do so.  You’ll find that you get a lot more out of every session, no matter how  skilled or experienced your therapist is.  A good massage therapy practitioner will appreciate the feedback.

© Copyright 2011 H Miller

Posted in At-Home Massage Articles, Therapeutic Massage and Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Your Therapist Should Be Asking You

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Unending Health Quest Editor

A good massage session necessarily requires that the therapist asks the client a number of questions.  Inquiries into past injuries, current painful conditions, as well as any medical conditions the client may have help to make a session safer, and more helpful.  If your therapist is not regularly  asking you questions regarding  the sorts of topics listed above, as part of your therapeutic  massage session, then you should be asking yourself if you’re receiving the best treatment.

It is unarguably true that a good therapist can tell where the tension is, as well as how deeply to work a muscle group, simply  by palpation, drawing on past clinical experience administering massage therapy, learned knowledge of the human anatomy from course work, as well as simple gut ‘intuition’.  Even so, there is no good therapist who does not inquire about a client’s condition, preferably at the beginning and end of every session, noting how the session affected your pain  and other treatable conditions.

Of course, you don’t want to feel bothered by a lengthy set of questions.  Relaxation is always essential.  But without pre- and post-session interviews, consisting of even just a few questions about how you’re feeling, your therapist is going to be delivering something less than the best form of  therapeutic massage.  One of the key selling points employed by both therapists and massage studios is the claim to individually custom-tailor sessions to the clients’ specific needs.

Paying attention to what your therapist asks/doesn’t ask can likely provide insight into whether they can really deliver: Without knowing about you and your body, a therapist cannot possibly be doing what they say, if their claim is that they provide individualized massage sessions.  If no questions are asked of you, it’s really time to ask yourself a number of serious questions about your therapist.

 

©Copyright 2011 H Miller

Posted in At-Home Massage Articles | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

My Quest For a Good Deep Tissue Massage

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Unending Health Quest Editor

I like deep tissue massage.  No; I must admit that I *love* deep tissue massage!

For me, no other modality is quite as effective as deep tissue massage, when it comes to relieving my  pain, while helping chronically tight muscles to finally relax.  After a particularly good session, I feel how much the tightness in my muscles has dissipated, and how much that formerly- chronic tension affected me adversely.  I literally feel like a new person.  With that said, I must unfortunately admit that most of my experiences with therapists providing deep tissue massage have been less than amazing.

Why is a massage therapist well versed in the technique so difficult to find?  I decided to compile a list of all the reasons that I could possibly think of.  By the end of this article, I think you’ll agree that we probably covered all the causes of ‘deep tissue despair’.

Have you ever requested a deep tissue session, and the therapist did not use enough pressure to even quality for anything remotely far from light touch?  One clue as to why this was happening was the feedback I’d receive from the therapist providing the massage: Repeatedly asking, “Am I hurting you” shows concern, but reveals a fear of actually working deep into muscle tissues and fascia.  While feedback is essential to any good session, the purpose isn’t to allay the fears of the therapist.

The reality is, many therapists aren’t certain about how much pressure an individual client can deal with comfortably.  But without even trying, no therapist is going to succeed at delivering anything close to a ‘deep tissue’ massage.  Therapists need to learn, while training, just how much pressure the human body’s muscle groups can sustain without damage.  Actually, it  isn’t so easy to hurt a client using excessive pressure.  (Of course, children, the elderly, and those with health conditions are the exception, and deep tissue is most often not recommended for these groups.)

Another reason therapists do not work with enough pressure is a lack of familiarity with muscle groups, location of glands, sensitive points, etc.  Without knowing where one can and cannot apply significant pressure, a therapist will usually refrain from using any deep pressure at all.  This is probably a good idea, for a therapist who is clueless; it’s better to be safe than sorry.  An even better  idea would be to find a therapist familiar enough with the human frame and muscle groups to actually feel comfortable with their own strength, and how to properly employ it.

If you’re extremely athletic, toned and muscular, that may be the issue.  Deep tissue massage takes a lot of strength.  If you’re a 300 pound wrestler, don’t expect a thin, frail therapist to be able to do much for you.  The fact is, a muscular person requires a therapist to work with a great deal more force.  A petite therapist without much muscle of his own cannot possibly succeed at delivering a good deep tissue session, even if the therapist utilizes proper form.  This is a physical art, and without the physique, a therapist can only dream.

The next reason for failed deep tissue sessions seems to be laziness.  Even when a therapist looks like a poster child for Gold’s Gym®, there’s no guarantee that she’ll provide a good session.  If you’ve had one good deep tissue session, and went back for another, only to find that the therapist seems to have lost her strength, it may be a simple issue of laziness.

Deep tissue massage, when done properly, is hard work.  There’s just no getting around this fact.  Some therapists pace themselves throughout their daily sessions, and don’t want to expend themselves unduly for any one client.  In their minds, the difference may be a smaller tip, but there was no guarantee of a tip in the first, and secondly, some clients tip no matter how the session went.

Lastly, there’s the inattentive therapist.  A deep tissue session will not work if the therapist is distracted.  No massage therapy session will go well if the therapist is daydreaming about dinner, or worrying about getting to the bank before it closes.  With deep tissue massage, the effect is more pronounced, since this is a more intense modality.

In summary, we have to conclude that effective deep tissue massage therapy is rarer than one might guess, perusing the web sites and literature from most day spas and massage therapists.  Just because a therapist *claims* to be adept at deep tissue massage doesn’t mean that he actually is.  Any therapist can have an ‘off day’, but that shouldn’t result in a totally useless session.  If that’s what you have experienced when seeking deep tissue work, your disappointment is justified.  Try finding a new therapist, but ask some questions before booking.

Some useful questions might be: How many sessions weekly do you do using deep tissue techniques?  Are you OK with using a lot of pressure?  Do you tire easily?  Do you like administering deep tissue massage?  How comfortable are you using a LOT of pressure on my shoulders/back/thighs/etc?  Your ad states that you practice deep tissue massage.  DO your clients often request this service?

©Copyright 2011 H Miller

Posted in At-Home Massage Articles | Leave a comment

Indulgent, Decadent, Pampering : Therapeutic Massage, Guilt, and Why We Deprive Ourselves

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Unending Health Quest Editor

It would be difficult to miss the great  number of day spas and massage therapists describing their services as an indulgence, sheer decadence, a hedonistic flurry of self-pampering fit for a queen.  All of this talk is both a reflection of the larger culture, as well as a reinforcement of stereotyped cultural memes regarding massage therapy, health, and wellness.  Such wording in advertisements only serves to perpetuate the image of massage therapy as something very exclusive, and very much geared toward self gratification, and little else.

Why do so many people feel that they don’t ‘deserve’ a session of at-home (or in- spa) therapeutic massage?  A few years ago, I noticed an odd trend.  Working at a day spa at the time, I was one of the staff massage therapists.  Consistently, I’d notice that women (and men) routinely placed their manicures (and of course, pedicures) above their massage therapy sessions, in terms of personal importance.

Sometimes it was an issue of funds.  When a client was feeling overextended for the week, they’d usually forego the massage therapy in favor of the beauty treatment.  Other times it would be a matter of time constraints.  So basically, I learned that if a client is limited in funds or time, the beauty treatment would come first.  This was true regardless of the therapist or beautician involved.  Because this was so, I realized that I was observing a significant social  trend with wider implications.

When it concerns beauty treatments, every woman knows that ‘getting your nails and hair done’ is something nearly all women do, regardless of income or social status.  It isn’t considered something especially self-indulgent, but rather as a bit of a necessity, in terms of its significance in keeping a person presentable to the world of work, family, and other social settings.  Most  women (and men, surprisingly)  I discussed this with felt strongly that beauty treatments are an absolute necessity.

Given the importance we place on our social skills and personal appearance, both in the professional world, as well as out and about in daily life, this attitude is understandable.  After all, if Mr. Appleton stopped dyeing his hair and having impeccably groomed nails, his boss – a man twenty years younger – might choose to let him go.  First impressions are everything, but it’s all the other impressions that really matter each day. But how do these same women (and men) feel about massage therapy, in comparison?  Is there as strong a reason for receiving a therapeutic massage therapy session?

Apparently, the answer was no.  Even when a certain regular at-home therapy client, a female professional with a family and busy life,  could easily afford twice weekly sessions, more than a few times she’d explain to me how guilty she felt ‘overindulging’, even though the at-home massage therapy was helping her with her arthritic pain.  Each time I listened patiently, slightly baffled by the way she’d discuss her frequent sessions as something requiring apology.

But what was she really apologizing for?  And to whom?

She wasn’t really apologizing to me, as I was paid to perform each session of therapeutic massage.  She was just confiding in me, thinking and feeling out loud.  Even though her sessions resulted in a greater feeling of ease, less muscle and joint pain, and more energy, my client felt her sessions an unnecessary extravagance.  (This from a woman who vacationed four times a year, threw lavish parties, and was wed to an equally successful husband.)  It was clearly about something other than money or time.  I was beginning to wonder whether the day spa clients from years before were just making excuses for a deeper sense of guilt.

Why would an intelligent, articulate woman feel as though she is doing something wrong?  Is it likely that she feels equally decadent when visiting with the doctor for her arthritis?  I doubt it.  It’s precisely because her view of massage therapy isn’t so much ‘therapeutic and health-oriented’ as hedonistic and ‘self-oriented’ that she felt as she did.

My approach to massage therapy is strictly therapeutic, and I view each client as a person whom I can help to live a fuller, less painful existence.  Of course I try to help each client have the most relaxing session possible, but that isn’t the same as thinking massage is like a super bubble bath or double fudge ice cream sundae.  Popular images on the topic suggest otherwise.  Now, I realized that this was at the core of my clients’ strange attitudes toward therapeutic massage.

Being free from pain (or experiencing less pain, as was the case with my client) isn’t particularly indulgent.  It isn’t on par with eating a cheesecake or driving a gas guzzling truck or anything.   There’s no negative impact on your body, the environment, or anyone else.  Doctors do not usually prescribe massage therapy, though many will recommend it.  When a client is sent for massage therapy by a doctor, what differences in their ideas and attitudes about massage should we expect to see?  This would make  a highly interesting study, one that would shed light on this obscure matter.

When we have to go to the doctor, we don’t ask ourselves if we ‘deserve it’.  Professional medical treatment is something that we receive dispassionately, knowing that it is a matter of health, a matter of wisdom.  Ignoring our body’s ailments only causes them to worsen.  Once our society begins to view therapeutic massage in a health-oriented context – like the way we now think about going to the doctor – I think we’ll finally get over our guilt of massage therapy.

If massage therapy can help you feel better, then there’s no reason to regard it any differently than you do other things in your life which make your life liveable.  Thinking about it now, it’s clear that massage therapy is actually no more an ‘indulgence’ than beauty treatments, both being a necessity (of sorts), when we really come down to it.  If anything, our quality of life is sustained more by massage therapy than beauty treatments.

Considering how each will affect your ability to stay in top form, it isn’t so difficult to arrive at a conclusion of why neither should really be regarded as any sort of indulgence. Both a relaxing massage therapy session and  a manicure and hairstyling appointment are necessities, but in different ways.

One helps maintain your calm mental state and inner poise, controlling pain, keeping you feeling your very best as you go about your day, and the other helps you to look your very best, helping you to feel good about yourself, something maybe less tangible, yet no less important.

But which will better prepare you for a long, strenuous week at the office (as well as help you recover from the week that just ended!), an insane problem-ridden remodeling of the kitchen (that was supposed to take three weeks and is now on six months), dealing with the kids’ schedule of soccer games, violin recitals, and unplanned-for parent-teacher meetings (after receiving calls from your son’s teacher about how  he was caught selling his homework to the other students)?  If we’re honest enough, it won’t be much of a debate at all.  Even the best manicure and hairstyling won’t do much to help with a busy schedule and tons of stress.

And if you’re really concerned with looking good, radiant beauty comes from the inside, many fashion pundits tell us, and so having beautiful nails and hair (or a really smart-looking goatee and sideburns) can’t possibly do as much for your appearance as feeling calm, healthy, and vibrant would.  Therapeutic massage can help contribute to a feeling of wellness by easing muscle soreness, as tension is cumulative, stress build-up occurring daily as we navigate through life’s situations.

Many clients feel that without weekly or bi-weekly at-home massage sessions, their ability to focus and cope with the stress of daily life decreases.  Considering the facts, while discarding the fictions,  therapeutic massage sessions should be considered more a time of healing than pampering.  The words that we use to describe what we do ultimately help shape our views; be accurate and honest with yourself and remember that there’s nothing particularly indulgent or hedonistic about getting a massage.  If you read up on the scientific literature, you’ll find that massage therapy has been proven to help maintain wellness in a number of ways; the more that you learn about the topic, the more foreign the concept of guilt associated with massage will seem.

©Copyright 2011 H Miller

Posted in Therapeutic Massage and Society | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Relaxation and Immunity: Can Therapeutic Massage Help?

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Unending Health Quest Editor

After a massage session, we feel calm and relaxed, probably more serene and blissful than at most other times.  While this is a wonderful experience, in and of itself, the benefits of that heightened sense of calm extend deep into the very cellular mechanisms that comprise one of our body’s most important functions, namely immunity.

Psychologist James Kiecolt Glaser of Ohio State University undertook a study which proved that relaxation can increase the number of helper T-cells.  The outcome proved a statistically significant causal relation between the amount of relaxation-promoting activity  the subjects engaged in weekly, and an increase in immune capacity.  For the study, students were taught self- relaxation techniques.

According to the results, “…these data provide further evidence that relaxation may be able to enhance at least some component of cellular immunity, and thus perhaps ultimately might be useful in influencing the incidence and course of the disease.”

Stress, in all forms, tends to weaken the immune response.  When we consider that stress may come in the form of allergic condition, inflammatory response, poor diet, psychological tension arising from work, family, and other issues, lack of (good quality) sleep, depression, and more, the universal need for stress relief is easily understood.  These various sources of stress all contribute to undermining our vitality and health.

Cortisol and catecholamine levels taper off after a person relaxes.  An individual in a continuously stressed state releases adrenaline, GH, norepinephrine, and other hormones and chemicals (manufactured in the body) that can create a long-term lack of calm.  A sustained tense state only leads to health issues.

It doesn’t seem to matter how one achieves a state of calm.  Whether through meditation or yoga, quiet contemplation or active creativity or sports, we need to find a way to stay relaxed.  The world is dizzyingly faced-paced, and as people of these times, I doubt most of us would want to return to the slumbering pace of our predecessors.  Even so, the weight of living in such world definitely takes its toll.

Meditation, Hatha Yoga, physical exercise, weightlifting, Chi Kung, Tai Chi, and Pranayama (intensive focused breathing exercises) can all help people to feel relaxed, and stay relaxed.  The number of techniques is staggering, as each culture has a traditional means of achieving self-calm, and in contemporary times, many therapists and doctors have likewise devised systems of physical and mental exercises and techniques that seek  to promote calm.  Find a method that is right for you, and fits into your lifestyle, personal philosophy, and faith.

Reading insightful books on the highly inspirational topics of healing, cultivating positivity in one’s life, and spirituality can likewise break up negative tendencies of thought that help promote a stress-prone mental framework.  Explore your faith.  If you’re agnostic or atheist, then dig deep into the rich legacy of human philosophy, spanning the ages from antiquity to modern times.  Find personal meaning in your life.

If faith and philosophy’s not your thing, and you’re more into fishing, then Google fishing, join discussion groups, read magazines and books about fishing, or actually go on a fishing trip.  In other words, whatever you are doing now,  bring a better attitude to it.

Therapeutic massage can be a great adjunct to your plan for becoming calm.  Being worked on always brings a feeling of physical, mental, and even spiritual wellness that leaves an afterglow lasting well beyond the massage session.  If the time is taken to truly work on cultivating calm in one’s life on a daily basis, then we are working in no small way to help our overall health and quality of life.  A strong immune system keeps us well, even with daily exposure to pathogens and environmental  toxins.  Frequent  massage sessions can only help accomplish this worthy goal of attaining a more relaxed state.

©Copyright 2011 H Miller

Posted in Massage and Health | Leave a comment

Personal, Caring Service: Does Mega-Massage Really Deliver?

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Unending Health Quest Editor

We offer personal service; unlike some of our competitors, we are not a franchise or a giant company, whose first mission is to increase profits and expand commercial activity.  We care about our clients; from booking to your actual session, you’ll be treated like a person, not a faceless consumer.  Face it, you can’t have it both ways: A mobile massage outfit that is  small, personal, caring, and oriented toward healing, is incompatible with a ‘big business’ model of massage therapy.

The whole concept of our At-Home Massage Therapy was to get away from the type of Spa and Massage Studio experience that we were so familiar with, both as a clients, as well as therapists.  It is obvious that the face of mobile massage is changing, assuming a more polished and commercial feel.  We seek to maintain the specialness that made us different, that motivated us in the first to provide home therapeutic massage: personal, caring service, provided by professionals motivated by their desire to help others.

By no means are we suggesting that good  business practice is  mutually exclusive with being a caring, motivated healer, but rather that once a mobile massage service becomes too big, too commercialized, too…impersonal, something significant is necessarily lost.

When it concerns the hiring of additional therapists, such mega-massage companies are concerned, primarily, with having enough therapists to handle the large volume of incoming calls.  Even if the founder of such a company had high ideals at first, it is inevitable that sacrifices, in terms of therapist quality, would follow a mass-hiring.  And, like the large massage spas with physical addresses, workers are paid very little

This  is America and we are capitalists; it would be disingenuous to argue that such factors as mentioned above will not negatively affect the quality of your session.  Just look to the third world for shoddy workmanship in imported products to get an idea of how an underpaid staff underperforms.

Automated appointment scheduling is another issue that arises in quality vs. quantity arguments.  While our clients may schedule online, by e-mail, by phone, and by texting, we always voice verify every appointment, as well as call the day before to confirm.  That’s something that some of the  larger At-Home Massage services do not provide.  It’s just little things like that that make the experience of dealing with Mountainside On-Site Massage Therapy something entirely different from our competitors.

We are not a franchise, nor do we plan to franchise our business.  Such are common in the bricks- and-mortar world of massage spas, but the larger at-home services are now going the same route.  While it’s a great business model for fast food restaurants, something is lost in translation when applied to massage therapy.

A  streamlined approach to clients is common with large-scale business, but almost always comes at the expense of a dynamic and cathartic massage session.   Truly, it has to be about something more than bringing in the numbers.

©2011 H Miller

Posted in At-Home Massage Articles | Leave a comment