Blog

You have heard the term “core stability”

As many of you have suffered from or still do suffer from lower back pain, this “core stability” is a way of helping to protect your lower back and prevent on-going lower back pain.

Reflexology - so good for your sole

Reflexology is both an art and science which can complement any health care work, has very few contraindications and many therapeutic benefits

Understanding dehydration and 5 tips to stay hydrated

You know when you have a massage and your therapist offers you a glass of water? They are prolonging the awesome effects of the massage by flushing out the metabolic waste that has been released from the muscle tissues...so you should continue to drink more water post massage.

But how much should we drink on a day to day basis?

Can massage be anti-aging?

If I said to you “Relaxation Massage” what are your first thoughts? I’ve been asking around and most people say...Light and fluffy, a treat or luxury, or a gift for someone else or even some even said pointless! I’d like to change your perception of a relaxation massage if I may!

Let’s start by changing its name to restorative massage because this is actually what it is.

A restorative massage should be seen as part of your wellbeing, an on-going maintenance of:

7 reasons chiropractic care can help adolescent back pain

Our colleague Dr Andrew Billingham of Back in Action Chiropractic shares with us the growing problem of adolescent back pain and what chiropractic care can do about it.

Research shows that our children’s posture is being dramatically compromised by the amount of hours that are spent on digital devices in our changing world.

Adolescent back pain affects more than 50% of school-age patients.

Aromatherapy: a natural approach to period pain relief

Aromatherapy has been around for centuries and has been used for many conditions including period pain and irregular cycles.

Let me use a couple of former clients for as examples.

How massage can help teachers avoid burnout

Teachers are some of our most regular clients and it’s not hard to see why. Inspiring our future generations can be exhausting work ...I know I’m exhausted after a day at home with my 3 year old! I’m always so in awe of the day-care teachers when I pick my son up from day-care. Then of course the teachers of older children from primary, intermediate and college who have a huge task daily in managing larger and larger classroom sizes, variety of behaviours at the same time as being creative and inspiring.

Then there is the marking in the “holidays” and the after school activities and other school events such as fundraising....so they are constantly giving, giving, giving!

New mums...Top tips to cope with back pain

 As a mum I know what it’s like to constantly lift and carry a wriggling sack of potatoes ...your child! The whole process of pregnancy and birth can leave a lot of women with back pain, and then there are the holding patterns we create to breastfeed and carry our children.

Do you get a burny ache between your shoulder blades? Or a sharp grabby pain around the top of the glute muscles? Or a deep ache on one side of your lower back?

 Common issues include sciatica pain, hip and lower back pain and pain between the shoulder blades all caused by the massive shifts in the body and new patterns of movement and constant lifting...not to mention the lack of core stability and time to exercise.

Regular massage can be a huge help in reducing this pain and doing some simple exercises at home can keep you pain-free.

Natural Movement vs Exercise

I’m lucky that I have a job that involves a lot of movement everyday and then at home I do some DIY, the lawns, maintain a huge vege garden etc.

Let me explain:

I recently watched a podcast with Katy Bowman about natural movement as opposed to exercise (natural movement is movement part of everyday activities; exercise is specific time set aside for the purpose of fitness etc), and it got me thinking about how in modern society we are constantly using technology to make day to day things easier to do, ie washing machines, dishwashers, as Katy mentions garage door openers, which means we are doing less day to day ‘natural movement’, then we have to make time to set aside specific exercise time. Now this is awesome for those of us who love to exercise and do sports but not everyone is.

10 holistic tips to relieve your tension headache

Do you often get a throbbing pain behind your eyes, or a tight band gripping the back of your head? This is more than likely the most common type of headache: a tension headache.
Although they are not medically dangerous, chronic tension headaches (longer than 3 months) can have a negative impact on your quality of life and work productivity, missing out on doing the things you love is never cool.

You probably feel like you’ve got your “iHunch” going on too and your neck and shoulders feel tight and sore...too many hours hunched over a laptop or tablet.

So what can you do to get rid of these headaches?

Let’s Talk about the Tummy

Now that I have your attention.....the tummy, abdomen or specifically in this topic the area from the bottom of the front ribs down to the pelvis, has got to be the most neglected part of the body when it comes to massage.

Why you ask?

My thoughts are as follows;

-          Most pain is felt in the back or the hips so that’s where you want treated

-          You may be unaware of the anatomy of this area, the benefits of treatment and how it can help

-          Perhaps some are a little sensitive to having this area worked on, feel a bit vulnerable and self conscious

Anatomy – what’s going on in the front?

10 Training Tips to Avoid Injury

This time of year we start to see a lot more runners in the clinic as everyone is starting their Auckland Marathon and Half Marathon and Queenstown Marathon and Kerikeri Marathon training. Of course we treat many other types of recreational athletes; golf, cycling, yoga, gym, karate, sailing, tennis...the list goes on.

I really love hearing about all the different sports and different challenges they face. Massage is often more than just muscle therapy it often becomes a safe place for people to talk about their challenges and often they work out their own solutions purely due to the fact that they have some quiet time to problem solve; but I digress...

Avoiding injury is one of the primary reasons people come to see us and massage truly is one of the most effective tools for this. 

It's Only Human Nature

We spend a lot of time as massage therapists telling our clients to work on their posture, that the pain and the tension they feel for example in the upper back is a result of tightness at the front, we try to educate you on which muscles are doing what, give you exercises and stretches or refer you to classes such as yoga, pilates, the list goes on.

Did you know that we have myofascial lines running through the whole length of the front of our body, the back, the side, plus many other lines. When one of these myofascial lines tighten up for whatever reason it affects your whole posture, including the lines opposite or adjacent.

What’s Myofascia?

The Mystery of Cramps...and how to deal with them

We have all had them at some point...in the middle of a run or in the middle of the night; cramps! They can be excruciatingly painful and downright annoying, so why do we get them and how do we prevent them?

What is a cramp? Nothing more than a short involuntary contraction of a muscle.

Why do we cramp? This is a little harder to answer as the researchers find it’s virtually impossible to cramp on cue, which makes it difficult to study and why it remains a bit of a mystery. What they do know is the following things are linked cramps;

Are you a clencher?

Recently in the clinic I've been seeing quite a few people with pain in their jaw and many people mention to me that they either clench or grind their teeth at night.

Is this you?

This can contribute to tight and sore neck muscles as well and is often what people book in for a massage for then casually mention the grinding and headaches!

Do you suffer from any of the following?

Understanding Stress & 8 Ways to Ease it

Massage therapists and their clients are familiar with the word "stress" as it relates to the modern lifestyle. But did you know that as a mind-body term, it did not exist until the 1930s? Read about how stress and the use of massage therapy to relieve it have grown together for more than 75 years.

5 Best Anti-inflammatory Recipes

When we have muscular pain we often want to rub it better and for the most part this can work really really well (of course!) but what happens when that pain, stiffness or injury doesn't go away completely?
Well nothing in the body works in isolation so sometimes we have to shift focus and look at what else we are putting into our body...food and drink! 

In our Western diet we are loading up our body's with inflammatory foods which in turn can affect the healing of an injury...literally slowing it down. 

So I've compiled 5 awesome (and tasty) anti-inflammatory recipes that you should be downing anyway but especially if you have un-resolved muscular and joint pain!

Enjoy!

Top 10 tips for a good nights sleep

We see a lot of people in the clinic that  really struggle with getting to sleep or staying asleep or both! Many will have a good snooze on the massage table, which is totally fine but you don’t want to miss out on a nice massage by sleeping through it right?

So here are the top 10 sleep tips (in no particular order) from nutritionist and sleep expert Shawn Stevenson you can check out his book here. 

Many of these tips we’ve been advising for a while but there are a few really interesting ones and even more in his book.

Acupuncture: what you knead to know

Acupuncture is an ancient medicine that was discovered by the Chinese over 3,000 years ago.   They used the science of observation to develop the theory and treatment protocols – if we do this, then this results.   In China it is practised in hospitals alongside western medicine.

Its aim is to have the body in balance and therefore there will be no dis – ease. The theory of Yin and Yang.  By removing all obstructions the qi will flow and good health will be the result. The body is divided into 12 channels and each channel is treated in relation to what the client is presenting with.

The medicine of Acupuncture uses needles, moxibustion, cupping, guasha or tuina to carry out treatments. Each needle is in a sterile pack, is used once then disposed. They are very fine and generally pain free when inserted.  

Acupuncture has proven to be particularly helpful in the following:

Open wide, or can you? A new treatment for jaw clenchers and teeth grinders

Stress, yes there’s that word again, great in small doses but when it manifests in strange behaviour and aches and pains then time to get onto it.

You may be thinking why I mention stress here?

Seems to be that one of the many ways stress manifests itself in your body as we try to cope with it all is through teeth grinding and jaw clenching.

I recently attended a two day workshop on Myofascial Release of the Jaw, Face and Neck where we addressed not only the neck but muscles affecting the jaw, with fantastic results. I was most surprised to see the limited ability to open the mouth wide by some in the class.

Sleep time equals relax time – or does it?

You’ve had a long day, head hits the pillow and now time for your body to completely relax – think again!

Recently I’ve had 4 weeks off work recovering from an injury with a lot of still and quiet time which has given me the space to slow down and pay more attention to my body. I was very surprised to observe (and I know I’m not alone in this) how much tension I was holding in my neck in particular when resting in bed ready to go to sleep. Was this a result of the recent trauma or was I doing this beforehand? (I have a sneaky feeling I may have been). Either way now is the time to remedy it.

Neck pain and what to do about it

Neck pain is very common, did you know that it is only second to the common cold for reasons that people call in sick to work!!

Neck pain can be from

• chronic postural strain
• sleeping on your stomach
• faulty sitting posture  
• excessive desk or computer work
• jerking movement during exercise
• forward head posture
• other illnesses such as meningitis: immediately contact your doctor if you have fever, headache, numbness/tingling, vomiting, nausea, trouble swallowing associated with neck pain.

Neck pain can translate into headaches which can be managed with...

Put your best foot forward

It’s a new year so let’s start off well and put our best feet forward as we head into new adventures. With summer finally here, the days are warming up and it’s time to ditch the shoes and get into our favourite kiwi loving jandals and bare feet. It feels so good to air those poor feet that have been enclosed all winter. Such a simple thing, you probably wouldn’t even think about how this can affect your body, I mean what could possibly be with wrong with this?

Restless Legs Syndrome

By Lisa Buchan, 15 April 2019

If you've never experienced this super annoying phenomena then you are very lucky, so what is it and what can you do about it?

The good thing about following other health practitioners and groups through their websites or facebook pages is you come across some real gems of information. This great article by Mark Sisson sums up Restless Legs very well...

ScarWork

By Lisa Buchan, 5 August 2019

I was very fortunate last September (2018) to be able to attend a four day workshop in Sydney with the incredible Sharon Wheeler who made a rare visit down under to teach a group of us the amazing ScarWork techniques to help restore function to impaired nerves, muscles and organs by breaking down adhesions and restrictions, integrating the rough fibres of scars into the fascial web.

We get to sort a certain age and most of us have a scar or two, whether it be a tiny one you got falling over as a child, burns, c-section, a vehicle accident etc, and if would be fair to say a lot of people don’t have a great relationship with their scars, from actual dislike to complete dismissal, some won’t even touch them...

How's Your Head Space

By Lisa Buchan, 14 October 2019

Last month it was Mental Health Awareness week and a few months ago I attended a first aid course in Mental Health through St John’s, just a coincidence as I had no idea the awareness week was coming up. I thought that since we have to do a first aid course for physical health then it should only be right that I do one for mental health.