Swimming

Swimming is one of the best exercises for the body. It is very meditative, zero-impact on the body, all of the joints are being supported with long, lengthening strokes and it allows you to optimize your breath.

Swimmers have very long, lean muscles, because swimming is a very congruent way to strengthen the body. And swimming is a great method to speed up your metabolism, swimmers burn off everything they eat.

The quality that the water brings to your body is unmatched. Being in the water makes people comfortable. It allows people to go back to where they are from, all the way back in the womb, and because our bodies are 75-80% water, it is a natural environment for us. As a massage therapist in ocean beach, I always enjoy working with swimmers!

Finding your Breathe: It means more than just Massage

Breathing is something that we do all the time, every day, and we do it without even thinking about it. Most the time our breath is shallow and just enough to keep us alive. When the brain and our body does not get enough oxygen, a signal of stress is send through the body, our most essential need is lacking. This will create anxious feeling in the body and will take us out of our “center”.

Even as an Ocean Beach Massage Therapist that is a trained expert in body psychology, sometimes I catch myself cought in the moment and my breath pattern is shallow and restrained. Even though I tell my clients to do it all of the time, it is easy to get distracted.

So, when you get stressed and feel like you are beginning to become overwhelmed, stop and take couple of minutes to focus on finding your breathe, let it climb slowly up and down your spine and regain your composure. It will help calm the situation, and making it a habit will help your quality of life in the long run.

 

One day to not worry about anything

We are wired to make decisions every day. Some decisions are small and don’t make a difference in anyone’s life but our own. Other decisions are for business or our jobs, effect many people and come with a lot of stress.

One assignment I like to recommend to my clients, is to take a day a month when you give away the “keys.” Allow other people in your life to make the decisions for that day. Everything is out of your responsibility, not only out of your responsibility, it is forbidden to you for this one day. When we realize that we don’t have to be in charge, and that the sun will keep shining without us, the birds will keep chirping, and everything goes-on without us.

This is a great exercise that forces us to relax, worry less, reduce stress and go-with-the-flow. When things come up throughout the day, notice your instinctual reaction to try to take over or make a decision, and resist that urge. Just by doing this once a month on a day where you don’t have to worry about work, running errands, providing for other people, you will increase your quality of life.

Our mind is a decision making machine. We are constantly being introduced with options, stimulation and dilemmas to our nervous system (our mind is the collective knowledge that our nervous system holds) and as those being presented, the respond in the tissue is contraction (tension in the body).

Being a Massage Therapist and Owning your own Business

As we are wrapping up 2011, it is still a very interesting time to be a business owner. The economy is still fairly unpredictable in most industries, the unemployment rate is as high as it has ever been, and millions of people are just trying to “hold on” and “survive.”

As a Massage Therapist in Ocean Beach that owns a Massage center and work with other massage therapists, I know first-hand that business comes in waves, and managing your business right and being prepared for those slow days/weeks is very important to small business owners. Following the pattern of your practice and preparing yourself with promotions and specials for those days will help stay busy. Also those times allow self care and rest that are very crucial in our high stress modern life.

Massage is a very demanding career to have, both physically and mentally, so working 9-10 hours a day, 5 days a week is not realistic. And if you want to be in this industry for the long-run, you have to setup boundaries early and take care of yourself as well. Support work (Yoga, Thai chi, meditation and other exercises) is very simple way to keep your body healthy grounded and open. Healthy body mechanics is a key for maintaining the body healthy through the work. LOTS of bodywork and massages are also big part of it.