Thai Massage takes place fully clothed, without oils on a mat on the floor. This type of bodywork incorporates stretches, yoga postures and deep breath awareness.
You will want to come to your massage with an empty stomach.
Thai Massage works the entire body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet. Belly, face, feet and hands as well as the limbs and torso are all attended to.
Thai Yoga Massage is a meditative practice. Both the giver and receiver engage in a state of relaxed focused awareness. It is best performed without conversation. The need to express may come up and that’s ok, however, the practitioner will not respond overly much.
One of the most difficult things to do during a massage is to let go. To let your therapist move your body, essentially do all the work. This surrender is imperative to Thai massage. It creates neuromuscular confusion, rewiring the brain to establish new neural patterns of movement.
After Your Massage
It is normal to feel a little sore the next day. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Drink lots of warm water/ jasmine tea to help flush toxins and help nourish the tissues of the body.
You may experience improved range of motion and flexibility.
You may experience relief from pain and/or injury recovery.
You may experience some changes in your energy. Generally an overall boost in vitality, however, if you feel very tired please honor that. Your body may be telling you something.
Please tell your therapist of any current or recent conditions you may be nurturing.
“It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses. ”
― Colette
Since losing my Mom, a little more than a year ago, I have been pushing my grief down. Literally, physically, metaphorically. Most of the time I am fine. Most of the time I move through life with an overall sense of optimism. I feel a deep sense of love, purpose and meaning. But then, moments come, and I miss her so hard there’s a lump in my throat and tears always threatening to fall when someone even asks how I am. Sometimes she is so far away that I can’t believe anymore. In anything. That grief, that hardcore loss that shakes you up and rips the rug out form under you… is good to feel. The times it’s risen up and become unbearable, the urge to drive it away and bury it is overwhelming. To become so busy I can’t think of it. In this past year I’ve learned that the moments of greatest clarity come in our moments of stillness. The layers of healing that happen when you are just able to “be” with your pain are transformative.
Right now three of my good friends are grieving…two of my clients are grieving…so many of you are grieving. My heart, empathetic by nature, is feeling this commonly shared experience so deeply. Having my own grief understood and reflected is such a gift.
“In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life” ― Nicholas Sparks
So in these moments I’ve found some things that help. Here they are in no particular order.
Nature
Family
Friends
Art
Music
Yoga
Thai Massage
Long Walks
Long Baths
Dancing
Laughter
Quiet
Meditation
So now I’m letting the grief rise. Experiencing it fully. Letting it overflow however it sees fit. Whether that be tears or song, anger or despair. This allowing is more healing than anything else so far. Two grandmas and a Mom in 3 years. That’s a lot to lose. I’m thankful for my sister and my girls. For my friends who are my sisters and for my teachers. This beautiful feminine energy is still there. Always with me. Supportive and nurturing. Helping me be the same for you. Thank you and I love you.
Lokah Samastah Sukinoh Bhavantu
May All Beings Be Happy and Free
I am now a most enlightened person regarding the needs of a woman’s heart—that throbbing heart which is like a bird flying in the spacious sky of love….It is like a vase replenished with the wine of the ages that has been pressed for the sipping souls….It is like a book in whose pages one reads the chapters of happiness and misery, joy and pain, laughter and sorrow. No one can read this book except the true companion who is the other half of the woman, created for her since the beginning of the world.
Kahlil Gibran
Hard to be soft. Hard to surrender. How to open? How to be vulnerable?
Easier to give love than to receive.
Love hurts sometimes. Somehow there is this wall around my heart because I’ve let the love that hurt contribute to my idea of what’s possible. To be possibly free….
“Our thoughts are our own creation. We make them real by cooperating with them. If we withdraw our support, they will dissolve. Observe the thoughts closely, without labeling them. Then you will see them gradually going away.” -Amma
I want a deeper love. A conscious love where the coming together of two souls uplifts the whole world. Those aspects of us that warrant closer look – done so through the mirror of another’s kind and loving eyes. If we believe we are fundamentally flawed how can we let another accept us. If we don’t love and offer compassion to our Self, how then can we do so for another?
Be present with each moment, love yourself and others, serve in whatever way uplifts and inspires you! What will you do with your one wild and crazy life?
“Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled where we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.” William James
“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver
In memory of Martha A. Sealy,
a woman who lived and loved with her whole heart.
September 7, 1943 – August 20, 2013
On Death
Kahlil Gibran
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
