Mara cautiously walks huddled alongside her mom.  This closeness, and the doll she clutches to herself, gives her a feeling of steadiness. She has low muscle tone that has caused her difficulty speaking, balancing, walking, using her hands, and developing at a typical rate. During Mara?s first CranioSacral Therapy (CST) session a lack of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow seemed to have disrupted the normal availability of vitalizing elements, called neurotrophins, flowing from her spinal cord to the rest of her body.

It is thought that neurotrophins are produced inside nerve cell bodies of spinal cord nerves, and then the neurotrophins stream within peripheral nerves throughout the body.  Hindrance in the accessibility of these enlivening elements can cause cell exhaustion, which in turn could lead to Mara?s muscle weakness.

There was a palpable communication, both bio-chemically and energetically, between Mara?s CSF, neurotrophins, and tissue.  It felt as though CSF was guiding the direction, and determining the amount, of neurotrophins trickling to her muscles, organs, and glands.  Since her CSF flow was very congested, particularly where her peripheral nerves exit the spinal column, her neurotrophins had almost completely lost the support and guidance of CSF.  Because of this CSF compromise Mara?s muscles could not receive their essential amount of vital energy from the spinal cord.

Our session focused on opening the connective tissue pathways by which CSF flows out of the spine, increasing CSF motion, and encouraging her body to receive increased neurotrophin flow.  There were times when you could actually feel her muscles enliven, as though they were turning on for the first time.

The entire experience was surprising, enlightening and very exciting for me, even though I?ve never read anything about a relationship between CSF and neurotrophins to validate what I was feeling.  Yet, client response to CST is one way to judge how precise our perceptions have been.

Mara?s mom reported that after our session Mara?s strength and balance noticeably improved, and the improvement lasted four weeks before the effects of our session began to diminish, but not disappear.  This is an indication to me that Mara had a good response to CST, she could benefit from more CST, and there is a supportive relationship between CSF and neurotrophins in her body.

             I have treated dogs, cats, birds and race horses successfully using my Myofascial Release principles. Cathleen recently asked the following question on my latest blog:

?Good evening Mr. Barnes,
I?m interested in taking Mark Barnes Equine 1 with Tamara Rapier. What results have you seen with the horses? Do the principles and teaching of Mark Barnes? course mirror your own? Do you recommend the course and Miss Rapier as a teacher and practitioner?
Your insight and direction are sincerely appreciated.
Best,
Cathleen?

• Cathleen M Peabody // Jul 10th 2009 at 6:57 pm

      Animals respond even faster than humans to Myofascial Release techniques.  Their life is motion.  They become an active participant in their treatment. 

      For more information on equine Myofascial Release, call Tamara Rapier (573-694-0350 or inquiry@myofascialrelease.com ) or Cathy Covell (260-829-6363 or http://www.motionforlife.net/ ).  Both are incredible therapists that teach the Myofascial Release principles that mirror mine and I highly recommend their equine Myofascial Release seminars.

Thanks for your interest.

John

There is nothing like learning something new to stimulate our mind/body with fresh impressions from which to grow, and to shock it out of old patterns of thinking, learning, feeling and doing. This is essential for massage therapy professionals since the quality of what we do not only impacts the effectiveness of the treatments we give our clients and patients, but also directly influences the living we make in doing it. Most of us are familiar with the expression, ?if you don?t use it, you lose it,? and that certainly holds some validity. However, I think that massage therapy practitioners are less inclined to accept another similar truth, which is, if you do not seek to grow, even that which you know and do well will over time deteriorate and weaken — become stale. It?s not very different from body-builders who stop working out, soon after all their muscles begin turning to fat.

Becoming a health care practitioner, such as a massage therapist, is a commitment to life long learning and professional development. It is a responsibility that comes with being called a professional which is defined as ?possessing great skill or experience in a field or activity.? Although we know that children are naturally curious, as adults we can become complacent about learning new things, and it doesn?t usually get easier as we age. It should be no surprise that habits and patterns become more fixed as we become older and more settled and ?uncomfortably comfortable in our ways.? Every massage therapist forms habits and patterns of treating after doing what they have been doing for years. Therapists can easily become fixed and reach a point of stagnation. This doesn?t mean that practitioners are not doing a good job at what they do. Many have reached a high level of skill and get wonderful results. However, if nothing is done to continue to cultivate that, then it will eventually begin to wilt. What is worse, is that you may not even realize it until you notice your practice dwindling.

Brushing up on old knowledge and techniques after years of experience will often lead to greater and deeper insight into what you already know and do which will immediately reflect positively in your treatments. Expanding your knowledge and technical base with training in new specialty areas is another powerful way to enhance your level of skill and breathe new life into your practice. The trends in our field are changing rapidly. Getting stuck in old patterns and habits of doing massage therapy, thinking that you know enough or that you are good enough can quietly leave you years behind relative to the speed and direction in which the Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork Profession is moving. It won?t be long before clients are asking you questions about techniques and forms of treatment you haven?t heard of yourself. You really must keep up!

We owe it to ourselves as professionals to continue learning and training in our chosen profession. It is vital that all massage therapists hold a view that it is their personal and professional responsibility to seek continuing education. Most of all, we owe it to our clients and patients who depend on us for the best and most effective treatments possible. Make it your personal commitment to seek self-improvement and continue to serve your clients with safety and competency. Give your self the gift of Continuing Education this year. The massage therapist in you will deeply appreciate it, and so will all your clients.

Discussion: At one time or another every massage therapist experiences periods in which his or her practice becomes stale. Boredom sets in, and treating becomes mechanical and rote. I’d love to hear different experiences related to this and what action, if any, was taken to combat your “massage fatigue” and to renew and reenrgize your love for Massage Therapy and Bodywork. Did you find that taking new or refresher CE courses in your modality helped? Did attending a regional or national professional association conference or convention where you could be around many of your peers rejuvenate your passion for the field? Let’s hear!!

Article marketing is one of the many online tools for promoting your website, your massage business, your massage school, your massage ce classes, your related massage products that is not very well known by massage therapists.

Article marketing is writing short, to the point articles and posting them on various free services such as ezinearticles.com or one of the many article marketing sites.

The main goal of article marketing really is to get the link to your site.  It doesn’t necessarily about getting people to click on the link but that can help too.  The search engines love to see that you have other sites out there that are linking to you.  They want to know that you are popular.  Most search engines rate and find your site based on the keywords you use in your site and pages and also how many backlinks (other sites linking to you) you have to your site.  They don’t really care if you create your own or not!

Writing in depth articles can also help you become recognized as an expert in your area, field or whatever it is that you are promoting.  Massage schools and massage ce teachers could benefit by writing articles about what their classes are and will do for people.  So many teachers miss the boat for promoting themselves.

Article marketing is fairly easy.   I also have set up a free article directory for massage therapists to add their articles too.  It is just a blog really that I have set up on my site www.thebodyworker.com The way it works is that you just create a free login.  You have to have a valid email address to get the login information.  After you get that you can login and post articles through the dashboard.   It works just like a word processor really.   Here are some ideas for articles that might help you get going:

For massage therapists promoting their business

• massage and fibromyalgia
• massage and cancer
• how muscles get tight
• the real benefits of massage
• describe your unique blend of techniques

For massage teachers/authors/massage schools:

• write articles on a topic that you talk about in your class or school or book and just write enough to want people to know more and then leave a link where they can find out more.
• Write why your class or school is different and what it will do for massage therapists – what will it do for their massage business or in getting a job?
• Write personal things about why you are doing this and what doing massage and doing the things you do mean to you.

In each article you can leave a link to your website.  To create a link just select the text you want to make into a link and click on the link symbol at the top and it will pop up a new box where you enter the exact address.  Select open in new window.   To get people interested in your link use it in an example or put something like :  For more information (on my very interesting class/school/topic) see my website

I started this awhile ago but only have a few articles written.  I don’t think people quite understand the reasons or methods of article marketing so let me know if you have questions.   I started doing an intensive article marketing campaign last month and my website traffic is increasing quickly which in the summer it is usually quite the opposite as far as traffic goes.

The grade of essential oil that you use trumps your knowledge of how to use it. You can spend a lot of time and money learning about the different properties of essential oils, but if the oil you are using is perfume or food grade oil, the results you are looking for will either not be there, not be as optimal as they could be, or even be harmful.

The grade of the essential oil that you use is MORE important than which particular oil (lavender, basil, etc.)  you are choosing to use. The first question to ask when choosing an essential oil is: does the oil have the ability to deliver the full content of the plants underlying benefits?

Almost all essential oils say on the label 100% pure or 100 % (lavender) essential oil or therapeutic grade but is the description on the label really what is in the bottle? There are no labeling laws in the U.S. for essential oils so the supplier can label their oil anyway they want.

So, how do you determine if the oil you are using is therapeutic grade? Ask your supplier! You and your clients deserve the highest quality. Anything less will not have the ability to deliver the benefits promised and may actually be harmful.

Ask your supplier the following questions

Before writing this I spent a lot of time thinking about some of the issues that many people raise in the educational institutions that I consult for (www.schenkmanconsulting.com)  in their evaluations either as an employee, faculty member or a student. When it came down to it, it seemed like most of the problems stemmed from poor communication, on all levels. That is not surprising and of course the buck stops at management when looking at it from a consulting perspective. However, when I thought about it on a more fundamental level, and from my experience as a stress management consultant for many years, I knew it was mostly a ?human being? problem related to perception and stress. So I thought I would try to express some of my thinking and knowledge regarding the importance of communication in educational institutions (and of course in day-to-day life) and see what some of you have to say or add to this conversation.

Communication is so important and yet is so easily and so often taken for granted and in the process we miss a very important and subtle truth about ourselves. And that is if we look inside and examine how we experience the moment-to-moment events of our lives, it becomes clear that what we often label as stress (our jobs, problems with children, divorce, vacations, traffic, etc.) is not really stress. Rather, these are the catalysts which ignite the ?stress response.? What we experience as stress is a function of our learned perception of events, the way we see things, and not the events themselves. The stress or ?fight or flight? response is an instinctive and automatic self-protective response pattern in our bodies which precipitates more than 1300 known physiological changes as a way of protecting us from physical danger, much more useful in the days when humans had to hunt for their food! However today, our perceptions become the basis of how we see and interpret our moment-to-moment experiences resulting in the manner in which we respond to or interact and communicate with others.  

As these perceptions activate the physiological changes in our bodies, they can stimulate negative or positive emotional states depending upon what they are. It is the negative emotional states that we generally experience as stress and what we refer to when we use the term. I say generally because just as easily, the joy of getting married can as well be a stress catalyzing event depending on how it is being perceived and consequently, dealt with.  

After all it is the quality and depth of communication we experience in our day-to-day existence that will ultimately determine the quality of our lives. When we break down the content of most days, we see that it was filled with numerous interactions with others. And although we may not realize it, we often judge our day on the basis of the quality of those interactions. The remarks we make when we arrive home from work, the comments we may utter after a ?conversation? held with a fellow employee, student or client are generally very telling and are descriptions of the quality of our communications. If at the end of a workday you feel drained, more then likely it was due to difficulties in communications. Breakdown in communication (regardless of whether the breakdown is your fault, the fault of the individual(s) you may be communicating with or both parties involved) inevitably leads to unnecessary expenditure of our own emotional energies. And conversely, some of the most energizing and rewarding experiences we may ever have are those that result from true communication. 

I think we often forget that true communication is accomplished only when there is a real interchange of one?s thoughts, feelings, opinions or information. It is not simply a matter of just saying what you have to or getting what you need ?off your chest.? The key word here is interchange. A true interchange is only possible when what another is trying to communicate is seriously taken in and considered from a place within oneself that is virtually free of our own biases, judgments, views and opinions. In order to really ?hear? what another is saying and be able to appropriately respond, it is necessary that the listener make every effort to suspend their own personal agenda, while at the same time working to consider the position and perspective of the other. Only then can the listener?s response be related and connected to the issues trying to be communicated. Stop and think for a moment if all our communications were like this, how much better the quality of our lives would be!!! By the way, the results of real communication do not necessarily mean that we get our way. However, if real communication is had, you will truly be heard and often that is as important as getting what you may personally want from the interchange. Once people begin communicating on this level, change for the better is inevitable. 

It is very common for a listener to respond emotionally without thinking about what was said by another. It is also very common for people to just blurt out what was on his/her mind in order to ?get in? what they wanted to say ?in the name of communication.? As you can see when you think about this, such ?communication? can only lead to frustration and argument, and accomplishes very little towards the result that either party wants.

Recently Sheila Walker posted the following thread on hydration and posed this question to me:

“Dear John,
It seems we?ve become a society obsessed with the notion of hydration, as witnessed by the blooming bottled water industry. Seems as though, everywhere you go, you can see people with their water bottles in tow. Could you please share your thoughts on how relevant our fascial system correlates with cellular hydration and therefore how to improve the effectiveness of keeping ourselves truly hydrated?”

      As Sheila has observed, everyone is walking around with their cute little water bottles, guzzling copious amounts of water.  This is about as effective as pouring water over a stone.  The surface becomes wet, but the water never penetrates to the interior. 

     The “stones” I am referring to are the collagenous restrictions of the fascial system that do not show up in any of the standard testing now being done.  The “ground substance” of the fascial system, the environment of every cell of our body, should be a gelatinous to a fluid state.  When we undergo trauma or a “thwarted” inflammatory  process, the ground substance dehydrates.  As the cellular environment, the fascial system, hardens it produces crushing pressure on the cells and blocks the flow of water, nutrition, oxygen, hormones, and/or medicine into the cell’s interior.  These fascial restrictions also block the excretion of toxins from the cell. 

     So, unfortunately no matter how much water you take in, in the presence of fascial restrictions, it doesn’t get to where your body needs it the most.  This is why I say, without Myofascial Release, the intention of drinking plenty of water is good, but it is as effective as pouring water over a stone!  Myofascial Release enhances cellular function and the effectiveness of good massage, bodywork, and energy techniques.

John

Hello all,

It seems the issue of providing massage for caregivers in hospice organizations is a bit of a sticking point for many organizations.  The points raised by Jennifer and Ann are well-taken and deserve some consideration.  I’m sure we can all agree that any caregiver in hospice or long term care give much of themselves physically, emotionally, and energetically.  Certainly massage would be an effective way to help them manage the stress and toll of taking care of others.  I’ve actually heard from several massage therapists about hospice organizations preventing them from working with staff because of organizational liability issues.  I’m prompted to explore this issue.  One thought comes to mind.  All long term care and hospice organization have a medical director.  I’m wondering if that might not be one solution to this issue.  I bring it up because one skilled nursing facilitly where I provide Compassionate Touch sessions had their medical director approve my services.  I understand that some organizations are more “guarded” than others.  But it might be worth exploring the idea of asking the hospice organization about having the medical director approve non-invasive, seated massage for stress management for staff. 

Have any of you tried this approach? I’d like to hear from you about this issue– what’s working, what’s not.  We have so much to offer those caregivers to help prevent burnout and compassion fatigue. 

Peace and blessings to you,

Ann

Colorado has just passed a regulatory bill (SB-219) for massage therapists that is awaiting the Governor’s signature. Although it started out as a bill for state licensing, it ended up being state registration, with all of the components of licensing, just by a different name. Such is the nature of legislative compromise. Passage of the bill is the result of several years of work by a coalition of AMTA and ABMP. As always when state regulation is on the table, there is a wide variety of opinion about the need or desirability for regulation.

I personally believe that regulation will be good for Colorado. We have many resort towns that have had no regulation at all, and anyone could show up for the ski season and proclaim themselves a “massage therapist”, whether or not they had any training or experience. In my mind, this put vacationing skiers at more risk for receiving substandard, possibly injurious, massage.

I welcome your thoughts on Colorado regulation, or on how things work where you live.

This was something I just wrote for my website, thought I would share with you all……

Did you know that getting massages is great way to stay warm, healthy and happy this winter?

Massage techniques can improve circulation, massage moves the blood around your whole body making you feel warm. Also with the warm hands of your therapist moving along your body it can really relax your muscles and make you feel so warm and cozy! Do you know that you lose most of your body heat from the top of your head? Usually in the winter I like to spend some extra time on my clients scalp to really warm them up, along with a nice blanket that is really comforting. You will feel like a child being tucked in on a snowy winter night! So this winter before cranking the heat up, cuddle up with a special someone or your favorite blanket and just give your toes, fingers and scalp a nice massage!

Are you looking to maintain your healthy lifestyle you worked hard for even  in the winter, when it seems to get harder to acomplish your health goals?  With all the holiday parties, and cooking you will be doing this winter, as well as the natural cycle of your body craving those crazy carbs when you get a cold chill, massage is a great way to boost your metabolism as well as fight cellulite. So if you are feely guilty about that extra cookie or glass of eggnog, get a massage, not only will it help you forget about the previous snacks,  but it will help you feel fit and light on your feet again!

Have these cold, dark months got you down?Are you stressed by the snow, hoidays, lack of sun and anything else that  can the best of you this winter? Don?t stress, massage can help to beat those winter blues.  There is nothing better for yourself than to get a massage. With the smell of fresh lavendar in the air, some relaxing music for you, you get to just close your eyes and a nice therapist will take care and nurture you, you will feel the stress sweeping out of your body. When the massage is through you will feel, relaxed, motivated, and refreshed, as well as happy, and ready to handle whatever life may hand you next!

Massage is a very healthy way to lose those winter blues. Stay warm, healthy and happy this winter with the power of massage, let Bee Well do something nice for you!

MASSAGE TIP #2: when you get cold this winter, give your feet, hands and scalp a nice relaxing massage!