Tag: stress

Best Sleep Positions

The average human spends around 1/3 of his or her life sleeping. Sleep is the time when our body regenerates, and in the case of your muscles and bones, realign and rest in preparation for the new day.

That’s where things go wrong. Because of habit, environment, or other physical factors, many of us choose sleeping positions that actually contribute to stress and strain on our muscles, particularly in the upper body.

“Eighty percent of the population will have back problems at some point in [their] lives oftentimes caused or aggravated by the way they sleep,” Dr. Hooman Melamed, an orthopedic spine surgeon at the DISC Sports & Spine Center in Los Angeles, Calif.,

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Massage for High Tech Workers

Most of us proud tech workers in Silicon Valley don’t let a day pass without using some gadget to keep up with a fast-paced world. While our hyper-connectedness can be exciting, it also challenges our body and mind to continue operating at a dizzying pace.

Just like most of our technology, our uber-connected body technology runs 24/7 and occassionally needs a reboot.

Like any computer hardware, occasionally our brain, and our muscles, need to be powered down so that they can reset and function optimally.

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Balance and Empathy: A Conversation with Jules

It takes a special person to work with mothers-to-be. It’s about balance and empathy and an informed touch. Expectant mothers are under tremendous stress and their hormones are almost as unbalanced as their changing bodies. For a massage therapist who works with prenatal clients, it’s about listening. It’s about knowing what’s going on anatomically, energetically, and emotionally. It’s about having special knowledge and skills to give some of those who most need it a time where they can completely relax and know that they are in competent hands. Say hello to a wonderfully caring massage therapist – Jules.

Jules does all kinds of bodywork, not just pre-natal. She’s also a doula (birth companion and post-birth supporter). She is very well trained in many types of massage including sports massage, chair massage, Swedish, deep tissue and more. A graduate of National Holistic Institute, Jules continues to attend professional development classes to keep her knowledge up to date.

What do you like most about being a massage therapist?

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Achieving Homeostasis

homeostasisHuman homeostasis is the process that maintains the stability of the human body’s internal environment in response to changes in external conditions. Your body has built-in sensors that constantly monitor body activities and attempt to correct imbalances when they occur. Getting out of balance can lead to serious consequences, including disease and a shorter lifespan. Your lifestyle and attitude has a great deal to do with maintaining balance in your body.

Here’s a short list of some of the main homeostatic processes in humans:

Real Change in Mind and Body

Think about the last time you made a decision about something. It may have been something trivial, like taking a different route during a morning bike ride. It may have been something major, like reaching out to someone with whom you’ve had an argument to patch things up. It may have been health-related, like giving up sugar for a week. Decisions, however trivial, can have a huge impact on your life. And your process for decision-making can dramatically affect the impact of the change created by your decision on your mind and body.

The process of getting your head around the challenges and opportunities presented by life’s choices usually begins with your method for decision-making. Some people run away and avoid the decision, and it usually comes back to haunt them. Others seek advice and counsel from others. Some make decisions quickly, some slowly. Still others find a way to hear and listen to their own inner voice.

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Four Kinds of Stress

stresscracksAhhhh STRESS. Everybody has it, but few know how to deal with it Many different things can cause stress — physical elements (illness and injury), psychological elements (such as fear of falling or snakes) and/or emotional (worry about your family or job). Identifying what may be causing your stress is the first step in learning how to better deal with it.

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The Parenthood Challenge

parenthoodIt’s not as easy as everyone thinks to be SUPERMOM or AWESOMEDAD. You carry all the weight of your family–and that can take it’s toll over time.

Nobody has to tell you that parenthood is both the best job in the world, and the hardest. If you are a parent, you know it’s a roller-coaster ride of priceless moments countered by emotional challenges too intense even for today’s reality shows. But somehow, you do it.

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Teen Stress Is Real

Teens are anxious about a lot of things in their lives and, like adults, they need an outlet for stress. If we don’t suggest some options, they’ll likely experiment for themselves, sometimes with unexpected and undesirable consequences.

How pronounced is stress in teens? A survey by the APA (August 2013) showed more than 64% of the teens surveyed experienced moderate or extreme stress in the last month. About 13% of teens say they experienced extreme stress levels. Compare that to the  21% of adults reporting extreme stress levels and it’s easy to draw the conclusion that teens are following in their parents footsteps on the way toward a future of chronic stress and the chronic illness that often follows.

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Make the Effects of Massage Last Longer

Stress / Relax - Concept SignMassage helps you feel better. It gets the blood flowing faster and soothes sore muscles. While some people may experience mild muscle awareness as the muscle fibers and nerves readjust to the work done, which is completely natural, most people will just experience an incomparable feeling of relaxation and wellbeing. Every fiber of your body is relaxed, your aches and pains subside and your brain knows it.

Here are some tips to help make the effects of massage last longer and prolong these good feelings:

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Combating Dad Stress

Whether you’re a new dad or the seasoned dad of grown children, you now about stress. It’s not the same stress that comes from deadlines at work, staring at unpaid bills, or even forgetting an anniversary. It’s “Dad Stress”. Dad stress comes along with the responsibility of being a parent, and it can be just as difficult to deal with as “Mom Stress”.

In today’s world of working more and relaxing less, there’s never been a more important time to learn to manage your stress. Some men choose to hide their stress, fearing that others will see them as weak. Actually, it’s the opposite. Men who acknowledge and manage their stress are seen as stronger, better partners, and more emotionally balanced.

What is dad stress?

Stress is a physical or emotional reaction to internal or external events. Dads have a lot of opportunities to experience both kinds. They experience external stress when they spend sleepless nights helping take care of the newborn (and their partner). They are stressed when the teen gets the car keys for the first time. They’re stressed when a child gets hurt.

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What Causes Muscle Pain?

Everyone experiences muscle pain at some time in their life. Since virtually every part of your body contains muscles, aches are quite common. Usually, muscle pain goes away in a few days, but sometimes it can last months. The most common causes of muscle pain are overuse, minor injury, tension and stress.

Types of muscle pain

There are two general categories of muscle pain: localized and systemic.

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Dealing With Phone Neck and Text Neck

There are more than 2.19 trillion texts sent each year by US mobile phone users. And massage therapists, chiropractors and medical professional are seeing a drastic uptick in the number of people seeking help for the “pain in the neck” texting, and sandwiching their phone between their neck and shoulder gives them.

More than 60% of Americans admit they might not talk to a medical professional if they were suffering from chronic pain. And according to AOA surveys, neck pain is number three most commonly experienced chronic pain (behind lower back pain and arthritis) with about 25% of experiencing the quintessential “pain in the neck”.

There can be many causes of neck pain, including poor posture while standing or sitting, using a crazy old/improper pillow when you sleep, hyperextended neck muscles due to injury or accident, or heavy lifting. And then there’s the phone.

The issue with phones

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Corporate Massage Works

corporate massageHere in Silicon Valley we work hard– we put in ridiculous hours, manage crazy deadlines, and co-exist in super competitive workplaces. As workloads increase and we reach our bandwidth limits, harmful stress can begin to take its toll. You feel tired all the time. You get cranky. You scream at the dog. You eat 4 donuts in 1 hour. Your spouse/partner/BFF thinks you’ve turned into another (not-so-pleasant) person. There’s only so much of this we can take as mere mortals, but we work ALL the time.  What to do?

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Combating Teenage Acne

Acne outbreaks can be a very difficult and devastating occurrence for any teenager or their parents. Acne is especially impactful for teens, since so much of their self esteem is tied up in their appearance. Teenage acne can have an impact far beyond simple appearance too.

 

Anyone who has seen an acne-affected teen fail to make eye-contact or a newly affected teen begin to do poorly in school, understands the effect acne can have on self-esteem. Adolescents with acne are reported to have higher rates of stress, mental health problems, affective isolation, social impairment, depression and even thoughts of suicide. In cases where the impact on the psychological health of the client is particularly burdensome, effective treatment of acne may result in dramatic improvement in self-esteem, reducing shame and embarrassment, and improving body image and self-confidence.

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Teen Sports and Massage Therapy

Every athlete is on the lookout for an edge that helps them train more effectively, perform better and recover from injuries more quickly.  For teens, whose bodies are still growing, muscles are more vulnerable to physical stressors, and because the muscles are getting longer, sometimes there are naturally occurring “growing pains”.

In any competitive or recreational sport, the risk of injury is high, and the risk of acquiring a long term injury is very real  Teen sports are no exception. School injury prevention programs are typically limited to padding and equipment, and maybe a few stretches.  For an active, growing teen, this really isn’t enough.

Stress is also a significant factor in growing teens, just like it is for adults.  Whether it’s school, the pressure to excel, family issues, or relationships, stress can be a real and harmful emotional drain.

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