All clients receive the benefit of being worked on by a professional who also has a Master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. Guidance for health is available with each massage session. No other massage therapist offers this unique skill set to maximize results and provide opportunity to train the mind as well as the body.
Although massage and bodywork is helpful to relieve pain, this is not the main focus. The main purpose is to promote health and well-being, facilitate lifestyle change and insight, and thus reduce pain and restriction through prevention. Back2Basics massage and bodywork is not for a ‘quick fix’ or to merely ‘pamper’.
All clients are provided individualized guidance, and encouraged to use proper sleeping posture, learn about their unique body mechanics, explore their relation with their body, beliefs about health, aging, injury, or wellness, and develop new awareness essential for health indicators like stamina, adaptability, vigor, joy, compassion, curiosity, creativity!
Bodywork is deeper, longer-lasting, and transformative in nature. This is not a surface-skin/spa type relaxation massage, it is much more! No oils or lotion are used. The body is covered with a cloth, so (soft, loose) clothing can be left on. Slow, precise, firm compressions and stretches cleanse and rejuvenate the body’s tissues.
It is a lomi lomi style bodywork. The pressure is steady and broad, not abrupt or overly intrusive as some bodywork styles can be. Much of the work is accomplished with the therapist’s forearms, so the ‘feel’ is still friendly, solid, not too aggressive, but not timid either! The intent is sincere and deep. Done with any regularity, it can be transformative to the body, mind and spirit. (With all respect to native and traditional lomi practitioners, the style is a unique composite.)
Soothing and therapeutic from its basic corrective and restorative results, it is firm and physical (not a surface spa-type massage), yet loving and respectful of the body. It is about being our best due to health and change, not frivolous “pampering”.
Bodywork will manipulate more of the soft tissue and manipulate tissues deeper and more thoroughly than a typical massage. Ligaments, tendons, fascia, major and minor muscles are all involved to get the body to start working as an integrated unit again, more fluidly, with all body parts cooperating for health and function.
Specialized deep tissue work is available for those who need it. Very few, less than 5% of people require it. The regular massage/bodywork is sufficiently strong for most people, most of the time!
The therapist determines who/when/where warrants such specialized deep work, which may include more aggressive “digging” motions, special posturing during the work or use of foot pressure while lying on a floor mat.
Provided by a massage therapist with a Master’s degree in Counseling, extensive knowledge of rehabilitation, medical, psychological/social aspects of injury, impairment, chronic pain, aging, or disability. |
Licensed over 14 years in Hawaii, experience of working on about 10,000 people of all ages and conditions. (MAT #4034, MAE #2533)