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Tag: tuesday toesday

Using a small pillow for bolstering the stomach

Have you ever had a client who has back pain while lying on their stomach to receive barefoot massage or even hand-on deep tissue massage?

This is often caused by hyperlordosis. An excessive curve in the lumbar (it’s sometimes seen in the cervical dish as well) can be caused by structural issues such as:

1. kyphosis AKA “dowager’s hump”
2. discitis
3. obesity (especially with a large stomach)
4. spondylolisthesis

Muscular imbalances:
1. weak glutes, hamstrings, and abdominal muscles
2. tight erector spinae, quadratus lumborum (QL), and hip flexors (especially iliopsoas)

If your client is not comfortable lying on their stomach, try using a small pillow between their pelvis and rib cage.

You can use a travel pillow (mine has feathers, which makes it squishy and moveable) or a toddler pillow (with cotton/polyester fill). The toddler pillow is a little smaller.

Check out our Tuesday Toesday Tip video to see how Mary-Claire uses a small pillow to make her clients more comfortable. (It’s just 3 minutes, 35 seconds.)

Next week will be another tip for when you need to bolster women for side-body massage (you do work on clients on your side, don’t you? )

If you haven’t learned sidelying massage, definitely look into our Intermediate class, where we’ll teach you amazing anterior barefoot massage (mmm..quads! pecs!) and super effective side-lying barefoot massage-you’ll reach muscles your clients may never knew they had.

Self care-rolling your feet

Whether you are a barefoot massage therapist or one who simply stands all day at work, our Tuesday Toesday tip may help work out those crunchies in your tootsies! All it takes for feet self-care is a little hand weight that you may have sitting around at your house.

It’s important that your hand weight has rounded edges, otherwise, it won’t roll.

It’s easy like Sunday morning.

Simply sit somewhere comfortable (you can stand too, if that’s your preference) with your hand weight on the ground. Experiment with rolling different parts of your feet and see what kind of knots you may find there!

A caveat: if you haven’t been rolling your feet regularly, don’t watch an entire episode of something on Netflix or you may have trouble walking for a day or two. (Ask me how I know this. 😉 )

Tuesday TOESday: another easy way to add ashiatsu cream

Recently, Jeni wrote a blog post about how to re-apply lubricant to her ashiatsu client by applying it to her shin. Today I’m sharing another easy way to add ashiatsu cream. Sometimes I wear long leggings or stretchy jeans (Must. Have. Stretch.) that come down to my ankles and so I can’t keep extra cream on my shins.

Why does this whole applying cream thing matter?

If you put cream all over your hands like you do for hands-on massage, the bars will get slimed up. When the bars are slippery, you need to grip them tighter. Because you grip the bars tighter, your forearms get sore. And then you’ve taken away part of the reason why you’ve learned ashiatsu in the first place: to save your hands and forearms from undue stress.