We structured our FasciAshi classes to incorporate a Mindfulness practice – so I’d like to challenge you to bring an element of mindfulness and attention to your massage practice this week.
Do you have a “Signature” stroke? That one stroke that, for some reason, you feel that you absolutely MUST find a way to sneak into every single session because you love it so much? I think we all have one. This week’s #AshiatsuChallenge is to help you find WHY you are doing what you are doing.
Barefoot Massage Therapists need a good amount of strength and flexibility in their hips – which is where mobility exercises that help to create a balance between the two concepts come into play. This week, it’s time to work on those hips! Resistance bands are a great way to strengthen muscles without causing too much stress, so grab your band and get started.
Here we are: 2 weeks into the second annual Barefoot Massage Open, a weekly massage challenge for ashiatsu therapists – this Friday we’ll step into WEEK 3! But lets not get ahead of ourselves…. lets focus on the now! Today is Tuesday, which means it’s #2sdayTOESday & also massage day in our #AshiatsuChallenge…
This year, for our SECOND ANNUAL ASHI-CHALLENGE (which coincides with the CrossFit Open) we bring you the BAREFOOT MASSAGE OPEN 2.0: with 2x the content!!!
On Fridays, our New York Instructor Dawn Dotson will be posting mobility/stability exercises and activities for your body…. And on Tuesdays, Jeni will post challenges to do while you massage!!!
Having knee pain? Need some mobility tips?
Here ya go! This week we focused on strengthening & mobilizing the knee ?
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•To start off, grab your lacrosse ball and place it behind the knee. •Grab your shin and PULL. •Point those toes straight up and create as much tension as possible.
Hold for a few seconds and release.
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• Attach a resistance band to a stable object and place behind the knee. • Keep your opposite leg straight.
• Fully extend the knee and use your quads to squeeze the lockout harder.
• Drive your knee out and don’t cave in.
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• With legs out straight, sit as tall as possible and point your toes towards you. • Keeping your quads together, turn them outward and continue tension in the legs.
• Try to lift your legs straight up without losing tension and keeping quads turned out.
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• Find a box or bench and slowly lower yourself keeping tension and control. • Reach your arms out for balance and look straight ahead .
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This year, for our SECOND ANNUAL #ASHICHALLENGE (which coincides with the CrossFit Open) we bring you the BAREFOOT MASSAGE OPEN 2.0: with 2x the content!!!
On Fridays, our New York Instructor Dawn Dotson will be posting mobility/stability exercises and activities for your body…. And on Tuesdays, Jeni Spring will post an #AshiatsuChallenge for you to do while you massage!!!
Do YOU have a great massage music playlist? Please share your link in the comments below! This is always such a frequently asked question with massage therapists, it’s sure to be helpful to another LMT!
This year, for our SECOND ANNUAL ASHI-CHALLENGE (which coincides with the CrossFit Open) we bring you the BAREFOOT MASSAGE OPEN 2.0: with 2x the content!!!
On Fridays, our New York Instructor Dawn Dotson will be posting mobility/stability exercises and activities for your body…. And on Tuesdays, Jeni will post challenges to do while you massage!!!
For those of you who know me – you know that I love the ashiatsu portable bars. I was originally trained in ashiatsu on a very old style of the portables, (that were new at the time) and they feel like home to me. Although I honestly couldn’t afford them back then, I put my first set on a credit card and made sure I got my money’s worth out of them ASAP. Ever since, I’ve used them regularly at local Farmers’ Markets, sporting/yoga events and massage conventions. I’ve taught on portable bars across the country and in Germany. I used ashiatsu portable bars daily for 6 months at one point because I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in that location long enough to justify building permanent bars.
I just spent 3 solid days working on a set of portable bars that I own. Now that *anyone* can go buy a set of portables, I wanted to fill you in on all the things I don’t think anyone will actually tell you about them. HERE WE GO!
At the Center for Barefoot Massage, all of our manuals are designed with space for notes. Note-taking moves you from a passive to an active learner and allows you to better absorb and retain the information you’ll be processing during class.
1. HOW IT WORKS:First off, note-taking requires effort so it feels like something we just don’t want to do, but the very act of taking the notes helps to form new pathways in your brain which increases the likely hood it will be stored in your long-term memory.
Notes taken via words or pictures or even better, both, will be super beneficial for your long term memory of the material as well as giving you something in your own words to look back on after class.
Don’t be tempted to shorthand your notes or get lazy with them. It’s better for your retention if you write as much as possible. Take it all in and write it all down. You never know what little tid-bit will stir your memory when you get back to your office ready to practice.
Note taking is a skill and I know you are pressed for time, so I will leave you with a video to check out, as well as a link to a frequently used system called Cornell Notes . I’ve also added a video that explains a technique called sketchnoting that includes adding images to your notes. Which brings us to our 4th and final tip:
Adding images to your words helps to increase your retention.
See you in class!
Today’s guest post is brought to us by a past instructor on our team.
The FasciAshi Fundamentals class is where we will teach you e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g that you will need to know on how to install ashiatsu bars and straps, and how to build your overhead bar support.
In class, we provide designs and blueprints with detailed suggested material shopping lists that outlines which wood to choose, as well as the specifications of the ~many~ different options for hardware available.
There are some specific measurements and safety guidelines that go along with using the bars that we will discuss together. For liability reasons we will not provide this information before class.
Many massage therapists have had to completely re-build their bars after taking our courses because their original designs were either not conducive to proper body mechanics, or were unsafe. Save yourself time, money and stress… just wait! Your Center for Barefoot Massage Instructor will show you examples, help you with designs, and provide you with blueprints when you meet in class. Even if you are not construction minded, the materials we provide you are perfect to hand over to your landlord, handy-person and build-out team: we’ve streamlined the process so you can easily build your bars in a day!
Read this blog post to know what the wooden portable ashiatsu bars are really like to use. SPOILER ALERT: They are not easy.
- Once you’ve finished your first ashiatsu barefoot massage class with us, our blueprints for portable bar designs are only $150!
The straps are something Jeni Spring came up with and has been using with her ashiatsu sessions since 2003. The Ashiatsu-Strap allows FasciAshi Therapists to work effortlessly on a diagonal angle to engage the lateral fascial line and offer different angles of pressure, still utilizing body weight and gravity to create tension in the strap that gets translated back into your client. It also saves your hands from death gripping the bars. Read more about our support straps here.
Equipment standards are a large part of the safety involved with our technique. Training centers are equipped with Earthlite’s “Spirit” massage tables and “Flex-rest” face cradle platforms, which have a 800 pound working weight capacity and offer the utmost padding for comfort. Strong enough to hold you, your client, and the movement created during the protocol, comfy enough to fall asleep.
The overhead bar apparatus in our training centers are built to commercial grade code, and support well over 1000 pounds in weight – even though we don’t dangle from the bars like monkeys, it’s very nice to know that our rigging is strong and can hold us up if the entire class decides to do a pull up on their bars!
We’ll teach you in class how to build safe and sturdy bars for your own use, and we’ll discuss the many makes and models of massage tables appropriate for using during a session. Discounts on Earthlite products available for our alumni – click here!
The goal of our team is to nurture a team of barefoot massage super star into subject experts, and let them lead the new wave of barefoot massage therapists into the future.
