New Ways to Press, Squeeze, and Glide
Finding new ways to press, squeeze, and glide can help reduce the repetitive-use injuries common for massage and bodywork practitioners. Consider experimenting with different combinations.
July/August 2022
Technique
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Where Is Curiosity?
Every client, every session, every day is an opportunity for assessing and reassessing, and from that comes mastery, growth, and progress for our clients and the profession.
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Getting a Grip on Letting Go
What happens when muscles become too entangled in their muscle groups? Focusing on the fascia that surrounds and separates muscles can help in a number of ways.
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The Twisting Sacrum: Ilia Rotation Technique
The sacrum twists slightly within the pelvis in walking and trunk rotation.
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Give Your Bodywork a Brain Wave Boost
Using verbal cues while the client is in a relaxed state and open to suggestion can lead clients in pain to favorably reinterpret the nociceptive (danger-signaling) input.
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Positive Friction
Therapeutic friction offers many benefits, such as increasing local circulation, breaking up tissue, and stimulating nerve fibers.
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Kinesiology Taping
Kinesiology tape uses medical-grade adhesive to create a microscopic space between the skin and the tissues underneath it, influencing the movement of fluids in the dermal and superficial fascia layers.
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Understanding Ligament Function and Injury
Ligaments are dense connective tissue structures composed of elastin that provides a degree of pliability and flexibility, and collagen that gives the tissue tensile strength.
Critical Thinking and Essentials
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Long-Term Lyme Disease
Persistent Lyme disease symptoms are common and serious, but the health-care community is deeply divided about how to care for patients with this problem. Here's how massage therapists can help.
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Lats, Not Traps
By strengthening the latissimus dorsi, bodyworkers can improve posture, body strength, and range of motion.
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Evidence Beyond the Echo Chamber
Many controversies among integrative health professions are outdated and a result of poor communication and negative habits. Examining evidence through interprofessional collaboration will benefit practitioners and patients alike.
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The Careless, Unintentional Mistakes
Many times, mistakes on our part, such as sloppy draping, are made due to carelessness, without any conscious intent to do something unprofessional. Clients who don't know us well may not know the difference between carelessness and intention.
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Using a Foam Roller to Relieve Muscle Stiffness
After a full day working with clients, massage therapists can develop their own sore, stiff muscles. Using a foam roller before and after a workday can help alleviate some of those pains.
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Supply Chain Issues
We're all familiar with the shortages of oil, gas, computer chips, lumber, and, most recently, baby formula. But back in April 2020, at the height of COVID-19 uncertainties, massage and bodywork product wholesalers were predicting supply chain woes.
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Healthy Competition
Competition can conjure a sense of uneasiness, but looking at it in a different way can help you come out of the situation with a renewed sense of self and motivation to grow.
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Celebrating Educators at the ABMP School Forum
Massage and bodywork school owners and educators from across the country gathered in Denver at the 2022 ABMP School Forum.
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ABMP Cornerstones
ABMP has launched an extensive instructor 24-course training resource that is free and accessible to all schools and massage educators through April 2023.