Look after your health
We all know that it is too easy to take good health for granted. Taking care of our bodies is the foundation to looking lovely. If you feel your best you will be able to look your best.
Relax with a Therapeutic Massage
Professional therapeutic massage is one of the best luxuries that I have ever discovered. A trained masseuse is capable of making my knotted muscles as soft as butter. I always enjoy a sound night’s sleep following a massage, and the benefit often lasts for days.
In researching this article, I found that the National Health Service (NHS) offers massage therapy to some cancer patients, particularly those who are having trouble relaxing or getting to sleep. The NHS message is that massage can help patients cope with pain, muscle stiffness, breathlessness, anxiety and fatigue as well as generally lift one’s mood.
Many other benefits are claimed for therapeutic massage, including:
Reduction in stress and anxiety
Benefit to the immune system by incraseing white-cell count
Lower blood pressure
Redcution to lower back pain and other muscle ache
Decreases depression and promotes a healthy mind
However, there are some medical conditions which will not be improved by therapeutic massage, and which could be exacerbated. If you suffer from one of these conditions, you should seek the advice of your doctor before getting a massage:
Blood vessel disease
Cardiovascular diseases
Skin condition with open sores
If you have a high fever or chill this could be a symptom of a severe illness
Severe osteoporosis
If you are pregnant, seek your doctor’s opinion about therapeutic massage, and should it be advised tell the masseuse prior to having a massage.
Indulge yourself with a massage
Pat writes:
I recently enjoyed a spa stay with Wonderful Husband. Our ‘special offer’ package included a massage. This was his first professional massage, and he was amazed at the reduction in muscle tension and increase in flexibility. He was so impressed with the massage oil that was used that he purchased a bottle to take home. He described this as his ‘first ever beauty purchase’.
 The product that made such an impression is Elemis ‘Musclease’, available online from Lookfantastic.com. I’ve been using it at home and I truly like this product.
Now you might be thinking that a massage sounds great, but surely it costs a lot of money. There are bargains available, as described below by Tricia.
Tricia’s budget massage story:
In the distant past, I had a lovely massage at a college local to me. I decided to repeat the experience, albeit at a different location. I found a training college with a beauty department from an internet search and booked my appointment.
There was a specific parking area for the beauty department, which was helpful. This was a college site over a fairly large area, the signs weren’t brilliant and it took me a few minutes to identify the correct door. Once that major challenge was over, I could relax. I was welcomed at reception by the lecturer supervising who introduced me to my student. The person I was booked with, we will call her Rachel for confidentiality, was in her final term. This meant that she was one of the more experienced students and almost qualified.
Rachel was friendly and quietly assured. She took a medical history, as is usual with a treatment, and then mixed up my aromatherapy oils for the massage. Rachel remembered that I liked lighter fragrances and used these in her mix.
The massage was professional and really relaxing. I had remembered to wear ‘respectable’ undies for it and I could forget that she had had to leave the curtain around the massage couch open a little (obviously a necessary safety precaution for a student). My feet have been quite sore lately from many hours standing on cold hall floors with my work. Rachel was also trained in reflexology and spent some time working on my tootsies for which I was very grateful.
The whole massage was wonderful. It did take longer than a usual massage but I didn’t mind at all as Rachel was taking a great deal of care and we had been warned on booking that treatments would be a little longer than at a commercial salon. I was relaxed for the rest of the day, so much so that it was difficult to teach my Pilates classes that evening but in a lovely ‘I just want to go to sleep’ way.
Having been a Primary School Teacher for many years, I am excellent at ignoring noise around me when required and could switch off to relax. This was a college with students in their teens around. Although everyone made an effort to speak quietly, quite a bit of chat could be heard, including the necessary conversations between student therapists and clients. The area was a large open room with just curtains around the couches. The curtains were rather splattered with oils in places, the blind at my window didn’t pull down and massage couches with breathing holes for laying down on your front were in short supply. An arrangement of towels sufficed. These problems were probably due to college budgets –or lack of. Everything else appeared clean and in working order.
The department was friendly and professional; my student therapist was skilled and could have worked in any salon. The surroundings were not as relaxing as in a salon, but this cannot be expected in a college. Care had been taken to re-create the salon experience as much as possible with a designated reception area, a waiting area and flowers in the ladies. The cost of my aromatherapy massage, which lasted for around ninety minutes, was just £12.00.
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