Connect Massage and Movement

Maximize healing -- maintain youthfulness

A variety of massage therapy styles help heal injuries, resolve health conditions, integrate primitive reflexes, and promote overall wellness. Combining massage and physical therapy has worked well with MS patients. Thai Yoga Massage combines movement and massage to stretch muscles and boost the immune and circulatory systems, getting the synovial fluids and lymphatic system flowing. Infant massage and movement stimulates neurological develop speeding myelination of the brain/nervous system. Chinese medical body work Tuina Massage, uses pulling and plucking and Feldendrais offers natural effortless movements. Let’s combine massage and movement techniques, creating a powerful means to maximize our living and learning potential.

Get High without Chemicals

Wellness Quest for Your Best! Sing, exercise, laugh and enjoy other natural ways to perk yourself up. Body-brain ‘feel good’ chemicals you create can last longer, without nasty hangovers.

Health Benefits: Natural endorphin chemicals produced in the body and brain can produce feelings of peaceful calm and euphoria, while easing physical pain.

Quote: "Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." Mark Twain

Humor: “Why did you get drunk in the first place?” “I didn’t get drunk in the first place… it was the last place.” Author Unknown

Post Script: Feelings of blissful euphoria can result from soothing massage, brisk aerobic exercise, helping people, meditation and other natural acts.

Quest Link: 20 Natural Ways to Get High: Part 1 by LiveLighter.org

Take Steps: How to Get a Natural High on eHow.com

Video: Emotional Sobriety by Tian Dayton on YouTube.com

Note: The cartoon is taken from Health Care-toons Calendar by Jeff Haebig and cartoonist Ed Fischer.

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Explore Movement through Feldenkrais (video)

Awareness through Movement for

Vitality, Creativity, and Comfort

Are you experiencing tension, anxiety, pain, tiredness, lack of focus, or diminished creativity? Explore your own movements through Feldenkrais, a method that combines anatomy, physiology with physics, mechanics and martial arts to understand and optimize movements for increased vitality and youthfulness.

Watch the video or read Marissa Harshman's article 'Exploring Movement with the Feldenkrais Method'. You will learn how to move more seamlessly and effortlessly. Experience the effect of your body on your brain as movement soothes and refreshes your mindbody.

Richard Goldsand's article makes 'Awareness Though Movement', a key Feldenkrais approach, easy to understand.

Exercise Can Ease Fibromyalgia Pain

Easy does it… well planned movement can reduce pain and build strength

Seems contradictory… but moving sore muscles and aching joints can benefit the body according to Gina Shaw writing for WebMD. Swimming, mild stretching and light aerobics can benefit many people. The National Fibromyalgia Association offers a bountiful resource of articles including this one by Lara Ozenne entitled, Staying Fit with Fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia Fitness Facts

There are natural ways to manage muscular and joint pain

Jeanie Lerche Davis writing for WebMD explains how home remedies and alternative treatments work . Moderate massage, pressure put on pressure points, acupuncture and application of heat and cold on tender spots are mentioned. Links are provided helping people understand and manage Fibromyalgia. I especially enjoy the chronic back pain videos.

Alternate Nostril Breathing (video)

Soothe chronic pain and promote relaxation

Timothy McCall, MD. writes in the Yoga Journal explaining how yoga breathing practices can quickly relax the fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system, shifting energy to the restorative parasympathetic nervous system. Pain can be effectively reduced.

Researchers from Nepal Medical College found that alternate nostril breathing can have a powerful calming effect. Other research is reported on CRPS/RSD A Better Life blog, including interesting ways alternate nostril breathing stimulates the brain hemispheres. A video describing this technique is shown.

Feldenkrais Fitness Comfort

Can a fitness exercise program feel this good?

Sara Reistad-Long writing for ThatsFit.com relates her first experience with Feldenkrais, a series of ‘awareness through movement’ exercise routines developed by Moshe Feldenkrais who studied ways our bodies can function with greater ease and skill.

More articles appear on Feldendrais.com. I have experienced Feldenkrais and need to return to this revitalizing practice.

Drum Therapy

Rhythm for self-expression, healing and heightened well-being

Michael Drake cites research on About.com, showing how drumming can reduce tension, anxiety and stress… control chronic pain…boost the immune system… deepen self-awareness… induce altered mental states of euphoria… team with others… connect with the natural rhythms of life… integrate the body, mind and spirit… and heighten self-expression. What a fun way to get the beat on overall health! For more resources check the Shamanic Drumming website.