Hey friend!  

Let’s face it, you knew this was coming; a blog post about essential oils and aromatherapy.  After all, are there any wellness-related blogs in the blogosphere that don’t cover it at some point?  Doubtful! I will NOT, however, try to sell you essential oils! Multi-level marketing companies are not my thing, so you can sit back, relax and read along knowing there will be no pitch to buy/sell more essential oils – promise!  Now that we got that out of the way, let’s dive in, shall we?

What is aromatherapy?

Aromatherapy is the use of essential oils to improve a person’s physical, emotional or spiritual health. Essential oils are the oils extracted from massive quantities of plant material (leaves, stems, flowers, rindes etc) through a variety of different, complex distillation processes that I have neither the ambition nor time to explain today.  (If you like to geek out on this stuff, here’s a great post by someone more patient than me).   These days it seems like every other Pinterest board or Facebook post is touting the benefits of certain oils or combinations thereof, but don’t be fooled!  Aromatherapy is an ancient and effective practice that’s been around for over 5000 years. Those oils they used to embalm and mummify the Pharaohs? You guessed it, essential oils.

Why aromatherapy?

If you are interested in natural remedies but don’t know where to start, aromatherapy and essential oils are a great way to make a shift in your health, wellness and cleaning regimens.  You can diffuse the oils into the air using an inexpensive ionic diffuser. This works double-time to scent the air (eliminating those chemical-laden room sprays or artificially-scented candles) and impart the therapeutic effects of the oils onto the people in your space.  Since there are dozens of oils that have antimicrobial properties, you can make your own simple cleaning products using essential oils instead of spraying sketchy, artificially-scented, petroleum-derived conventional cleaning products. For more advanced users, essential oils can be applied topically to enhance their health benefits, although you should certainly do plenty of research regarding the safety and contraindications of any essential oils you plan to put on your skin.  

Speaking of Skin

Aromatherapy massage is one way you can receive the benefits of both practices, and it just so happens that I know a thing or two about this!  I studied aromatherapy in massage school and I’ve been using essential oils in my massage practice since I opened almost two years ago. I find that my clients enjoy having a few options of lovely-smelling massage oils to choose from, and it’s a great way for me to increase the healing potential of the hands-on work I’m doing.  Here’s a quick list of some of the essential oils I’ve worked and had success with (hyperlinks redirect to an informational site where you can learn about the properties of each oil):

Lavender – Lemon – Neroli – Black Pepper – Petitgrain – Rose – Lemon Balm – Clary Sage – Ginger – Lemongrass – Ylang ylang – Clove – Cinnamon – Rosemary – Peppermint – Frankincense – Rose Geranium – Vetiver

Some of the above are especially great for reducing pain and inflammation when used topically, but most are actually said to improve emotional well-being and/or mental health.  In my opinion, creating a positive sensory experience for my clients is pretty much what it’s all about. I’m not just providing therapeutic touch or addressing structural problems in the muscles, ligaments and fascia, I’m also creating an atmosphere that looks, sounds and smells lovely to help people get into the parasympathetic mode of healing.  When our minds are less stressed, our bodies can repair – it’s that simple.

Where do I get my oils?

I thought you’d never ask!  There are lots of options for sourcing essential oils including chain supermarkets, health food stores, online retailers and a couple very successful network marketing companies.  Where you buy your oils doesn’t matter as much as how they are made. Because tons and tons of plant material are used to distill the oils, there’s an immense opportunity for pesticides, herbicides and other gunk to be concentrated in the final product.  Harsh solvents used in the extraction process can also be found in inferior essential oil products. Because the skin is the largest organ in our bodies it’s kind of important to be careful with what you put on your skin. For this reason I only use organic essential oils diluted in fractionated coconut oil in my massage practice.  There’s no way in H.E-Double-hockey-sticks that I’m going to rub concentrated toxic chemicals all over people all day. Not good for them. Not good for me.

I buy my oils from a wonderful Vermont-grown company called Lunaroma.  They’re located in Burlington, but have a fantastic website featuring their entire (vast) product line.  The reasons I work with Lunaroma are:

1. It’s a woman-run company with a strong commitment to helping other female entrepreneurs.  I dig this.
2. They have great sourcing transparency.
3. Knowledgeable and trained aromatherapists create their formulas  . . . and if you go there, you can actually speak to them!
4. There is an amazing brick and mortar store, in VT, that employs actual people with real faces.  I like faces . . . and brick and mortar stores!

Most of the time I purchase single essentials oils from Lunaroma and blend them myself into seasonally-inspired or condition-specific massage oils.  Once in awhile I purchase tried and true essential oil blends (my personal favorites are Protection, Allure and Sunburst) and make my massage oils using those.  Recently, however, I went a little wild and got a few pre-made massage oils . . .  now I need to get rid of them!

Don’t stop reading!  You’re almost there!

From now until the end of May book a massage of any duration and click the “Add-on” for “Aromatherapy Special”.  When you come to your appointment you can choose between Ginger Snap, Northern Comfort, Fresh and Insight massage oils*, and after your massage, the remainder of the bottle is yours to keep!   I only have about 16 bottles, so book soon!

Happy Mother’s Day, y’all! Don’t think I forgot what’s coming up next weekend!!!  For this Mother’s Day, skip the outdoor accessories or corny jewelry and get her something that will improve her wellbeing – a gift certificate for a 60 or 90 minute massage!  Use coupon code MAMA at checkout and get 10% off. And give her a big hug, because moms are the best! Moms, don’t be ashamed to share this little blog with your kids – they’ll get the hint!

* supplies are limited so depending upon when your appointment is, not all options may be available.

Happy Monday, friends!  

Quick post here, to talk about another little thing we can do to help improve our health; Golden Milk.  Read through for a FREE offer at the end!

Per usual, this post is inspired by what I’m observing in my massage therapy practice as well as in my own personal experience.  In the past few weeks it seems like everyone is presenting with general achiness and/or a re-appearance of old pain patterns that had more or less gone dormant over the summer.  I don’t have a medical explanation for this, but my personal theory is that the adjustment to cold and dark, and less outside/exercise time is a little stressful, and when we’re stressed, we become more inflamed.  Even if it’s not the mental stress that causes us to “freak out”, there’s a subtle adjustment that our bodies are making to restore equilibrium. And it doesn’t feel good.

For my part, although my diet has remained relatively consistent, the joint pain I sometimes experience (and can typically manage through diet and lifestyle) has flared.  In addition to feeling a little more tired and chilly, my body aches. This resurgence of symptoms had me reaching to the back of my fridge for the jar of turmeric paste I thought was there (it was not, but I found some yummy little pickles so, SCORE).  I went a whipped up a new batch and have been consuming Golden Milk daily, with positive results. BUT . . . I made way too much. . . hence the FREE offer (if you’re still reading this, you’re my favorite).

If you haven’t heard about Golden Milk yet, here’s the quick and dirty:  Golden Milk is an ancient Ayurvedic (that’s the thousands-year-old healing tradition of much of present-day India.) tonic meant to nourish the body and soothe the soul.  It’s made from turmeric paste and milk (please note, “milk” can be whatever kind works with your diet – doesn’t have to be dairy), served warm and consumed as one might a cup of decaf tea or hot cocoa.  The health benefits of Golden Milk are almost innumerable, and they are almost entirely due to the turmeric.

What’s the deal with Turmeric?

Turmeric has many positive benefits: it supports detoxification for the liver; promotes a healthy response to allergens and a healthy immune response; assists digestion; helps purify the blood; and promotes health of the lungs, circulation and nervous system. Turmeric contains curcumin, a flavonoid which supports a healthy inflammatory response, thereby promoting general well-being.  This anti-inflammatory business is what I think is most beneficial right now, but honestly, it’s warm and delicious, so what do we have to lose?!

So, about that “free” offer . . .

If you schedule a massage between now and January 31st, and bring a mug, I’m going to bring some nice, warm golden milk for you to try, for FREE.  Just use the code GOLDEN when you book, so I know you’re into it. Of course, you don’t have to try it if you hate being warm or feeling good (weirdo).  Because I don’t keep dairy on hand, I’ll be making your golden milk with organic coconut milk (which, unlike dairy, is also anti-inflammatory).

Click here to schedule.

In the meantime, just take good care of yourself.  We’re heading to the season of stress and excess, but try to maintain a little bit of self care, whatever that looks like for you.

Love,

A

P.S. Shameless self-promotion ahead: massage gift certificates and packages make lovely little gifts (more care is better than more stuff, in my humble opinion).  Head over here to check out your options! The packages can be split and shared, so if you buy one, I can make you separate certificates for each recipient!

It’s back to school day here at my house, which went relatively smooth.  Not that I’m surprised. My kids seem to like school. You see, their primary caregivers all summer were their grandmas, a handful of camp counselors and yours truly (in between clients).  I make them do things like chores and outside play and reading, and they get very minimal screen time. So, school seems like a pretty fun change of pace; they get to see friends, there’s a predictable schedule of snacks and screens are incorporated in their learning time (don’t get me started).  So, it’s a win-win all around! Now that we have a routine again, I can extend my business hours to include more client sessions AND more admin time (yay, bookkeeping and blogging). But I don’t want to give the impression that learning wasn’t still happening during summer vacation because, I for one, learned a LOT.  

I’ve decided that my next few blog posts will be about things I learned over the summer.  They will be delivered in the order in which I remember them, not in which I learned them (sorry chronology nerds, my brain doesn’t work that way).  They will span the categories of massage techniques, business development, trivia, personal growth and of course, healthy lifestyle stuff, cause that’s kinda my jam.

What I learned this summer; The Dual – Rhomboids vs. Pecs

When the upper back hurts between the shoulder blades, I used to think the rhomboids (muscles that connect the shoulder blades to the spine- see illustration below) needed to be worked (kneaded, stripped, frictioned, whatever).  And indeed, doing this felt “good” to most of my clients who complained of upper back pain of this sort. However, no matter how often I saw them and did this work, they would always present with the same complaint when I saw them the following week/month.  So what the heck, right!?

Rhomboids in red – red cause they’re ANGRY!

Enter the concept of antagonist muscles.  Most (maybe just many, I don’t know, I’m not a physiologist) major movement muscles have an antagonist – a muscle that does the opposite movement.  The most familiar example of this is the quadriceps/hamstrings relationship. When you straighten your knee, your quadriceps engage (hammies relax), when you bend your knee, your hamstrings engage and your quads relax.  They can both engage at the same time (if you hang out like that you will look awkward, but I’m not judging) and they can both relax at the same time (which is how I prefer to spend my time at the lake). When it comes to rhomboids, their job is to retract (pull together) the scapulae (shoulder blades).  But I noticed on lots of my clients with upper back pain, their scapulae were spread pretty far apart while resting, in other words, stretched.  And you know what happens when you stretch a muscle for a long time?  

Back to the quads for a moment: Imagine pulling your heel up to your butt all day, every day . . . how would your quad feel?  It’d freaking BURN like a whole milk half caf latte with extra foam and a shot of CBD oil on a bumpy commute to work (shoutout to my barista friends and fam!).  So what the heck was pulling at all these rhomboids to the point that they were stretching and making my clients hate their backs? I needed to figure out what muscle pulls the shoulder blades apart . . . enter; Pectoralis Major.

Me: “Oh hey, pectoralis major, why you tuggin’ on the rhomboids?”

Pecs:  “Well, my people work at computers a lot, then they get on their phones and stoop over them with their shoulders rolled forward, then they get in their cars and drive forever with their seats away from the steering wheel, and sometimes they cut hair, or massage, or fix sutff, craft or tinker, and do a bunch of housework/cooking . . . they’re always using me to get their arms in front of them, and then I get short and instead of going back to neutral, I just kind of stay that way.”

Me:  “Yikes!  Well, here’s a bunch of massage techniques and stretching.  Go back how you’re supposed to because you’re a causin’ problems!” 

You see, when we allow our shoulders to roll forward (which we kinda have to in order to use our hands/arms out in front of us) we engage our pecs and stretch our rhomboids.  Our pecs get shorter, our rhomboids get longer. Over time this postural change makes a for noisey upper back.

She looks happy and she’s got pizza, but don’t be fooled. All that time at her computer and her shoulders have rolled forward. Bet her pecs are short too!

Luckily, by releasing the pec major through trigger point therapy, mayofascial techniques and gentle stretching, my clients and I have been able to greatly reduce, if not eliminate, upper back pain.  It doesn’t usually take many sessions to start feeling a lot of relief, and for my clients who do their at-home stretches, their rhomboids and pecs are getting along very nicely these days.

If you are modest about your chest and wondering how I work into the pecs while maintaining privacy, here’s a great video demonstrating some of the draping and massage techniques that I use.  Note: the video is not exclusively addressing the upper back pain that I have discussed here, but some of that is covered.  I absolutely LOVE Rebel Massage!

Want to learn more about this kind of stuff or book a session to address your upper back pain?  Maybe you want to see if I can figure out what’s going on with your noisy areas? Give me a call, shoot me an email, fill out the contact form, or heck, just book a session and treat yo’self because massage feels so.dang.good!

Also, if you have specific questions you would like me to look into or answer on my blog, please let me know!  I’m always eager for inspiration!  Also, please share my blog and my contact information so that I can keep building up this little dream of mine!