The Ma roller is the best tool I’ve found for working with tight muscles in your back. These often cause back pain and nothing is as consistent in easing this muscle tension as this simple tool. Follow along with this video and go slow. This is part 1 of a 4 part series of techniques and tips on using the tool.
I get this question more than anything regarding my work. There isn’t really a category for what I do. I’m a yoga teacher, bodyworker and cook but really what I do is take my life’s work and offer it to you. If you have posture problems and back pain I can help you.
Thai massage is far too vast a subject for a single blog post but maybe this will become part one of ninety thousand. Thai massage is in short, the best bodywork I’ve ever received. I’ve devoted my life to practicing it along with yoga to pry apart the secrets of the human body and healing. In that ongoing quest to help myself I’ve become a wonderful person along the way, whatever seed was there originally has sprouted and is producing fruit.
I work on someone with back pain in ways they’re unfamiliar with. I move you around on a mat while clothed on the floor and stretch, press, pull and knead all the tension away. When you walk out of my office you feel taller, less encumbered and closer to how you felt when you were a baby, you could stand but without postural tension and distortion. The physical connects to the spiritual. I use the handle I’ve been given, the body. “The body is my temple and asana are my prayers.”~~BKS Iyengar
People often wonder how I know where to press or what to stretch. I can only communicate my experience over the past ten years. I’ve had more pain and aches than I care to remember but out of that reservoir of experience emerged a healer. I can unwind the patterns because I’ve experience unwinding them in myself. My maps are yoga and Thai massage. I had to travel the path though, otherwise it’s just images on a page.
You can take the journey as well. Thai massage is the best bodywork I’ve received and I’ve scoured the US and various states looking for more. If I find anything better I’ll learn it and start teaching it in addition. For now if you want the best massage in Austin or Round Rock, Texas you come to me. If you’re a massage therapist and want to learn Thai massage you come to me as well. You can settle for less in a bodyworker and healer but with the stress of family and jobs don’t you deserve the best? Isn’t it time you felt less pain and let someone help you feel good regularly? That, my friends, is what Thai massage is as well as yoga. It’s a path to healing.
Get a session before Christmas by calling soon. I don’t have much space available. Business is busy.
Namaste’,
Robert
512 905 2298
I had a conversation with an associate where I was discussing business, marketing and how to draw clients in the 21st century. She has a small niche business she’s trying to grow as I’m working on my own and we were comparing notes. She mentioned that it sounded like I’d escaped the system. I found it odd but thinking on it I realize that it’s living in a city with so much tech industry. People often work for large corporations like Dell, Apple etc. Workers are concerned about downsizing, losing jobs and have high stress levels but I seem relaxed comparatively.
My choice to focus on healing work does not equal all joy with no work or stress. I’ve no insurance and have lived hand to mouth for the entire 10 years I’ve worked as a Thai massage therapist. Many times I’ve wanted to choose another field that would offer security, benefits and the chance at a better life but when I sit to think what I’d do, farmer is the closest to what I would choose. Healing work isn’t a job, it’s a calling. I do it because I’ve no other choice, not in the sense that it’s hopeless but in the sense that I simply have to follow my heart.
Part of my stress is seeing others like tech workers who’ve made choices that they deem necessary but then come to me with large amounts of stress and back pain. For ten years people have told me how much they hurt and ache, how little money they have and the untold amounts of time and energy pressure they’re under to keep performing in whatever roles they’ve chosen. I accept it, just comes with the job but usually I’m telling clients in a small humble way to change your life. Then you’ve no stress or at least less.
A client was late today and I had about 40 minutes of alone time before his Thai massage. I hung out, doing forward bends opening my hamstrings and breathing. A few downward dogs, half moons and headstands down the road then I did half downward dog against a wall. Upon standing I realized I was more calm, more balanced and my nervous system was free. It’s not bad for a break at work. I get to do yoga for a living. It doesn’t yet buy a home but that’s a matter of time. Breaking the mold will help you escape the system.
Think outside of the box, follow your dreams and let no one tell you that it’s impossible. Most who say it cannot be done have simply never tried.
In teaching Thai massage I’ve a daunting task. How does one pass down the traditional bodywork of a people whose country I’ve never visited? I’m a Scots-Irish kid from south Louisiana, I’m from the land of gumbo not coconut curry!
I learned Thai massage from a well trained and thoroughly versed teacher over the course of two years and was a teaching assistant for her classes in three different states. When I called my teacher one day and said, “I want to teach.” She just told me to, “Go! You know it, go teach.” That was enough for me.
In the midst of sharing this work I’m sharing ten years of in depth study of anatomy/physiology and my yoga practice. Everything is being slowly distilled into my students and I give the meaty chunks of the work, little is light or topical. A vein of ten years worth of practice is tapped to help people with posture problems and back pain. If students pay attention and absord what I’m passing along it’s no longer just Thai massage, it’s Thai massage from a western bodyworker and yoga instructor. That’s to say, you’re getting far more than you pay for.
Students can save their hands, work more efficiently and learn things that will help their clients long term. It’s not just a single session, we’re educating them so they can educate their clients. What we’re really teaching isn’t Thai massage, it isn’t western massage, it’s healing. Healing has no copyright and can’t truly be taught. I pass along techniques, you pick them up and with heart centered focus use them until you intuitively grasp the healing that can be done.
Yoga isn’t just learned in India, nor Thai massage in Thailand. Healing is where you find it. If you want to learn Thai massage, take a class with me soon.
Bikram yoga is one of my favorite discussions in the yoga community. Nothing else that I know of is quite as controversial and with as many varied opinions. Those in the yoga community tend to fall into camps. They prefer certain teachers, certain styles and although some are eclectic I find strong opinions in people that are nearly religious in their fervor. Bikram is separate, nearly reviled by those who do not practice it and loved and held in high estreem by those who do. It’s something akin to the disdain people have for the Grateful Dead and their music while Deadheads keep dancing merrily.
I took maybe 6 classes of Bikram before moving to Austin. I was excited upon moving here to live in a city that offered Bikram and signed up immediately and have not looked back. On average I’ve practiced once a week for 6 years. Yogagroove has supplied a steady supportive base for me to continue my practice over this time.
A few months into my jaunt I got together with college friends. All of their families are from India. As we ate curry, yoga came up. The modern situation one finds oneself in amazes me. Three Indian guys and one ScottsIrish from south Louisiana. I not only do yoga, I teach it. They’ve barely done more than a sun salutation.
Bikram came up as that was on my mind at the time. Immediately I was told that Bikram was horrible. The hot room was bad for you and what was worse, Bikram was selling the culture of India. I took all of this information in and respectfully as possible replied to certain concepts. It is true that Bikram’s business practices have received attention. Court battles have been fought and won and no one can teach Bikram yoga unless you train with Bikram. At its core Bikram isn’t selling yoga or Indian culture he’s marketing the sequence that he developed and now sells.
In the same way that a song is copyrighted, so is Bikram yoga, and it gives Bikram sole ownership. Many do not like this, they do feel he’s sold part of Indian culture. When I get these complaints much as I did that day with my friends, I ask them a question, “Have you ever done his yoga?” Usually the reply is what I heard that day, a confused look comes over their face and they say, “No.”
When you’ve practiced his yoga, done what he’s asking and looked at it the way I have you form different opinions. Having old injuries, inflammation and scar tissue the heat in a Bikram studio warms me and makes me pliable. It helps me open into those areas and flush blood to help heal old wounds. My body is stronger, leaner, more healthy and I can eat what I want. It’s not much of a sacrifice for 1.5 hours of my time once a week. It’s the only regular purposeful exercise I get. I’ve learned to hydrate well, drink little alcohol, eat lightly and prepare my body for the rigors of his practice. He in turn has helped me with my aches and makes my life more tolerable. I’m one of the healthiest people I know.
Bikram codified his sequence in the heated room for a particular reason, he’s working with Americans first and foremost. Americans are often overweight, lazy, work in air conditioned office like environments and are not yoga aficionados. Bikram’s yoga can take someone who is out of shape and wake them up. I’m not saying it is for everyone, if it doesn’t suit you go do something else. 105F isn’t for everyone but with patience and practice Bikram’s yoga can transform people, of that I’ve little doubt. I’ve done it for 6 years and I’m still finding new levels of health, alignment and openness. The practice gets less difficult but it’s never easy.
Bikram doesn’t have to tell his students to hydrate, they do so because they must to practice his yoga. Bikram does not have to tell his students to practice on a nearly empty stomach, they learn that they will have trouble practicing if they don’t. Bikram does not have to tell people to lay off of the alcohol, they will simply learn that they will be dehydrated if they do not. Bikram’s yoga can turn out of shape people into healthy liberated beings.
It’s not everything. It’s not all of yoga. It’s Bikram. I honor his work and teachings for the differences it’s made in my health and body as do I other teachers, particularly BKS Iyengar.
The heat helps someone who is tight begin to stretch. The heat means they will not be thinking about their grocery list during asana, they’ll be focusing on not passing out. The cardiovascular workout people receive in that light sauna environment gets their heart pumping. That blood circulating does what circulating blood does but add to it asana and its tourniquet effect and you have a way of cleaning out your body. That blood cut off then released flushes the organs, glands and helps heal injury.
Bikram developed his sequence after destroying his knee in a weight lifting accident to the point that doctors told him he would not walk again. Many I’ve spoken to in the Bikram community have overcome injuries due to his yoga. My clients are often overweight, they are lazy, they suffer from American average. If they have a remotely athletic bone in their body I tell them to do Bikram. The reason is that I know this yoga and what the clients will be doing. If I send them to just any studio what will the teacher be teaching? It will vary from teacher to teacher and class to class as does my teaching. This is one benefit to the practice as someone who would recommend yoga to clients.
I do not expect all to like Bikram or his yoga. I see results from my practice. If people practiced Bikram’s yoga they would not wander into my office with a list of medications for illnesses that only affect people in the 1st world. They would not complain about their upper back and neck because they work on a computer 40 hours a week and get no exercise while eating too much fast food.
It is not the only yoga I practice but I honor what he has done. If I ever meet him I’ll polish his Rolls Royce with my taut white keister.
Thank you mister Choudhury and thank you to my friends and teachers at Yogagroove.
Namaste’
