Use this and the information from my other thai massage video for friends with low back pain. Using the feet to open the hamstrings saves your hands and allows you to apply a broad firm pressure. Always feel comfortable and relaxed while you’re working.
If you’re in Austin, contact me to get a thai massage. You won’t regret it. Invest in yourself and your body.
After our brine our birds are ready to be roasted. The pan contains carrots, potatos and celery. We roast at 425F for 30min then an hour at 325F. I don’t use a meat thermometer anymore, I’ve done this so many times I know the birds are done but feel free to use one if you’re unsure. The birds should be 165F at the thigh.
We have two more videos in this series. Stock and then chicken and sausage jambalaya. I love how the meals flow into one another.
I never realized the master cleanse has such a frenzy of hate mail online. You’ll get every doctor and scientist telling you it’s horrible but there’s this other cleanse you can do with a link to something you purchase. I’ve only ever done a water fast for three days or the master cleanse. For me it’s more about the exploration than a set destination.
I don’t intend to lose any weight and if I decide to eat due to ill feelings I don’t flagellate myself for quitting. It’s about exploring your relationship to food and what it means. How many times in the past few days have I had an off feeling and wanted to go to the fridge? Most of the health issues in the first world are due to excess, not lack. When’s the last time you saw some kids with scurvy? We see obese people every day.
Long term I’m not sure what the benefits would be to doing the master cleanse. That is, I’m not doing it for a month. I’d like to make it the full ten days and I’m doing fine so far. If in doubt, stop. Read all you can, learn and grow. When on the cleanse, listen to your body. I do this with 8 years of yoga behind me. I’m in full health and have no major medical issues.
Take what people say with a grain of salt, particularly those who’re trying to make a dollar off of it. If I get hungry, I drink a little more tea. I stretch, I breathe. I’ve even kept up with work so far.
This video shows a stretch for the hamstrings and piriformis that’s good for low back or hip pain. If your loved one is complaining about low back issues try this one out. It’s extremely simple but very effective for lumbar spine problems. The musculature of the gluteals and piriformis form a tight grip on the sacrum and if it’s pulled out of alignment low back pain is common. I’ll be posting more of these that you can add together as a small routine. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.
Thai massage doesn’t seem extremely common in Austin and I hope to change that. The more the public is aware of what it is and the differences it has from table massage, the better off we’ll all be.
Today has been interesting. I had work then the family needed a grocery store trip. It’s always odd to have not eaten solid food in three days then wander the halls of mass consumption wondering why we need so much food in America. Near the 5th day my memory is that food barely sounded appealing but I suppose that shifts over time.
I feel light, airy. I’m occasionally absent minded but I’m alert and aware of my surroundings and body in new ways. Doing some yoga in the living room I’m limber and my stomach certainly isn’t in the way.
The saline wasn’t a challenge this morning. I’m unsure what the change was but I downed it in two tries. I’m hoping that things will continue as they have. I look forward to delving into my yoga more during the week.
Today has been fine. The worst part is the saline rinse, I’ve never found it easy to drink that much salt water. I plan on making the rinse tonight and leaving it in the fridge to cool over night. I’ll also drink the saline first thing in the morning, you won’t want to go anywhere for awhile.
My senses are sharp. My pupils are slightly dilated and my nervous system feels stimulated. My sense of smell and touch are heightened and I’m in a clear head space. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
I’ve begun the master cleanse today and hope to go the full ten days. This will be double my previous 5 days but I suspect I can make it. I never do a cleanse with the goal of losing weight. My primary goal is to look at my attachments to food and delve inside myself using regular yoga and meditation along the way.
Nothing makes roast chicken better than brining it first. Trust me on this one. This can also be used on other poultry as well as pork and shrimp. Video quality is improving as I learn to work with my video equipment. Thanks Blake.
A client had me work on him for 30 minutes and when we finished he lamented that he hadn’t scheduled a full hour. He said that the work we do makes him feel younger.
I’m always amazed at what I’m doing these days. I can’t really say it’s yoga, can’t really say it’s bodywork and can’t say it’s just education. It’s just where I connect with others and go, I think this will help the most, let’s do this. When a client is willing to take the plunge with me I dare say it’s tantamount to when Peter walked on water with Jesus. Unbelieveable things happen.
That sounds like a tall order but when clients report a 7 on a pain scale out of 10 and walk out telling you they’re at a 1 I start to wonder. When doctors call because their patients went through my yoga therapy class and say that they feel 70% overall improvement in unhealed, ongoing neck conditions what do I do? I allow clients to have their own experience, I help apply what I think will work and most importantly I tell the clients, “It’s You. Has very little to do with me.” I’m just a guide, the journey is yours.
In mentioning youth I told the client that at 34 I feel better than I did at 22 just before my car accident. I’m older, far wiser and honestly more healthy. Age does change things but my yoga practice removes cobwebbs in a way that most seem to consider a nearly mystical conversation with me. Scientifically I honestly don’t know how it does exactly what it does. I just feel better. Pain doesn’t just go away but I work with it. I make my pain scale 4 days go to a 2. Day after day, regular practice and it continues to lower. My posture improves, my breathing is clear and my nervous system is alive. Life sometimes has a sparkle to it.
He’s hoping to do the same and I tell him he can go as far as he wants. The way is yoga. No dogma, no rules. Just honest opinion from someone in the trenches of life. Mentioning how he felt more youthful after our sessions I told him of my grandmother.
Growing up my grandmother was my closest grandparent. She lived with us and I always remember her as crabby. I ran into the kitchen one day as a child and smelling food excitedly asked my grandma what was for dinner. Her face turned into a light scowl and she looked over at me and with a sneer said, “food!” in the same way that an old man tells the neighborhood kids to get off of his lawn. I wondered why grandma was being what I considered mean but I ran off to play.
Grandma was often this way. It wasn’t until I was older that I began to understand. She’d had 3 husbands and divorces, four children and by the time she was old the fallen arches in her feet, a dowagers hump, a slumped upper back and arthritis plagued her. She hurt constantly. It’s a low level ache that crept up on her day after day in the same way the sun and moon rise a set. Before you know it those constant 7 out of 10 days get to you.
When I finished massage school I came home and remember my grandma got her first massage from her grandson at 72 years of age. I loved running my hands over her undernourished skin. She was still solid, skin thick enough to not worry about a tear. I’d press on her upper back and she’d tell me she could feel it in her toes. Small nuances that I couldn’t understand at the time. I just took note and kept working. There were lots of vascular flushes, pushing blood and lymph around and this old woman had some love given to her. Her husbands were long gone. How much quality touch did she receive?
When we finished my grandmothers whole demeanor changed. She was light, bright and full of chatter. She was asking questions about massage, questions about complementary medical practices wondering what else she could do to help herself feel better. I realized at five minutes or so that she was free of pain. Wherever she’d been, the massage lifted her out of the doldrums. Her vision had been changed in the way that an airplane comes through the clouds into the brightness and light of the sun. For a short time, things were clear. Her nervous system wasn’t drowning her in the signals of discomfort and pain. She was happy.
A year or so later grandma passed. I often think of her and am so happy that I had the ability to connect with her in this way. I can think of little as appropriate in the expression of care than helping her as I did. Occasionally and only occasionally I wonder what could have happened if she were around now with what I know. The ideas of grandma doing my lazy yoga in a chair give me slight tears knowing I could have helped her even more. I could have empowered her to know she could change not just by someone else touching her but by harnessing her own healing capacity with yoga.
You’re never too old.
A student in my nursing home class asked me one day, “How far can we go with yoga?” I looked him clearly in the eye and told him that, “You can go as far as you can. Just depends on how much focus, energy and time you put in.” I meant it then and I mean it now.
Your injuries, physical limitations, psychological set, and lifestyle have little to do with whether you’ll succeed. You must only water the seed within yourself that says healing and growth is better than sickness and withering. Come to class here, go slow, breathe and focus. The best breath to start with is the one you’re taking now.
It is your birthright to thrive. To feel younger you must embrace the ebb and flow of life not fight it. Be a cork. Float. I’ll see you soon at Ebb and Flow Yoga studio. We help people feel younger.
We now show hamstring stretches in a chair for both legs simultaneously. Opening your hamstrings will make a large improvement in low back pain and overall posture. Office workers are chronically tight in this area. When people start yoga classes they often comment on how tight their hips and hamstrings are. Take your time. Breathe.
Hamstring tightness is the bane of most office workers. Shortened hamstrings add to low back pain and strain so it’s important to stretch them regularly. These stretches allow you to do this where they often shorten, in an office chair.
This continues the piriformis stretch from the previous video. More nuances working with the femur and hip socket are added for variety. Open hips help allow the low back to relax into a neutral position. Long term this leads to less low back pain. This version adds a neck stretch at the end.
