the field of dreams business plan (+ a free podcast)

May 16th, 2012 by

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You know the story.  Kevin Costner hears voices telling him “if you build it, they will come”**, so he builds a baseball pitch in his back garden.  Everyone thinks he’s mad but at the end of the day he gets to play catch with his dad.  The moral of the story?  If you want something really badly and you follow your heart, you’ll get there.  And, also, American movies place huge amounts of importance on playing catch with one’s dad!  Being British I have no idea why. I can think of a million things I’d rather do. But then I’m hopeless at catch….I’d probably call my dad back from the dead only to drop the ball! :)

Anyway, why am I digging up old and somewhat dubious Kevin Costner movies this morning? Simple. That paragraph you’ve just read, minus the playing catch bit, that’s my business plan in a nutshell.

Sometimes I get asked how I did it

How I moved to a new town and two years later had a little clinic and a (mostly) full appointments book.

And my answer is nothing if not honest.  I genuinely don’t know.

A series of serendipitous events led me to find the studio where I now teach my classes and low and behold it also had a treatment room standing empty – well of course I jumped at the chance of subletting that!  I made a website, left a trail of flyers and business cards everywhere I went, invited every yoga teacher, personal trainer, chiropractor, osteopath I knew to come and have a half price treatment and spread the word…

….but mostly I just built it and they came

I genuinely believe that if you really want something and you want it for the right reasons it will be yours.  It might turn out that you will get what you wanted in a completely different way to how you thought you would, or you don’t realise you’ve got it until you’ve been doing it for six months.  It will be astonishingly hard work (I found setting up my business/working for myself one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and from reading some of your blogs I know you did too!) and the road will be riddled with disappointment and criticism.  But if you want it badly enough you’ll deal with that gruesome twosome pretty easily.

When you want something enough you don’t let anything get in your way.  And while saying “I’ll build it and they’ll come” might not be the soundest business advice you’ll ever hear (nobody is ever going to give you a start up loan based on that – my advice, do it without a start up loan!) and I can sense my accountant father shaking his head in disbelief on reading this, I promise you that it works.  Yes, you’ll panic about not having enough clients/money, yes you’ll have to work even when you’re sick because sick pay becomes a thing of the past but there’s this thing called freedom.  And I cannot recommend it highly enough.

** The words that Kevin Costner actually heard were “if you build it, he will come” – he being his dad I presume. I think the phrase that I have built the foundations of my business on is “if you book them, they will come” from Wayne’s World 2. To claim that you built your business on a quote from a Mike Myers movie is even more ludicrous than the plot of Field of Dreams, so I’m sticking with my original title!

Free Podcast

Last year I recorded this podcast – 5 ways to Happy, Joyous Self-Employment.  You can listen to it below or Download by clicking on the “download” link.  I hope you enjoy it!

SYPodcast2 by suburbanyogini

Download

Posted in cambridge, life, massage, massage in cambridge, yoga | 2 Comments »

the blame game

May 9th, 2012 by

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I read a book last week about osteoporosis and diet.  Its main aim seemed to be to debunk the Calcium Myth – to prove that eating dairy had nothing whatsoever to do with bone health and that the true root to bone health is a low acid diet – little to no animal products and lots of fruit and veggies.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against this very sensible advice.  We’ve all known for a long time that a diet low in animal products and high in plant foods is one of the keys to good health (although personally I believe that there is no point in changing your diet at all if you are not prepared to move a lot, but that’s another post for another day). No, my problem with this book was its tone.  It implied that if you had any kind of bone density issues it was your own fault for not eating the diet this book claimed you should be eating.

What if, like me, you’d been eating a good diet for years – almost exactly how the book sets it out, plus you’ve been doing all your weightbearing exercises – walking everywhere, Pilates, Yoga? What if even with that you have the early stages of osteoporosis?  And what if you know when you were younger, much younger, you didn’t look after yourself as well as you might?

Here comes the self-blame

What happens is you start to feel guilty.  You start to think “well if I’d just eaten better/not smoked/done more exercise/fill in appropriate blank when I was 22 then I might not be here now at 37″.  You think of all the things you may have done wrong during your life, all the things you should have done differently.

For the record, I hate the word “should”.  I think it “should” be banned (ha ha).  We do the best we can with the tools and knowledge that are available to us at the time.  And for many people lots of dairy products is the go-to calcium resource.  Even my doctor suggested lots of yoghurt when my bone density scan came back.

We all know we do our best.  But somewhere along the line, at some point, every single one of us is made to feel that doing our best just isn’t good enough.

That’s human nature

I’m quite sure it wasn’t the intention of the author of the book I was reading to make me blame myself for any health issues I may have but I do think it’s important to remember that many of us beautifully flawed human beings do blame ourselves for our shortcomings and do constantly strive to be better than the best we can be.  We’re not meant to be perfect, but just try telling a human being that!

Sadly this particular book isn’t the only example I’ve come across recently of putting the blame for pain, bad posture, digestive problems etc back onto the client, reader or student.  And it’s completely the wrong way of going about helping anyone.  Nobody ever did anything worthwhile out of a feeling of guilt.

What can we do about it?

Well I think the most important thing to remember as teachers, therapists, writers is that ultimately we must show compassion and kindness to our client base. People have come to us or are reading our books because they want to do something about their aches and pains or other ailments.  Actually admitting there is something wrong is the first, and most difficult, step of the process.  They have come to your office  or clinic or have bought your book because they don’t know what to do to get better, or at least to not get worse.  What’s happened in the past is done.  It is our job as teachers and therapists to share the knowledge we have with our clients, to help them let go of suffering and take ownership of their health.

We need to remember how easily we blame ourselves for our failings and that our clients will be doing exactly the same. Which is why we need to provide a safe space for our clients to move forward without making them feel guilty for what has happened.

There are certain things which, as a yoga teacher and massage therapist are outside my scope of practice.  Blame is outside of everyone’s scope of practice.

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my poor toe: could everything really start in your feet?

May 2nd, 2012 by

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the saying that people whose second toes are longer than their big toes are destined to become great leaders?  Well those toes in the above picture, with the long second toe – they’re mine.  So make of that saying what you will!  When I was at school they used to say a longer second toe made you a werewolf.  I don’t think there’s much truth in that either!

But one thing a longer second toe can mean is a little condition known as Morton’s Toe.  This is when the first metatarsal bone is shorter than the second metatarsal bone and affects around 10% of the population.**

Pardon?

Metatarsal bones are fingerlike bones in your foot onto which the toe bones attach.  The first metatarsal is the attachment point for your big toe, the second metatarsal for your second toe and so on.

Let’s have a look at some X-Rays.  Firstly a picture of a foot that doesn’t have Morton’s Toe.

And secondly a picture of a foot that does have Morton’s Toe.

Can you spot the difference?

In a “normal” foot the metatarsals are all in a neat row, which means that the weight-bearing through the foot is even spread through the five metatarsal bones.  In a foot with Morton’s Toe and its shortened first metatarsal bone, the second metatarsal will meet the ground before the first with every step.  This means that the poor second metatarsal bone is taking 100% of the weight when it should only be taking about 30%.

I’ve said metatarsal too many times…

I’m in the middle of a chain reaction

Many complimentary therapists and teachers, including myself, believe in treating the body holistically.  Everything is connected. And so it stands to reason that what happens in the foot is going to have a chain reaction somewhere else in the body. This means that not only could a Morton’s Toe cause foot and heel problems such as corns, callouses, bunions, fallen arches and tired aching and even swollen feet and ankles but it can also  cause back, hip and knee pain, calf and leg pain, aches and pains up into the glutes and pelvis and even all over body pains such as fibromyalgia and myofascial pain.

My second toe is shorter than my big toe.  Could I still have Morton’s Toe?

Yes you could.  In his brilliant book Why You Really Hurt, Dr Burton S Schuler outlines how to check if you have Morton’s Toe or not.  Over to Dr S….

…hold your first and second toes down.  Right behind the spot where the toes attach to the foot you will see bumps pushing up from the top of your foot.  These bumps are the heads of your first and second metatarsal bones.  Draw a line on your foot where the bumps end and meet the top of your foot…. Look at both lines. If the line of the second metatarsal head is farther down the foot towards your toes then you probably have a short metatarsal bone.

Morton’s Toe is an inherited condition so you might want to see if mum, dad and siblings have it too! Both my mum and dad have it…what are the chances?!

This makes so much sense!  What can I do about it? Can massage help?

Well yes massage will help.  If you are suffering from pain in the legs and body, a deep tissue massage with trigger point work will definitely help to relieve the pain.

However if you suspect you have Morton’s Toe your massage therapist can only help manage the pains, and cannot diagnose any kind of condition.  You might want to visit a podiatrist for confirmation.

You might also want to buy Dr Schuler’s book in which he describes how to cheaply and easily make yourself a Toe Pad to help spread the weight through the metatarsals again.  If used correctly (wear it for an hour or two a day for the first week and build up from there) you might find it really helps. If you combine using the Toe Pad with regular massage treatments you are likely to find a definite improvement.

To book a massage appointment with Rachel (and her Morton’s Toe) please call 07985 779892 or email rachel@massage-movement.co.uk

Who or what was Morton anyway?

Dr Dudley J Morton (1884-1960) was a renowned expert on the anatomy and evolution of the human foot.  He wrote numerous papers on the foot and published his first paper about what would come to be known as Morton’s Toe in 1927.  He wrote two particularly famous books during the 1930s: The Human Foot (1935) in which he laid out the evolutionary and heridtary steps to why human beings have foot problems, and Oh Doctor, My Feet (1939) which was written for the average person to understand and made him a household name in the US.

 **while this may affect only 10% of the population when it comes to yoga and pilates teachers, massage therapists, yoga students and massage clients it is much more than 10%. I can only assume this anomaly is because we come to yoga, pilates and massage in many cases because we are in pain in some way.  

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yoga + massage for M.E./C.F.S.

Apr 25th, 2012 by

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As some of my clients and readers already know, next month marks the 20 year anniversary since I was first diagnosed with M.E. (or “Yuppie Flu” as it was known then – these days more commonly referred to as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, although I really don’t think that does the myriad of symptoms justice!).

M.E. is one of those labels that is used when all the tests for what could be wrong with you come back negative.  Fibromyalgia is another label, more commonly used in the States.  Nobody really knows why some people have M.E. although many theories abound.  Originally it was thought that mine was a hangover from a bad bout of glandular fever which I largely ignored (what with having 3 A Levels, a Dance Foundation Course and a part-time job to worry about!), although so little is known about this chronic condition that its origins could lie in anything from crop spraying in the 1970s to the luck of the gene pool.

Much has been written about the suitability of exercise for M.E. and much exercise has been proven to be unhelpful.  Sometimes every day feels as though you are battling through a sea of jam, your memory is so bad that you have forgotten what you want to Google before your fingers hit the keyboard, there isn’t a part of your body that doesn’t ache so wildly that even prescription painkillers don’t touch the sides and while you can quite happily fall asleep in your dinner it’s very rare that you actually sleep at night. Exercise is the last thing on your mind.  There is a very thin line between gentle exercise and doing way too much.

Can Yoga Help?

Yoga is different from other forms of “exercise”.  It is a system that can be adapted to suit the individual need or ability and can be changed regularly (even daily) depending on how you feel.

Yoga works on a very subtle level on both the physical body and the mind, helping us to begin to relax and renew on a very profound level.  Physically it works on bones and muscles but also on the nervous system and the organs.

Us human beings do have a tendency to spend much of our time focussing on the physical body.  We overload our senses  even when we don’t want to. Coloured lights, music, smells, sounds, advertising billboards are everywhere we go, whether we like it or not.  Yoga encourages a harmony and balance between body and breath, breath and mind.

Yoga by its very nature targets those places that can be so affected by M.E.  It encourages relaxation and thereby helps the insomnia that so many people with M.E. relate to (I cite yoga as one of the main reasons that I am now capable of getting an almost good night’s sleep!), it encourages energy conservation and exercise tolerance, it allows us to be present and thereby more accepting of where we are right now, it helps us to find balance – both physically and emotionally….. oh, the list is endless and these are just a few of the important issues yoga can address.

Can Massage Help?

We all know that massage can help reduce stress-related symptoms, improve circulation, and increase your overall sense of well-being and can therefore help to alleviate some of the symptoms of M.E.  The number one purpose of massage therapy is to relax, calm and help soothe the body, especially when it is under stress such as when the severe symptoms of M.E. flare up. Some doctors are even beginning to recommend massage to patients with M.E. and Fibromyalgia.

It is important to let your therapist know that you have M.E. and it might also be wise to ensure that you find a therapist who has some experience or knowledge of M.E. Make sure you communicate with your therapist about how much pressure you need.  If your Fibromyalgic pain is quite bad, you may feel you want a bit less pressure in some places, although a firm hand often helps alleviate the symptoms (I have days when my whole body can feel bruised but a massage will really help me to feel a bit more human!).

You might also find that you need some trigger point or acupressure point massage, especially in the muscles of the legs if your symptoms have left you having to spend a lot of time inactive – if you have been sitting or lying down for long periods.

Always make sure you drink a lot of water before and after a massage. Before to hydrate the muscles and make them easier (and therefore less painful) to manipulate.  After to keep the muscles hydrated to lengthen the effects of the massage as well as to flush any toxins that the muscles may have released out of the system more quickly.  People with M.E. are particularly sensitive to these toxins and if you don’t drink plenty of water you may have a slight “hangover” feeling the next day, although this in itself is nothing to worry about.

If you would like to know more about yoga and massage for M.E. or book an appointment contact Rachel on 07985 779892 or rachel@massage-movement.co.uk 

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coping with criticism

Apr 18th, 2012 by


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About a year ago I got an email from a client. He’d only been for one treatment and he wrote to tell me that the soft tissue work I’d done had made no difference to him and he wouldn’t be coming back.

I’ll be honest with you. I was upset. For many reasons.  I’m not a miracle worker. I cannot heal you in a 40 minute session (oh if only it were so easy) and you have to meet me half way and take ownership of your own healing journey too. I can only do so much.

And it dented my ego. Someone I didn’t really know had implied I wasn’t good at my job. Of course I’m good at my job, I have a gajillion qualifications and happy, healthy clients to prove it.

So why was it, if I know I’m good at what I do and I have countless awesome testimonials from the people I’ve worked with over the years, that I was letting this one person get to me?

The ego is a fragile thing. It can grow and shrink at the slightest provocation. When I was a newly qualified yoga teacher I thought I knew everything. I would take every opportunity to lord my newly inflated ego over anybody I thought was living a “bad and unyogic life”. It didn’t last long. I soon got that beaten out of me and I think it’s a phase we all have to go through on our journeys, especially when we are retraining and changing. I think we’ve all probably been there.

But then you get your first criticism. It might not even be as overt as an email telling you that your work hadn’t helped. It might just be someone missing an appointment or not turning up to class ever again. You tell yourself they’ve died tragically or moved to Outer Mongolia on a secret mission but you know really deep in your heart that they hate you and never want to see you again.

I told you the ego was a fragile thing.

There’s a chance you’re not such a drama queen as me. If you’re a yoga teacher or complementary therapist there’s an equal chance that you are. It’s that sense of the dramatic that makes us so good at our jobs. But so harsh on ourselves.

After a while you realise you can no longer cope with this constant ego fluctuation and you have to find a balance. And here’s what I learned.

The world is divided into the people who are meant to be your clients and the people who aren’t.  Every teacher, every therapist has had a client that hasn’t been a good fit with their mission statement or who wants results that you’re not sure you can give. But in those early days when we’re fragile and we don’t think we’ll ever get another client again we take them on anyway. This will inevitably lead to heartache. They will either never come back or be 99 times more trouble than they are worth.

Accept this. Accept that you cannot take on everyone. Somewhere there is another massage therapist who will be able to fix that guy’s calf injury.

Somewhere there is a yoga teacher who does give those students who never came back what they were looking for.

But remember, that some clients who never went back to someone else now see you regularly.

And it really is that simple.

So when the criticism comes in feel free to have a cry or a shout about it in the privacy of your own home.

When you feel better (sleep on it, everything always looks better in the morning), decide if the criticism warrants a response. Maybe you did something wrong or didn’t treat the client in the way they wanted. If this is the case then apologise. It won’t get the client back so don’t bother offering them a free treatment or session, but just apologise anyway.

Then again you probably didn’t do anything wrong. In which case do nothing. Delete the email or text. Forget the conversation and concentrate on the clients who love your work. Keep a copy of their testimonials if you can for those times when the fragile ego does need a little stroke. Remember that you are doing so much good work and nobody gets it right all the time.

Ultimately some criticism is constructive and you should take it as so. We can’t know everything so it’s always good to get a second opinion. But a lot of the time criticism isn’t about you, it’s about the fragile ego of the person doling it out. To paraphrase Plato we’re all fighting hard battles, nobody has an “easy life” (whatever that means) and ultimately we have to treat every situation with kindness.

Unless you want to do nothing ever again, never express an opinion, never be anything you want to be, you will come across criticism. If it hurts, let it. Cry and shout. But only for a little while.

Then take a deep breath, put on your grown up pants and get on with whatever it is you were put on this earth to do.

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a question of etiquette

Apr 11th, 2012 by

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Today I want to talk about yoga class etiquette.  Over the years I have spent teaching yoga I have come across people from all walks of life.  99% of my students have been polite, sweet, kind and very, very open minded (which is really just as well).  I have had students who have come once, contributed fully to the class and never come again; I presume because they found yoga wasn’t for them, or my way of teaching wasn’t for them, or that life just got in the way.  You learn not to take it personally (more on that next week!).

But then there are that tiny handful of students who can be downright rude.  Now maybe I rule my yoga classes with an iron thumb, maybe I’m too strict but I feel I have to look after the good of the whole class and not just the individual.  My students come for a variety of reasons, some of which I will never know, some of which they probably don’t know and I want their experiences to be as safe and as comfortable as possible.  This means that arriving anymore than five minutes late is not an option.  Neither is leaving during or before final relaxation unless you have told me you might have to beforehand and  I have put you near the door.  If your mobile phone rings I will let it go once.  If it happens every week I will pull you up on it.  And may the gods help you if you actually have a conversation on it during my class! ;)

But by far the worst thing that has happened to me was when I was covering a friend’s class at a gym.  Suddenly, about five minutes into the class one particular student began to do her own personal practice in the middle of the room.  I quietly asked if everything was OK.  She told me she didn’t like “this kind of yoga”.  Now, everyone teaches differently and not everyone welcomes the cover teacher with open arms but I do believe if you teach from the heart most people will enjoy it.  Clearly not all though.

I said I was sorry to hear she was unahppy and quietly asked her if they would maybe like to leave and come back the next week when the regular teacher returned.

She just carried on.

And I just carried on teaching.

She continued to practice throughout the class and throughout my relaxation session.

She was still going when I left.

I honestly didn’t know what else to do.

Even now, with many more years teaching experience behind me I’m still not sure I would know what to do.

Yoga teachers – what would you have done in this situation?  How would you have felt?  And what etiquette do you expect from your students?

Non-yoga teachers – what behaviour drives you wild when you go to yoga class?  Or just behaviour in general?

Of course, we should all be practicing mindful detatchment and letting these situations go.  What can I say?  We’re only human!

“Though the unwise cling to their actions, watching for results, the wise are free from attachments, and act for the well-being of the whole world.”

–Bhagavad Gita, 3.25

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yoga does not a yogi make or why it’s not what we do that defines us.

Apr 4th, 2012 by

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

picture source

A regular yoga practice does not automatically make us yogis. A lot of people mistakenly imagine the world of yoga to be different from the rest of the world, but sometimes I think yoga amplifies us, defines not just our better qualities but also those not so nice ones as well. Those prone to ego can grow an even bigger one as it were.

Practicing yoga doesn’t change a person overnight. All the difficulties of everyday life are still there as soon as you get off your mat and the only thing we can control is our reaction to these difficulties.

We are all human and we all make mistakes. However hard we try we will probably continue to make mistakes. And while it is easy to spot flaws in other people it isn’t always so easy to spot them in ourselves.  Believe me, as the self-crowned Queen of Unsolicited Advice, I know this.  The phrase “physician heal thyself” springs to mind.

A long time ago during my yoga teacher training, I attended a workshop on hand balances. The teacher was strong and flexible and could not understand why I had such a problem with hand balances. She even insinuated that as this was such a problem perhaps I should think twice about teaching yoga.

My problem with hand balances is to do with my scoliosis. The curvature of the spine  is exacerbated when I’m upside down. Basically that means that without a wall, I fall over sideways.  Which in some ways is hilarious.

These days my work as a massage therapist means I need to look after my hands and I’m not known to hand balance very often although I have been known since to show my yoga students this amusing overbalance just hammer the point home to them that none of us are perfect. Back then, however, it was still quite a touchy subject. My fragile ego was shattered by an off-handed remark about my ability to teach. Yoga practice may amplify overinflated egos, but it also amplifies the underinflated as well; lack of self-esteem and self awareness. The strong flexible teacher reacts negatively to the condition of scoliosis and the scoliosis sufferer reacts negatively towards their practice. I’m not sure that in this case either teacher or student were practicing yoga. We were both certainly a long way from being yogis.

I think I have come on in leaps and bounds since that workshop on hand balances; I am more sure of my practice, my teaching, my path in life.  But I can also be stubborn, irrational, impulsive and moody. I get impatient and irritated too easily a lot of the time. I forget to breathe and open my heart when I’m in everyday situations. I am very much a work in progress.

We can choose to participate in competitiveness, ego and negative feelings or we can tread our own path and try to create examples of open-mindedness and compassion, transcending not only the competitiveness around us but also our physical bodies themselves, wonky spines, painful hands and all.

Because, as Dumbledore says, it is our choices in life that define us.

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five tips for healthy bones

Mar 21st, 2012 by

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I work with several clients who suffer from osteoporosis or its pre-cursor osteopenia. These are generally thought to be conditions of elderly women and while there is some truth in this, they are more common than you’d think in younger women and men.

While there is an hereditary aspect to osteoporosis the trick is to keep the bones as healthy as possible. So here are five places to start!

1. Walking every day: We hear a lot about weightbearing exercise as a way to keep the bones strong, but what exactly is it? Weightbearing exercise is any activity you do while on your feet and legs that works your muscles and bones against gravity. During weightbearing exercise, bone adapts to the impact of weight and the pull of muscle by building more bone cells. Consequently, bone becomes stronger and more dense. And the best of all weightbearing exercises is walking.  I’m trying to do at least 20 minutes every day with a couple of longer walks (45 minutes) each week. Even if you just walk to the corner and back it’s better than nothing.  Running and jogging are also good weightbearing exercises but new research has shown that the low impact of walking could be more useful for building those bone cells.  Also, while swimming and cycling are great exercise, they aren’t weightbearing unfortunately (that said of course, any exercise is better than none!).

2.  Pilates/Yoga: Because both Pilates and Yoga use the resistence of your own body weight against the floor they are also great weightbearing exercises.  However, choose the class you go to carefully.  If you already have osteoporosis/osteopenia or are at high risk of them you must make sure you are doing the right exercises, otherwise you will do more harm than good.  People with osteoporosis/osteopenia shouldn’t be practising spinal flexion (forward bends), lateral flexion (side bends such as Trikonasana) or rotation (any kind of spinal twist)**.  Narrows your practice down a bit doesn’t it?  But I have developed a really good practice without these things and you can too if you make sure your are working with a teacher who knows what they are doing.

3. Vitamin D: The best source of Vitamin D is the sunshine but I live in a country with a climate that can only really be described as grey! Vitamin D deficiency is rife in northern Europe and with it can come muscle pain and fatigue.  More importantly the body needs Vitamin D to absorb magnesium and calcium (and you need both to build healthy bone, calcium alone is pretty useless) from the diet.  And I’m sure you knew this but there is far more calcium in a serving of broccoli than in a serving of milk.  The more I read about broccoli the more I’m convinced it is truly amazing! Because I know my vitamin D levels are low I take an oral Vitamin D spray every day.

4. Stop smoking, cut down on alcohol, caffeine and salt: That pretty much goes without saying in all areas of life these days right? All factors that can, amongst other things, inhibit bone growth and absorption of key minerals. Oh, and drink gallons of water. But you knew that was coming!

5. De-stress as much as possible: Do yoga, do pilates, meditate, get lots of fresh air, try not to worry, say ‘no’ whenever you need to, get lots of sleep, trust in the universe. Do whatever it is that brings a little bit of peace into your life. Because stress, especially long term stress, as we are all too aware is one of the most health destroying things in the world. Plus it is now thought that the hormone shifts that happen during stress (increased cortisol, decreased serotonin) inhibit the production of osteoblasts (bone-building cells).

So as always: move, breathe, smile, eat (a little) cake. Look after yourselves.

** The reason for avoiding these exercises is to do with load bearing through the facet joints of the spine. Forward flexion causes excessive force on the front of the vertebral bodies and weakened bone may not be able to withstand the force. Likewise in lateral flexion and rotation (and especially when lateral flexion is mixed with rotation such as in Triangle pose) compression forces on the facet joints and vertebral body can be excessive. Spinal extension however is a different story (backbends such as cobra, upward dog). The part of the vertebra involved in the weight bearing is much more able to bear the load. Also strong back extensors are built up during extension work and these help with avoidance of spinal fracture.

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new treatment: indian head massage

Mar 14th, 2012 by

Indian Head Massage has been part of daily life in India for centuries.

It has been used in Asia for over 5,000 years and works specifically on the areas surrounding the head, scalp, face, neck, shoulders and upper back. Indian head massage comes from Ayurveda, an ancient method involving natural therapies, which takes into account mind, body and spirit.

The treatment takes place in a comfortable and relaxing seated position and can be done with or without the use of oils – the choice is yours.  If you prefer not to use oils then the treatment can take place fully clothed. If oils are used, as with other treatments, you will be covered by a towel at all times.

Indian Head Massage can help relieve:-

  • neck and shoulder tension
  • tension headaches and migraines
  • ear, nose, throat and sinus issues
  • jaw tension/teeth grinding
It can also increase joint mobility, blood circulation and lymphatic flow.

Please allow 40 minutes for your Indian Head Massage – your first appointment will include a full consultation.

Book your Indian Head Massage by calling Rachel on 07985 779892 or rachel@massage-movement.co.uk – each session is £30

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would you like a biscuit?

Mar 7th, 2012 by

This week I’d like you take five minutes, pull up a chair, pour yourselves a cup of tea and have a strawberry vanilla thumbprint biscuit.

This recipe is an adaptation of one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. These are small, nibbly biscuits to have with your morning tea. Enjoy!

Ingredients (makes 12)
110g unsalted butter at room temperature
110g Caster sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 egg yolks
1 tablespoons mil
140g plain flour
Some jam for later

Heat the oven to 180*C/350*F/Gas Mark 4 and line a baking tray or two with baking parchment.

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy and add the vanilla extract and egg yolks, beating them in one at a time, followed by the milk.

Gently fold in half the flour, stir, and them fold in the other half.

Gather the soft dough together and make a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for half an hour.

Then make 12 small balls with the dough and flatten them down onto your lined baking trays – make sure they are well spaced as they spread whilst cooking! In each biscuit make a thumbprint in the dough which you fill with a little (quarter of a teaspoon) of jam.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until firm to the touch and allow to cool on wire racks.

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