Jonathan Clark teaches children with developmental and communication disorders. He is also a certified massage therapist with a dream. “There are so many different things that massage helps adults with,” said Clark recently from his office at The Matthew Reardon Advanced Academy in Savannah, Ga. “I know it relaxes me to the point I can focus. I thought maybe it could help a child focus.”
Most of us take water for granted. It’s in our oceans, rivers, lakes and swimming pools. It falls from the sky and flows from our faucets. We swim, bathe, wash and soak in it. When we need it, or want it, we have it. Our supply of water is not the problem today, (more than 70 percent of the Earth is covered by it) the problem is the purity of the water.
All water is not the same. There are differences equating to different healing properties and, as you can imagine, its uses in hydrotherapy vary greatly.
Q. It’s hard to miss the fact my cat loves a good belly rub. It makes me wonder if animals benefit from massage the same as we do?
Q. My therapist told me that massage and bodywork can be helpful for eating disorders. How can this be?
A. The truth is, millions of American men and women suffer from some sort of eating disorder. Bodywork, however, can help lessen the chasm between body and mind that helps “feed” these disorders. According to author Merrill DeVito, who went on her first diet in the fifth grade, the self-loathing that accompanies eating disorders gets trapped in the entire body, but bodywork helps release it.
Q. Is there any way for me to get my massage expenditures reimbursed by insurance?
Q. Being fairly new to massage, I’m always unsure about whether to tip or not? Is there some sort of tipping protocol like in dining, or is tipping my massage therapist like tipping my doctor?
You probably know that problems can occur when you combine different drugs or use certain drugs in conjunction with certain foods. Yet, are you aware that a wide variety of commonly used drugs — including prescription, over-the-counter and herbal products — can affect your response to exercise, potentially increasing your risk of injury? Discover how to stay sage using these tips from Carol Krucoff, coauthor of Healing Moves: How to Cure, Relieve and Prevent Common Ailments with Exercise.
Breathing in aromas rich in antioxidants — the agents in fruits and vegetables, as well as vitamins C and E — may be an option for good health, according to Kwang-Guen Lee, a researcher at the University of California at Davis. Lee distilled and extracted 30 chemicals to produce aromas from 10 plants, including soybeans, kidney beans, eucalyptus leaves and several types of spices, including basil, thyme, rosemary and cinnamon. Lee then tested the extracts for antioxidant levels and found them to be similar to those in vitamin E.
New research verifies what massage therapists have always known: massage eases chronic tension headaches (American Journal of Public Health, October 2002). The small study measured baseline values of 14 non-migraine, tension headache sufferers for four weeks, documenting frequency, duration and intensity of the headaches. Subjects then received two 30-minute massage sessions each week for four weeks, emphasizing the neck and shoulder area. After just one week of therapy, subjects reported significant reductions in headache frequency, which continued throughout the study.
Research into distant healing requires us to have new eyes. Furthermore, it may require a leap into the collective consciousness. And therein lies only one of many challenges facing researchers in their quest. Even the term “distant healing” reflects a response to the obstacles and objections within this field, for what we’re really referring to is spiritual healing, or prayer. The utterance of the words “spiritual” or “prayer” in conjunction with scientifically-based research is enough to raise the hackles of some scientists and doctors.
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