Sports Massage
When you take your body to its limits regularly in your favoured sport, that body needs to be in top shape. The joints need to be mobile, the muscles supple, and you need your range of movement maintained. One key factor is balancing strength and flexibility… all too often the scales tilt towards working on strength, which will keep the muscles in a tightened state, at the expense of flexibility. Sports massage is a fantastic way to assist you to loosen up any muscle tightness, and therefore help you to prevent injuries – it is like a body MOT to make sure you get the best out of your fitness. Injuries can occur from repetitive movements and overworking the muscles, and they usually take quite a long time to heal so prevention is very important.
However, if you have already attained said injury, the massage will also help to shorten the lengthy recovery time and help you regain your full strength and mobility.
But you don’t need to be a sports person to benefit from sports massage: pain and injuries occur from a wide range of other activities. Prolonged sitting in a car or at a computer desk will shorten the hip flexors, repetitive movements can cause tendonitis, and lifting heavy things the wrong way can wreak havoc on your back. Whether it is work related or you pulled a muscle while hacking away ambitiously at the garden over the weekend, you will be amazed at how much relief massage brings.
Sports massage goes deep and targets the problem areas. I’m personally not keen on excruciatingly painful massage sessions, so I like to reach a “good pain” level and no more, as pain can further tighten the muscles or injure an already traumatized area. There are plenty of gentler ways to achieve great results. However, if you subscribe to the “no pain no gain” belief, just let me know and I’m happy to accommodate! 🙂
Price: 30m £30 60m £45 90m £65
Recommended length: 1hr would cover upper body or lower body comfortably; for a wider area 90m would be better suited.
Passive stretching
Stretching is one of those things that we know we need plenty of but we are either not doing it at all, not doing enough of it, or simply not doing it right.
Assisted stretching helps you to stretch deeper than you are able to do alone. In passive stretching you have nothing to do just relax on the couch while I do the stretching for you. It helps relaxing muscles, mobilizing joints, and increasing range of movement.
It is a reasonably gentle workout that you may keenly feel hours later as if you had a proper workout. It is used to improve flexibility both by athletes and people with mobility issues. Usually highly recommended for people with fibromyalgia, MS and many other conditions that affect mobility, it is a wonderful way to increase range of movement and feel lighter and looser (tests have shown that it even lowers blood sugar level)
Price: 30m £30 60m £45
Lymphatic drainage massage
You Lymphatic System is your unsung hero.
It deals with larger particles (bacteria and viruses included) that are too big to re-enter the blood system from the cells, so instead the lymph system steps in to remove it to the lymph nodes so they can be processed and eliminated. And it does that without having a large motor (the heart) to pump it! It uses our movements, tiny muscles and one way valves to shepherd all that loaded lymph to the nearest "checkpoint".
The lymph flows at really a slow rate, so it is a very slow massage to match the rhythm, as and it is a very gentle massage as it does not work with the muscles just the lymph system which is just below the skin.
The system usually works just fine by itself: the lymph fluid moves around doing it's thing. However due to poor diet or insufficient exercise the lymph nodes can become restricted and slow down the filtering process. This leads to a build-up of toxins and that creates a whole lot of issues: pain, swelling, lowering energy levels are the usual signs.
Lymphatic drainage is always included in all my treatments as needed, and all types of massages will speed up lymph movement, so I mainly suggest a full Lymphatic drainage massage for medical conditions that cause swelling, or post surgery (for example cosmetic) where doctors suggest massage to help control swelling.
Price: 30m £30 60m £45
Recommended length: 1hr
Prananadi energy treatment
Prananadi is a Tibetan healing energy method. Prana is energy, we cannot live without it. The nadis are the small energy channels in the body that take up this energy. Prananadi originates from thousands of years ago; it has been used in Tibet and Nepal in monasteries to heal a wide variety of illnesses. The simple method of energy channelling targets most of the body especially the organs and have a profound effect in clearing the blocked energy channels. We naturally take up energy from our environment as it is freely available all around us. However the unclean environment we live in, the unhealthy habits we keep and the mental and emotional traumas we encounter greatly affect our energy system which can becomes blocked and sluggish. Blockage also often means pain developing in that area. The energy channels and blockages that developed can be freed to provide truly incredible results in physical and mental healing.
It is successfully used in halving recovery time after any injury, in relieving pain, revitalising the person. Even broken bones (after they have been set by a professional!) heal at an incredible rate. A few treatments close to each other are first recommended for the proper clearing of the energy channels. Most people drift off during treatment as it is an amazingly calming method.
Price: 60m £45 90m £65
Recommended length: 1hr
**Get the best of both worlds by combining it with massage: receive a relaxing massage until you are all floaty then get filled up on energy while you are at your most relaxed state for the ultimate inner healing journey. Combining these two make for an amazing experience and I promise you that you will sleep like a baby that night.
Price: 60m £45 90m £65 2hrs £85
Recommended length: 90 minutes or 2hrs