red cheeks, red hair, hot stones

As a brand new baby in the massage community, my self confidence has been waning a bit. In school, I was in a class of sixteen other folks who were at the same level as me. We were all being bombarded with the same level of information, and learning it in the same order, at the same pace. At work, I'm with therapists who have a wide variety of experience levels, some of whom have been practicing for decades, and when I look back at myself I feel a little ignorant. Since, I'm lucky to even have a job this soon after my training, I know I shouldn't complain...so I'm not. I'm simply expressing that I'm feeling an extra push to continue educating myself, so I've started researching different workshops hoping one of them will restore my confident energy (this, of course, is after I tried some other extreme and unproductive things, like dying my hair bright red and eating a pint of ice cream). There are so many options, that I think I'm just going to pick whichever workshop is being offered first.

In the meantime, I'm supposed to be working on my Hot Stone massage training at work. I've been skeptical to real therapeutic value of hot stone massage, and had thought of it as purely a luxurious, high priced spa treatment. I thought that there wasn't any more, and probably less, therapeutic value to hot stone massage than sitting in a sauna or taking a bath...until I received a hot stone massage. Those rocks can hold a lot of heat, and if they are at a good temperature (but cool enough not to burn your skin, ouch!) they melt stress and tight muscles like butter! No joke. It's like magic. Heat can penetrate pretty deeply into the muscle tissue, and causes almost instant relaxation. I think the specific contact you get with a basalt stone, compared to sitting in a hot bath or sauna makes all the difference. The temperature contrast of the area being worked on, to the rest of your body, sends direct messages to your brain and then to your areas of tension, and they just give up and stop holding on. It's lovely, and the difference in muscle tone is physically palpable afterward.

One super fun fact about Hot Stone massage, is that basalt is a volcanic rock. It came out of a volcano! In terms of energy healing, that probably scores hot stone massage major points. Molten Mother Earth is being used to heal your body with her ancient wisdom and pure intention, grounding your spirit in your physical being.

m a g i c .

I have to admit that learning to massage people while holding hot slippery rocks is not helping to strengthen my confidence at all, but I'm working on it.

Everything is a process.