By Hillary Arrieta Do you have trouble sitting on the floor comfortably or while in meditation for any length of time? Are you looking for a slower, more focused yoga practice? Are you a more athletic yoga practitioner who wants to get through the primary series with ease? These are all good reasons to practice the yin form of yoga. How is Yin Yoga different from other styles of yoga? Yin differs from a flow practice greatly. Most all of the postures that are considered "yin" focus on the health of the spine and the lower body. We use blocks and bolsters to support our bones so that the muscles can feel safe in our intent to completely relax them while putting healthy stress on our joints and connective tissues. We hold the postures for time and bring awareness to the breath. Sometimes these postures can be held for five, even ten minutes... or longer. It is also much different than a restorative class. You will feel a lot of sensation during the class. Holding happy baby for six minutes is no easy task. There are many challenges you may face during your yin practice. Working with the breath and developing body awareness that is required to know when you've gone too far in to a posture are all things that will be developed during the practice. Principals of the practice. Yin has three main principals .
When we find this Goldilocks position, we use the second principal to become still. Next we hold this position for time, and work on our connection to our breath. I'm happy to announce that this month, I began teaching Yin yoga classes in Garland at Shakti Yoga Center on Sunday evenings. Prepare for your busy week by doing some Yin and then resting deeply during my iRest Yoga Nidra class immediately following. Resources: www.yinyoga.com Paul Grilley's article on Yoga Journalwww.yogajournal.com/article/practice-section/yin-yoga-2/ AuthorHi! I’m Hillary Arrieta and I help people improve their lives by offering holistic solutions to ease stress, eliminate pain, and inspire self care practices.
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By Hillary Arrieta, Dallas Texas Massage Therapist.
Have you ever heard of a self-massage technique called Maya abdominal massage? If you have, you may have been like me and dismissed it in the past. It recently popped up again when I was studying about uterine health in one of my herbalism classes. This time, I made a point to learn it and started to use it in my everyday wellness routine. After having this first-hand experience, I can only say that I wished I had started sooner. Like most women, I've had my fair share of womb woes, including painful ovarian cysts that have cause some scary symptoms. Finding this self-care technique empowered me to feel like I could take charge of my well-being in this department. Where does this technique come from initially? Dr. Rosita Arvigo, N.D, developed the Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy. Based on her time studying under the Maya healer, Don Elijio Panti, as well as her education as a naturopathic physician. The Maya believe a woman's center is her uterus. Don Elijio Panti, the great shaman of Belize, is often quoted saying, " If a woman's uterus is out of balance, so is she." The uterus is situated in the lower abdomen and is held in place by muscles, ligaments, and the vaginal wall. Over time, these muscles and ligaments can weaken and cause the uterus to tilt. Rosita explains that by gently repositioning internal organs that have shifted due to this weakness and toning the muscles with these massage techniques, the aim is to improve lymph and blood flow, nerve function, and the body's flow of qi. Women with a tilted uterus can experience issues that range from painful periods to blood flow issues. Here are my teachers' instructions on taking a natural approach to healing your womb with Maya abdominal massage.
Did you give this technique a try? What did you think? Leave a comment. Resources: https://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/ancientmaya.asp Hi! I’m Hillary Arrieta and I help people improve their lives by offering holistic solutions to ease stress, eliminate pain, and inspire self care practices. I own The Heeling Hut in Plano, TX. Where I teach workshops, write, and specialize in unique and effective massage and meditation techniques such as Ashiatsu Barefoot Massage and iRest® Yoga Nidra. At The Heeling Hut you'll find the best massage in the Dallas area for pain and stress management. Texas MT 040051 By Robert Gardner Client care is something that many will overlook but it's one of the largest factors in whether you get long term relief. Anything a massage therapist can do for you you can often do for yourself. It will never replace the luxury of a massage but we've all heard that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Working on yourself is as simple as breathing, stretching and some simple self massage. Here's a video showing how you stretch and open your gluteals and it often helps ease low back pain. If you're having problems with your neck you can work slowly and gently using the video shown here. If you're sitting at work you can do the same basic neck stretch within what feels comfortable to you. Always remember that you go slow you breathe and nothing should feel painful. These are simple easy to use tools that you can expand upon taking a yoga class and by getting regular bodywork. Once you know where the tension is it's far easier to work on.
Human Architecture By Matthew Nolan for P2K Ah, Paris in springtime, and what would a trip to Paris be without visiting the Eiffel Tower? The creation of Gustave Eiffel is the tallest building in Paris at a height of 324 meters (1,063 feet for Americans). Gustave sought a way to build a large structure of iron that would not collapse with the weight of iron required to build it so tall. Few people realize that he turned to the human structure for his answer. He studied bones, primarily the femur (thigh) bone for inspiration and answers. The end of each long bone is made of “spongy bone” or trabecular bone tissue. This particular bone tissue is less dense than the bone making up the shaft of the bone and it has more surface area. One of the amazing factors of the design is the ability to withstand the forces of gravity on the body in motion. The trabeculii help to dissipate the forces so that we don’t break our legs every time we jump or run! This is what Gustave understood and used to design a tower that although is made from iron has “a lower density than a cylinder of air occupying the same dimensions as the tower” Truly amazing and wonderful. Our human body is an architectural wonder from the arches of our feet to the pulley systems of our tendons. Take your form out and say thank you, perhaps by sipping French Roast in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower?
By Hillary Arrieta At the end of 2015, I was busy making a bunch of herbal remedies for the coming cold and flu season. I was determined to use them as preventatives to make sure I didn't get sick. Well, that didn't happen. Despite my efforts, I never implemented my remedies and now I've been fighting off something for the past few days. My homemade elderberry syrup never made it in to my wellness routine, nor did my fire cider or my garlic honey but it was really fun to create these traditional herbal recipes. Some of them were made with my own plants from my garden. We had a very mild winter this year and my rose garden still had quite a few blooms on February 14 when I pruned them down to only about two feet high. I'm really looking forward to seeing the "first blush" of roses this year. i made a rose elixir from some of the rose petals around Christmas time. A rose elixir contains rose petals, raw honey, and grain alcohol. After steeping for about a month, I strained it out and put the liquid in to my mason jar. It's beautiful. Rose is an herbal ally for matters of the heart especially heavy matters of the heart. It's a beautiful concoction to have around during the holidays when grief and lonely feelings come up. It's chilling in my refrigerator as we speak and it's gorgeous. Along with herbal remedies, I received a bunch of massage this Winter. Massage therapy is always something I use as preventative health care but for my birthday, I was also re-introduced to seasonal body treatments for the purpose of a "re-boot". A cleansing, whole body re-boot and It was fantastic. My birthday was spent at an Ayurvedic spa where they offer some very healing treatments. I had a really great lunch too. A classic Ayurvedic cleanse or re-boot always calls for kitchari. I've been re-inspired by seasonal wellness rituals and am in the process of creating a new treatment. I can't wait to be able to offer it on my service menu. It's a secret for now! Gaia Bodywork is growing! I can feel some major shifts happening this year as I map out a new business plan. Exciting and really good changes are coming soon. I have added two combination therapies this year. Check those out on the site! Here are some pictures of the above mentioned herbal remedies I put together this Winter. Questions: How was your Winter? It's almost over! Do you have and wellness tips to share? Leave me a comment on my blog. I love hearing from you.
Guest Blog Post by Matthew Nolan of P2K “Reach out and touch someone”, some of you may be old enough to remember when AT&T used this as their marketing slogan. In these more modern days we have a number of technological advances that allows for us to remain in “contact” with our friends, families and well, just about anyone and everyone! While high tech has made it possible to keep up minute by minute with the world, our need for plain old fashion touch is just as important. In his landmark book, “Touching”, Ashley Montagu calls touch the “mother of the senses” and states that it is the first of our senses to become “functional” during fetal development. He also recounts how in the early 1900’s doctors in medical institutions could not understand how mortality rates for infants admitted was almost 100% for each institution. It wasn’t until Dr. Fritz Talbot was visiting a hospital in Germany that he discovered a “secret”. He witnessed an old woman carrying around a baby on her hip and when he inquired as to who she was, found out that when a baby wasn’t doing well and the medical team did everything they could, they called her in and she would “turn the child around”. Dr Talbot brought back to the US the concept of touching infants; holding them, rocking them, stroking them. Amazingly infant mortality rates dropped from about 35% to just10% in one year! Dr. Tiffany Fields established the Touch Research Institute at the University Of Miami School Of Medicine in 1992. Her goal, to really understand the importance of touch by creating studies that look at the impact of touch throughout a lifespan. Touch is so powerful that she list the benefits on the website (www.miami.edu/touch-research) and includes “enhances attentiveness, alleviates depressive symptoms, reduces pain, reduces stress hormones and improves immune function”. In 1996 a study was completed that looked at the effect of a 15 minute chair massage vs. just relaxing in a chair for 15 minutes. The study compared EEG patterns and math computations. The results showed that while both groups showed signs of relaxation, the massaged group increased their accuracy on math computations as well as the speed of the computations! Additionally, the massaged group scored lower on job stress at the end of the five week study. Even “casual touching” can be important. In a study that has been replicated numerous times in different settings, people rate service higher if there is some form of touch involved. In one such study, cashiers are instructed to place a person’s change directly in their hand and for the next customer just place the change on the counter. Researchers then stop the customer and ask about the service they have received. People receiving the change in their hand rate the service higher than the person who had to pick up their change from the counter. An article published in the New York Times (Feb 23, 2010) outlined even further evidence of the power of touch. In that article they describe a research paper that studied NBA teams and the interactions within teams. The authors of the paper, Mr. Michael Kraus, Ms. Cassy Huang and Dr. Keltner reported that “good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones. The most touch bonded teams were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers.” I dare say that if the better performers are touching more than lesser ones ~ well can I get a high five here?
Human House By Matthew Nolan of P2K Ever looked at a crack in the wall of your house and wonder when did that happen? For some people the fix is quick and easy, patch it and forget about it. A few months go by and lo and behold another crack needs mending. Maybe a few more months later and you wonder when did that door become hard to open? For the average person, the thought that they need to deal with their foundation doesn’t hit until well after every room in the house is impacted by the shifting forces. Left unattended, we have all seen old houses whose walls are gone and roof is so pitched, it would be unsafe to walk under it! Ever have a moment getting out of a chair or up out of bed and wonder, is that a new pain? When did that start? Well your body has a foundation also, the pelvic girdle. It connects with the legs at the hips and also the spine at the SI (sacroiliac) joints. So if the hips have “shift”, it is not unusual for the forces to be off all the way up the spine! Your body has a goal, for your head to remain facing forward and to keep your eyes fairly level. So if one side of the pelvis changes position, there is an alteration in the “foundation” and the rest of the body has to adapt by shifting as well. You may experience this anywhere in the kinetic chain; meaning that you may feel tightness and pain in your shoulders, neck, head or even the jaw. Yes, your “TMJ” issue may be coming from your hips and pelvic girdle. Think about it, your “foundation” shifted and left unattended your “roof” can no longer handle the change in forces. Most of the time these “compensatory” injuries show up on the opposite side of the body. Try a little experiment, stand up and place all of your weight on one leg. Feel how the rest of you has to move to keep the balance? Why would anyone not notice? In the course of a life you have to get things done so you keep going. Most of us wouldn’t recognize this shift as an injury. We begin to consider it “normal”, and don’t seek to correct the foundation problem. So the next time you get headaches a few days in a row or your shoulder “suddenly” doesn’t want to do what you ask ~ have a professional check your hips/pelvis to make sure you don’t need a “foundation repair”. And, oh, by the way, taking a pain killer is like patching the crack, sure you don’t see it anymore but that doesn’t mean you’ve fixed the origin of the problem!
Happy New Year! It's the first post of 2016. I think a self-care reminder is a perfect way to start the New Year! As you know, I'm always advocating self-care rituals and making "me time" a priority. I recently came across this excellent self-care checklist. What an excellent idea. It's easy to get off track and overwhelmed when we get busy. This list is a perfect reminder that sometimes we forget to do those little things that keep us balanced. You can read the original list here and check out the follow-up post as well. I pulled out a few of the suggestions that I love. Next time you feel like life is too crazy, and everything is terrible, or maybe the crazy Dallas weather is bringing you down, take a break and make sure that you are taking care of yourself.
Question: What's on your self-care checklist? Let me know in the comments.
Relief vs. Repair By Matthew Nolan of P2K Most of the people I treat come to me in some sort of distress or pain. Usually the first visit we end up talking about relief versus repair. It is important to discuss this because I think that most people equate the two. The “normal” scenario is: 1. I experience pain. 2. Pain causes me great distress 3. I take a pain killer 4. pain stops. 5. distress stops, problem solved. The main issue for me, as a therapist, is that you may have temporarily turned off the alarm system, but you may not have solved the underlying issue that was causing the alarm in the first place. Seems like a simple thing to understand right? Unfortunately it isn’t that simple for people. In today’s society of instantaneous everything, no pain equals fixed. I find using a smoke detector analogy works. Your smoke detector goes off, you scramble around trying to find the source of smoke but don’t find anything. You wave a plate in front of the alarm until the it stops making that damn noise. Sometime later it goes off again, and you attempt to find the source but don’t so this time you take out the battery. Problem solved? I don’t know about anyone else but I wouldn’t sleep soundly wondering if there were a smoldering fire in the walls or furniture of my house! So why do we accept the same noise (pain) as “normal” in our body? Oh, I’m getting old, I have arthritis, I have an old injury….the list goes on. We are never really encouraged to fully repair and correct our movements. We are told to stand up straight but it is the how we stand up, sit up and walk that make the difference. That is what I want my patients to take away from our time together.
I want to make your 2016 a year of self care so I decided to put this offer together. Many people are scheduling and prepping this week for the new year ahead. This sale will make it so easy for you to enjoy a monthly massage. The discount is a special way to thank you for putting yourself first this year. The Sale A series of twelve 60 min massages- $660 - just $55 each (normally $75 each) A series of twelve 90 Min. massages -$1,020 - just $85 each (normally $110 each) What you need to do now For this to work, You'll need to purchase the package of your choice and then visit my booking system to schedule all 12 (preferably) at once. You'll find buttons to both links at the bottom of this post. When you do this, you can add all your prescheduled sessions to your calendar and then book your other engagements around your massage sessions all year. This prioritizes your commitment to wellness in 2016. If you need to reschedule a massage, no problem! Just send me an email or give me a call. What you need to know This offer expires January 31,2016 You must buy all 12 sessions at once. No extensions on this sale. You must book all massages in advance (preferably at purchase time). Please book online. This offer is good Tuesday-Friday from 10-7 (my normal operating hours). You can only use the duration you buy. For example, you can not break up a 60 min. package in to 90 min. sessions or vice versa. All Massages in the package must be completed by January 31, 2017 Excludes the Shirodhara treatment. 90 min. package excludes Reiki. Bookable services: Barefoot Bar Therapy, Swedish Massage, Hot Stone, Reiki (60 min.). Mix and match. All regular policies apply. Find them listed under the "policy" tab at gaiabodywork.com
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Dallas Massage Blog is a written journal about Massage Therapy, Wellness, and Ashiatsu Barefoot Massage in the Dallas, Texas area. |