During Your Massage

• Communicate any discomfort or concern. Say if the pressure of the massage is anything other than just right for you.
• Know that it is alright to talk if you’d like, but that silence is acceptable as well. In fact, silence may deepen your massage experience, allowing you to focus on what is happening in your body, mind, emotion and spirit as you are being massaged.
• As you settle on the massage table, imagine your body being very heavy and melting into the massage table.
• Breathe deeply into every cell of your being throughout your massage. As you breathe in, imagine your being filling with light, energy, and wellness. As you breathe out, imagine releasing any stress, tension, pain, or worry you might be carrying. Focus on this especially when you feel any area being worked on that feels tight or tense.
• Open yourself to fully receiving. Your massage session is time just for you to let go and receive.
• Allow emotions to surface and be expressed.
• Enjoy!

Post-Massage Tips

• Drink water to flush and replenish your system. Massage helps the muscles release lactic acid and other waste products that build up in chronically held tissue. Drinking water helps to cleanse these materials from the body.
• Have an epsom salt bath. Like drinking water, epsom salt baths help clear the body following a massage. Begin with adding 1/4 cup of epsom salts to your bath water. Gradually increase the amount with each bath until you are using 4 cups. Drink water during and/or after your bath. (Epsom salts are available at your local drugstore).
• Take time for yourself following the massage by doing something you enjoy. This will help you prolong the effects of the massage and let the massage settle into your body. Some suggestions: go for a walk in the woods or by the ocean, sit back and enjoy your garden, recharge with a short nap...
• If possible, avoid getting busy right away. Try not to go right back to work, out to a mall, or doing anything that leads to stress. Allow yourself an extended break from stress.

Between Massage Tips

• Stretching helps maintain the ease gained through your massage. Even just a minute or two here and there throughout the day can make a great difference in how your body responds and feels.
• Contrast Baths are a wonderful way to decrease pain and facilitate recovery of sore, aching limbs. If you are experiencing discomfort in your foot, ankle, knee, leg, hip, hand, wrist, elbow, arm or shoulder, contrast baths act quickly as a restorative.
  
  Contrast Bath Technique:
  This may seem like too much at first glance, but can it be done in 10 minutes and the benefits make the procedure invaluable.
  
  • Use either a double sink, or two good sized buckets.
  • Fill one sink/bucket with water as hot as you can comfortably tolerate. You may opt to add a cup of sea salt or Epsom salt for additional benefit.
  • Fill the other sink/bucket with cold water chilled with 2-4 trays of ice cubes.
  • If your pain is in your hand, wrist, elbow, arm or shoulder, immerse as much of your hand, forearm and elbow as possible in the hot water for 1 minute.
  • If your pain is in your foot, ankle, knee, leg, or hip, immerse as much of your foot and leg in the hot water for 1 minute.
    * note that this treatment will affect your upper arm/leg and shoulder/hip despite the immersion being limited.
  • Immediately transfer over immerse in the cold water for 1 minute.
    * if 1 minute is too intense, make it 30 seconds in the cold water.
  • Repeat the hot/cold transfers until you’ve done it 3 or 4 times.
  • Always finish with the cold water bath!