Q: How do you feel about massaging women?
A: Most of my clients are women. I feel that I’m able to give a good, therapeutic, intuitive massage. I’m not judgmental of women’s bodies; I treat all of my clients with the respect they deserve. Q: And how about massaging men? A: In my experience, men who ask for a male therapist usually want deeper tissue massage, which is great for me because that’s what I like to do! Deep tissue focuses on the therapeutic aspect of massage. It’s a major part of what I do. Q: What are your feelings about being a gender minority in the massage world? A: I look at my job from the perspective of a massage therapist, not from that of a man. Unfortunately, massage therapy is still confused with intimacy, which it is not. It’s assessment, it’s treatment of soft tissue injuries. It’s an hour on the table working on your muscles. It’s therapy. Your therapists sex has nothing to do with it. Q: What would you say you focus on during treatments? A: Pain is often what brings clients in. I always address pain first – it’s a symptom that shouldn’t be ignored. Once the pain goes away, I focus on funct
Husband Jamie and I took the kids wilderness camping at Algonquin Park a few weekends ago; it was their first time, and they loved it. When camping, one has a singular purpose: to survive. There’s no luxury to camping in the wilderness, save for a decadent square of dark chocolate at the end of the evening, or a luxuriously dry pair of socks when your body is damp to the bone. We pushed on, canoed until our arms and shoulders ached, carried our canoes and packs on our tired backs, found a place to rest, set up camp and made food to fuel us. We slept when it darkened. Then we woke up and did it again. In between, we swam and laughed, interacted with each other (without the distraction of electronic devices), made up stories, sang songs, and observed the wonder of nature. It was amazing. The rhythm of camping and portaging is simple, satisfying. I felt better about myself camping (dirty, calloused and aching) than usual, and I didn’t touch a phone or look into a mirror in over 72 hours. That’s not an accident. I was able to really feel my body on our trip. I felt the strength in my legs and back as I hefted my 65-pound pack (and added Little One’s pack to it as well, when she tired). I felt my hunger rise up as we finished setting up tents: a natural reminder to eat for fuel rather than out of habit or boredom. And I sank into sleep each night, sardined in w
In April I had the opportunity to speak at a Women’s Business Network breakfast, and I spoke about a topic that I deem extremely important. Read on to find out how to start listening to the language of your body. Your body is great. I’ve said this before in another blog post, and I mean it. Listening to the language your body speaks enables you to give it what it needs. When you respect your body’s needs, you can nourish it in the right ways, and be healthier, more functional, and overall happier with life. Too often we ignore the little signals our bodies give us. Headache? Just pop a pill. Tired? Just one more hour on the computer. Stiff? Ignore the discomfort, it’ll eventually go away, right? Nope. The body has the amazing ability to speak to you louder and louder until you get the message. Eventually, it will make you pay attention, even if it has to shut you down with extreme pain or limitation. When learning to listen, it’s vital that we deem ourselves important enough. If we d
I’m watching Jessica Kanstrup run a bootcamp class. At first glance, the 26 year-old is an intimidating figure, even at 5’4”; she paces slowly back and forth across the studio stage in her black tights and red GoodLife Fitness shirt, stopwatch in hand, brow knitted, watching her crew of ladies sweat it out in their circuit. It’s clear from the stern expression on her face that no one is going to slack off under her watch. Then suddenly, she looks down at the stopwatch, clicks it, and shouts a command: all of her ladies come to a relieved stop and stare at her with expectant expressions. Jess’ face breaks into a huge grin and her hands fly into the air in victory. The rest of her crew does the same; the class is over. They’ve done it! The exhausted and relieved expressions on all of their faces say it all: they are both ecstatic to be done and delighted they came. Jess congratulates each lady in turn as they leave the studio. It’s evident she is someone who loves her job and cares about her clients. “Having a trainer is so important for success,” she says as we sit for the interview, “It’s definitely been important for
I’m on a mission to “create space” in my head. That was part of my homework when I had my nutritional consult with Karen, and I’ve been searching for it ever since. Meditation is the obvious choice for opening the mind, but meditation, it should be said, is like stabbing myself in the eye with a fork is not really my thing. I can’t picture myself sitting cross-legged doing nothing but contemplating for any length of time. Actually, thinking about it now makes me laugh – my three year-old, Molly, would be like, “Cool! Mum’s a jungle gym!” in about five seconds. Plus my mind wanders incessantly, and my inner monologue would no doubt have a field day: Why are you doing this? This is boring. This is stupid. You have an itchy leg. What’s that noise outside? I wonder if that laundry’s done. What is Molly up to? Is she colouring on the wall again… and so on. So no meditation. But space is still the objective. Running helps, but I need something more. A few weeks ago, our family joined a local dojo. Husband Jamie has studied martial arts since
I’m standing naked in front of my full-length mirror. This is my exercise in exiting my comfort zone today, and boy, is it ever working. Having grown up in a rather liberated household, I’ve always been comfortable disrobing in front of others in a change-room, or around family. Disrobing in front of myself for the purpose of affirmation, however, seems terrifying by comparison. During yoga training this weekend, we spoke a lot about our comfort zone, our ego, and the things we tell ourselves. Here’s the gist: If I go about looking at my body from a place of hate, disgust, or shame, I propel those feelings into the future and am guaranteed to live them. I know this. We all know this. But it’s easier said than done to love yourself all the time and look at your body from a place of love, acceptance, and pride. I wrote a blog recently about how everyone’s body is perfect, and I really meant it. I meant it about myself, too. But living that “perfect imperfection” daily is about meaning it when I’d actually rather cut myself down. Hence the nakedness in front of the mirror. I deserve to be happy in my own skin, though, so I try and ch
Mel’s Meandering Massage Mind: Let it go - not the Frozen version Pain - everyone gets it; and no one is left unscathed by its wrath. I’ve been thinking a lot about pain in the last few weeks, so it’s fitting that Jen asked me to write about it and that the theme of this month is Letting Go. In the last little while, I’ve made some changes that have affected my life drastically. Granted, the changes were for the better, but that doesn’t mean that letting go of my safe-holds was any less difficult. When I wake up in the morning, I put on a suit of armour. I think this armour is going to protect me from the pain that I might endure throughout the day, but in fact, I am actually putting on a suit of armour that is made of pain. Every time something hurts me, the armour builds thicker and thicker around my heart. The thing about adding thickness to this armour is that the extra material has to come from somewhere; so I take pieces out of other places to make that one spot stronger. In the end, my armour is heavy and lopsided in one area, but I’m completely vulnerable on another. At some point, I am going to grow too weak, fall, and break down when this weakness is exposed. That breaking point came not too long ago on a massage table. I broke down. The massage was not at all painful, but it left me a shattered broken shell of a woman. I di
Last night, I laced up my new sneakers and went for my first run of the season. Here’s a snippet of my inner monologue: Oh wow. Amazing. These shoes feel so comfy; I can’t wait to tackle this run! Ugh. Definitely not moving as well as I did the last time I ran. It’s ok. Keep on trucking. It’ll improve. Ok I have a cramp. It’s probably time to take a br- what? It’s only been 3 minutes? Gah… The cramp is gone but I can feel my belly shaking. This is both motivating and extremely depressing. Go away, flab! Go away! I’ll bet my butt is jiggling too… Oh I love running. It’s been 12 minutes and I’m starting to settle in. I’m getting that good running feeling! I can still feel that cramp. Shut up, head, enjoy this. Oh I love running! …and on it went for 30 minutes until I was a sweaty, happy, smiling mess. Although it may not seem like it from my inner monologue, running has been my mental health savior these past few years. I’ve had anxiety for as long as I can remember, and when I discovered running, I opened the door to a remedy that could never be found in a pill bottle. As a kid and teenager I was a total running failure. I would be the one walking around the track as the others sprinted effortlessly. I would hide behind the portables on track and field day. I avoided team sports and gym. I
I’m healing this week, from a bit of a wounded pride. I have tried and failed to do at least 4 fitness shows. I did succeeded once, but in hindsight, I feel like I might have only succeeded at the hands of Trainer Jamie, who basically pulled me along and made decisions for me. This time, with only me at the helm, I failed. Or did I? At the beginning of this fitness journey, I told the world my plans to keep me accountable and on an even keel. And it worked, to some extent: It helped to know there were people cheering me on. But in the end, my decision to stop all of this made me feel both empowered and lost. Was it the right thing to do? Right or wrong, this humble-pie eating experience has taught me a few things: Failing is really, really, normal. Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10, 000 ways that won’t work.” My track record is one win for five “losses”, so I suppose I’m doing alright. The wins in life are remarkable; failure is easy to come by. If we just press on knowing that failure is inevitable, I feel like success might come faster.
Mel’s Meandering Massage Mind: Are you a….Desk Potato??
Often, we go from sitting at work all day to sitting on a couch all evening. Desk potato to couch potato. I haven’t worked in an office setting in a long time, but I can remember the endless hours at my desk, followed by the long seated car ride home, followed by the ‘down time’ in front of the computer or TV at night. I was sore and tired A LOT. Sound familiar?
I say we take the opportunity to start fresh this month. Take those resolutions that you have forgotten about from January and restart them now. For those of you still going strong on your resolutions; re-evaluate them, see where you have come from and where you want to go, then adjust accordingly. Do something! Change something!
Don’t let yourself be a Desk Potato anymore. Maybe you can’t change jobs, but you can make the best of your situation. Your lunch hour is the perfect time to step outside and go for a quick jaunt around the block, have a dance party in your office (maybe close the door for this one), or you can put up a sign to see if anyone wants to have weekly lunch hour yoga sessions.
Spring begins tomorrow. It’s a great time to kick potatoey habits to