Dara Torres, the oldest swimmer (42) to medal at the last Olympic games, had two hours! of daily bodywork sessions when training and competing. The bodywork kept her soft and pliable which helped keep her at peak performance levels without injury. Her team of therapists were vital to her medal success. While here in Lincoln, I don’t see many Olympians, I do sports massage on some very dedicated athletes who know that massage can help them stay at peak performance levels.

This week I was impressed with a client who at age 50 ran a sub 2:50 marathon! He discovered that having massage weekly made him more competitive physically at a time when his mental race was getting much stronger, but he was having a hard time with keeping himself uninjured. He laid on my table and waxed lyrical about massage the entire time – how it settled his mind, loosened his muscles and generally kept him injury free. It gave him a competitive edge. Most of his friends saw physios when they got injured (which was regularly), but wouldn’t spend the money on prevention. He was the same until his trainer who was newly qualified in sports massage offered to give him a discounted session. Now he is a massage evangelist (THE perfect client!) trying to convince his buddies about the benefits of massage not only their body and mind, but as a tool to reach that goal of all runners – the PR.

Even if you play/run/compete regularly, as you age you become less flexible and more injury prone. A typical scenario – You have a little twinge in your knee, but it is nothing much. You ignore it. Next time or ten sessions later…. you do a bit of a warm up, maybe a cursory stretch and you are off playing like you used to, but this time the leg doesn’t just twinge when you lunge unwisely, it twangs and you have a torn meniscus or calf muscle or achilles tendon.

Now you are injured and either stop playing X at all or get treatment and try to regain your strength in the injured area which could be a long process that you may not even bother with. This is the path to being an EX player/runner/cyclist etc. And it is so very common. As we age, we become less supple, our muscles and tendons shorten and become more brittle, so even if you exercise regularly and are sensible as you age you are more prone to injury. Especially in our society where we sit in front of computers and in cars for long periods of time.

Massage is a great way to loosen up your muscles and joints to help you move with ease thru an ordinary, everyday sort of life. But if you are a keep fit enthusiast and enjoy your sport or physical endeavors, then massage is a great way to make this less risky later in life. So if you have delusions of glory in the local 10K or on the tennis court, try having a massage before your next big workout or match and see if it doesn’t ease the creaks, strains and hopefully help you avoid injury! Prevention is for the the wise (no, I didn’t say old….)

Are you sitting comfortably?

Where are your shoulders?

Please keep an eye on them. They are sneaky. If you are like the majority of my clients, then your shoulders are most likely approaching your ears in very insidious ways. You might not notice this habit your shoulder blades have of creeping up the back. Your neck probably has tried to warn you, maybe it has even started complaining bitterly. Sometimes a professional negotiator (…er..that would be me…) must be called in to manage the tension.

Liberating shoulders and freeing necks is gratifying work. A bit of cross fiber massage on tight bands of muscle between the neck and shoulder can work miracles. Occasionally I test my clients before and after so as to draw attention to the changes, as they usually have much improved mobility in their neck and their shoulder blades are lower and feel more relaxed.

So to empower you, and all my lovely clients, in this ongoing struggle to free worthy necks and shoulders around the world, I offer this helpful self-care routine which is especially useful for desk jockeys doing computer work and/or driving a lot. It is based on Taoist self massage techniques found in a book by Mantak Chia, called v. imaginatively – Taoist Self Massage.

Take a break and try it. Please….(Cue pleading mother voice often used to encourage vegetable eating)

1. Take inventory

Turn your head slowly to one side and feel where any tightness is and how far you can turn. Now turn to the other side. This is just to help you gauge the benefit of this little routine.

2. Give ‘em a pounding

Make a loose fist with your right hand, gently pound the left shoulder (not the bony bits, nearer the neck area) about 20-50 times. It may be quite sore at first, so just pat firmly with a flat, but loose hand if it is tender. Be gentle until it gets a bit easier, then give it some welly. This brings blood and qi to the shoulder area and softens the tissues that are stiff and tense. Repeat on the opposite shoulder.

3. Free the neck

Reach your hands up to the base of your skull. Then using mainly your middle finger feel for the depression halfway between your ears and the middle of your spine. Press and gently rub, then move along the base of the skull, rubbing gently in little circles on any areas of tenderness.

4. Get the blood moving

Now with a flat palm on the opposite shoulder/neck join, slap gently from your neck all the way down to your hand and back up again. It should start to feel tingly with blood and energy. Repeat 5 times each side.

5. Soothe the shoulders, pacify the neck

Using the same flat palm, now just slowly and gently smooth down the area that you have just stimulated, starting just below the ear finishing on the back of the palm. Repeat 5 times.

6. Take inventory again

How do you feel? Turn your head to the right and then the left and you may find that your range of motion is increased and the little niggles that you might have felt as you turned have gone.

I was at a wonderful pub in Lincoln called The Dog and Bone listening to an amazing group called “The Lincs Effect” It was one of those really lovely summer evenings with a girlie half pint of cider in my hand and a homely atmosphere that is quite unique to English pubs, I was having a good night out enjoying gorgeous voices in close harmony, bliss.

In the break, I fell into conversation with a lay vicar. When suddenly, I unveiled a real shocker for this man. I told him I was…. AROOOGA ARROOOGA, a complementary therapist. The alarm had sounded and the poor man literally fled through the loo door just a few feet away mumbling something about reiki and waving his arms about. This is a small pub and it took some doing to avoid re-engagement, especially on my part. My lovely partner did humour me with tales of this man’s obvious bowel issues, but I was not amused (okay maybe a bit). Mainly I was quite shocked.

I have never thought myself as being particularly woo-woo and illogical about my profession. I read lots of research in efforts try to find out how things work, what works and why it works. I am particularly attracted to very practical therapies that at least have some chance at answering such questions. Perhaps I am lucky that this is my first experience with such an extreme reaction, but it disturbed me. Why did he react so badly?

And why does complementary therapy have such appallingly bad PR? Really, this is a silly question, of course, complementary therapies encompass a broad spectrum from practical therapies like massage to completely out-there vicar frightening stuff like, apparently, reiki, so many people react badly to the spectrum of the scale that falls outside their understanding or belief in what constitutes acceptable medical/physical treatment.

I actually have quite a lot of sympathy for this poor man. So many people claim the most outrageous things have helped them feel better and this is all lumped in as complementary therapy. Even I, white witch that I am (haha), have been frightened in my time by the complete wackos that are, apparently, my colleagues. It is all a bit unsettling. So the fact that someone who believes in the Big Daddy in the Sky and all that that indicates about your tolerance for the unknown and the unknowable reacts so strongly to the idea is not unusual.

Many people wonder at what point complementary therapies encroach on ideas of religion. But I feel there is no conflict here for those who are willing to look at themselves in a holistic way. We are not separate, body, spirit and mind. We are whole beings.

This situation speaks volumes about the huge division that we have made between what is physical and what is spiritual in our society. And while we all like things to be nice and easy to categorize, life is invariably messier than some belief systems account for. We find it so hard to believe that our spiritual health can directly affect our physical health and vice versa. I love this video on the observer effect in physics, which just underlines what we don’t know about the nature of matter and reality. Just witnessing or being there is affecting the whole situation in ways we cannot fathom.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction is the modern name for meditation practiced and measured for research purposes. There is a growing body of research to show that if you do this for six weeks and it will affect your blood pressure, cortisol levels and anxiety – that is scientific fact. You don’t hear the Buddhists complaining that science is overtaking their religious tradition and proving it may just be a healing modality, now do you?

Taking God out of healing spiritual practices is quite threatening and upsetting to those whose belief system is dependent on this separation. In 1st Corinthians 3:16, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and his spirit lives within you” clearly makes looking after yourself a spiritual practice in Christian terms. But perhaps the way many complementary therapies use vaguely spiritual terms without any reference to God (or whatever your perception of the divine is) makes them seem disrespectful. But where is the disrespect? I honor these human temples on my massage table daily and annoint them with oil….echoes of religion everywhere in my mind. Yet I imitate physiotherapists everywhere in my application of basic massage techniques to muscular adhesions. Is it science or religion?

We all have our own path to wholeness. The integration of the holy trinity of mind, body and spirit is accessed thru many doors. So in pursuing a truly holistic version of health, perhaps the great spectrum of complementary therapies is a gift to humankind from the Big Daddy in the Sky (or Momma). Think on that, you silly vicar.