massage – Trinity Health & Living

The art of breathing – properly

Ahhhh breathing… it’s something that is so subtle to our systems and yet is one of the most important aspects of our physical being that we completely take for granted. Take a moment now to notice your breath – are you breathing from your chest or above, or are you breathing from your belly? Most of us breathe from the chest and up. Unfortunately, that’s not how we are designed to breathe. The diaphragm The main muscle of respiration in the body is actually your diaphragm (as a side note, isn’t it funny that the diaphragm’s shape is very similar to the shape of the lungs). So, during inhalation, the diaphragm contracts (i.e flattens out) and pushes down on the abdomen, and during exhalation, it relaxes and the pressure is taken off the abdomen. This means that it’s your belly that should be the main mover during breathing as opposed…

Fascial unwinding – what it is and why it’s great for you

In my massage therapy sessions with clients who are exhibiting neck stiffness or pain, I tend to employ a gentle technique known as fascial unwinding. From experience, fascial unwinding isn’t a technique that most massage therapists use, however I find it to be one of the best tools to loosen up the tension in the body. Fascia – what is it? Fascia is connective tissue that unifies your entire living system. It’s not just the fibrous tissue that surround our muscles (think of the sinewy stuff that we see on steaks) – it’s also in your organs, cells, tissues and the various systems of the body. Given this, it helps to define the structure (construction and shape) of your body. It is also critical to maintaining the tension of various forces within the body, so if one part stretches than it will ensure that its matrix changes elsewhere to compensate…

Welcome to 2018 – A great time to make a change

Goodbye to 2017 and welcome to the beginning of 2018! Whilst I’m not the biggest believer in new year’s resolutions (i.e. I believe that we can consciously choose to make a change at any point in time and not necessarily just at the beginning of the year), the start of the year is a good focus point for sitting back and thinking “what could I do to make my life better?”. A good way to start this process is to do a personal stocktake – not just of our physical things, but also of our own patterns, beliefs and thought forms. So how do we do this? Physical de-cluttering De-cluttering is a great process to go through to get rid of the old and make way for the new. From a physical perspective, it’s pretty easy. Go through your wardrobe, cupboards, pantry, etc and ask yourself whether you really need…

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Why the butt is linked to lower back pain

We all take for granted what we have been given, and this is especially true when it comes to our lower back. In clinic, we treat many people who come in with lower back pain. In some instances the pain is so great that it makes it incredibly difficult for our clients to walk let alone do anything else! From a musculoskeletal perspective, what we’ve found is that the most common cause of lower back pain is the inability for our glute muscles (e.g. our butt muscles) to activate properly and a weak core. The butt Our butt (i.e. our glutes) are the biggest muscle in our body so they actually are designed to bear a lot of the load of the body. They are crucial to ensuring the stability of the pelvis and movement of the hip joint. Weak glutes means that your lower back muscles, hip flexors and…