Aviva Half Ironman

I recently worked at the Aviva Half Ironman massage tent and it was quite an experience! When John & Su from V-Spring first asked if I could help out because they were short of a therapist, my initial reaction was to say NO.
“Will they be sweaty when they come in?”, “Do they take off their shoes?”, “Is it smelly?” I asked a million questions. This would after all be my virgin sports massage (the impromptu pre-event rubs for the Brother-In-Law, Paul and rubs for friends at parties of course do not count!!!)

I realised very quickly that I was not approaching this in the right spirit. Massage is after all an exercise in giving; to give freely and without judgement. To give your best regardless if your patient is fat, thin, beautiful, ugly, young, old……

In any case, it would be great experience. When else was I going to get to work on 15 bodies in 1 day! So, ego aside, I went down to East Coast and checked-in (late as usual). True enough, the athletes arrived in quite a state; smelly, dirty, and very much in pain! I don’t mean to relish in someone else’s agony, but it was kind of exciting to get a person in extreme pain come in….. It was good fun to work on those cramps!

All in all, I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to participate in this. Not only did I get to try out some of Dr Myk’s special techniques, I had an important revelation at this point. The relationship between the therapist and patient is one of master and servant. OK, that may be pushing the analogy a bit, but a therapist is basically there to provide a service, much like a waitress or a salesgirl.

This was quite a departure from the way I have viewed massage practise so far. As a yoga massage therapist, the act of giving a massage is as precious as receiving one. The practise benefits both parties and the objective is that the energies of both can become one. The massage is a meditative dance between receiver and giver, and when the giver manages to release the blockages in the receiver, this is then mirrored and will also provide healing for the giver…… Well, that is at least how I have been trying to practise, and it is quite incongruent with the Master Servant relationship that is the reality.

So, now I am confused….. haha.

Ironman Massage Seminar with Dr Myk Hungerford

I just attended a most amazing sports massage therapy and osteopathy course with Dr Myk. Hungerford. This 80yr old lady is not known as the Mother of Sports Massage for nothing. She was therapist at the white house and to the US Olympic team......... Talk about experience!!!I was new to most of the techniques and found the idea of "No Pain" a little difficult to get used to. Dr Myk's philosophy is to work the body in a non-invasive manner thereby causing less trauma and stress to the system ("the patient is already in pain.... that is why he has come to see us, so don't inflict more pain!" )
1/ identify area of muscle soreness / tension / pain.
2/ bring the patient to the Point of Comfort (ie : the muscle is relaxed, loosened) then hold for 90seconds so that the brain gets the signal. It is somestimes quite complicated to get the POC (you need to understand how the muscle works, where it origins & inserts, how to adjust the body applying extensions, rotations, compressions, traction etc....), but the POC is the main gist of it! Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff was really quite difficult so I am not doing Dr Myk's work justice with a one-line summary, but the POC was the key take-away for me.
3/ we learnt to do compression work on the muscles to release adrenalin and histamines (mainly for pre-races), applied swedish style effleurage strokes to release tight muscles (great for post-race), thai massage stretching, vibrations, thalamotherapy (for insomnia), chest work to improve the respiratory system, counter-strain to release kinks in the muscle.......... A whole new bag of goody techniques!
Problem I have now is to integrate all this into my Yoga Massage work. I really enjoying giving Yoga Massages (and don't think Sports Massage will give me as much satisfaction), but it is amazing to see how her techniques actually work! Peng had a neck problem and I followed Dr Myk's counter-strain technique (put the neck into POC with extension, side bend, rotation & compression and hold for 90secs), and it worked! But the experience was not "shiok" (That is singlish for feel good......... You know how when you work on an area of tension, it generally hurts, but it is a nice releasing pain that kindda makes you go aaahhh........ well, you miss out on that with counter-strain!
I am off to spend the month in Greece with Arnaud & Itzhak, my yoga massage gurus, next week, so maybe I will come back with more ideas on how to marry all this into one practise!