Spring 2013

Hello Friends!

Now that it's spring time and you're being more active outside, why not support your health and come in for a session? Massage is an excellent way to support your athletic endeavors and relieve stress from all that [INSERT ACTIVITY such as spring cleaning, moving, finishing school semester, etc.]

Next May I will be attending Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy training!!! HOORAY!!! Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy is based on ancient massage techniques found across Asia where the therapist uses their feet to deliver deep, flowing, effleurage strokes. CLICK HERE to check out a video of a session by one of the trainers. I will be the only therapist in town (that I know of at least) providing Ashiatsu massage!

YOGA: I am now offering a Gentle Yoga Class Tuesday nights at 6:30 pm at my office. If you would like to attend, you must reserve a space by either calling me (352-328-7449) or sending me an email (melissa@doylelmt.com). Also, starting May 5, 2013 I will be teaching yoga at Alter Ego Fitness in downtown Gainesville! If you're a member, stop on by to start your week off right!

Appointment Availability: To get a real time view of my availability, please click on the "Book Now" button on the left side of this page. This button is a direct link to my schedule. Click on the option you would like 60 minutes or 90 minutes and some dates will appear. If the days say "No Availability", choose the arrow on the right and it will bring up the next week. I will release additional appointment times as they become available. If you have a particular day and time request, please email me at: melissa@doylelmt.com and I will make every possible effort to make space for you.

Hours: Appointments are available Monday - Friday 10 am - 6 pm. Occasionally, there may be additional appointments available outside of those times and those will be updated in the online scheduler. If there are any cancellations and you would like to be put on the waiting list, please send me an email with your time preferences at melissa@doylelmt.com and I will contact you as appointments become available.

Building Information: Treetop Massage is located on the second floor at 900 NW 8th Avenue. We are a cooperative of massage therapists working out of a converted apartment. The stairs are on the outside of the building (to the left of the offices on the first floor). At the top of the stairs, enter through the door on the right and take a seat in the waiting area.

Groupon 2 for $60 Information: This Groupon is valid only for the same person. I am a one person operation and not able to accommodate two appointments at the same time. Per my legal agreement with Groupon, this package cannot be shared.

No Show Policy: If you cancel within 24 hours or do not show up to your appointment you will be charged the price of the Groupon. If you arrive late, I will make every effort to give you the full session however, your session may be shortened to ensure that I am able to fulfill the other appointments of the day.

What to Expect

Hello Groupon Clients!

Welcome to my little spot on the internets! Thank you for visiting my website to learn more about my massage practice. There have been 185 Groupons sold! WOO HOO! Thank you so much for making this campaign a success. I'm looking forward to working with all of you.

Appointment Availability: To get a real time view of my availability, please click on the "Book Now" button on the left side of this page. This button is a direct link to my schedule. Click on the option you would like 60 minutes or 90 minutes and some dates will appear. If the days say "No Availability", choose the arrow on the right and it will bring up the next week. I will release additional appointment times as they become available. If you have a particular day and time request, please email me at: melissa@doylelmt.com and I will make every possible effort to make space for you.

Your best bet for scheduling will be to book online I am making every effort to have appointments for my existing clients and new clients that I am meeting through Groupon. The Groupons are valid for 6 months so there will be time to see everyone!

Hours: Appointments are available Monday - Friday 10 am - 6 pm. Occasionally, there may be additional appointments available outside of those times and those will be updated in the online scheduler. If there are any cancellations and you would like to be put on the waiting list, please send me an email with your time preferences at melissa@doylelmt.com and I will contact you as appointments become available.

Building Information: Treetop Massage is located on the second floor at 900 NW 8th Avenue. We are a cooperative of massage therapists working out of a converted apartment. The stairs are on the outside of the building (to the left of the offices on the first floor). At the top of the stairs, enter through the door on the right and take a seat in the waiting area.

Groupon 2 for $60 Information: This Groupon is valid only for the same person. I am a one person operation and not able to accommodate two appointments at the same time. Per my legal agreement with Groupon, this package cannot be shared.


No Show Policy: If you cancel within 24 hours or do not show up to your appointment you will be charged the price of the Groupon. If you arrive late, I will make every effort to give you the full session however, your session may be shortened to ensure that I am able to fulfill the other appointments of the day.

Take care and I look forward to working with you,
Melissa

What to Expect From Your First Massage Session:

In the first session, you will fill out a form that provides information about your history and your intentions for the session. An intention for your session could be to relax or it could be to explore a nagging ache that has been troubling your for a while.

At the beginning of the session I may give you some restorative yoga poses to get into on the table so that I can assess what is going on in your body and pinpoint the muscles that need to be targeted in the session. During these relaxing restorative poses, you can totally let go and relax into the table as I stretch your limbs to loosen up the muscles, preparing them for the massage. This part is important because it allows your body to become more relaxed, allowing maximum benefit to be received from your massage session.

The rest of the massage session is tailored and designed to address your needs at the moment of the massage appointment. Massages often begin with warming up the tissue, using flowing Swedish techniques and then transitioning to find areas of tension and then smoothing them away. Don't be surprised if you fall asleep!

I am available for appointments throughout the week. Please call 352-328-7449 to schedule your appointment.

Bolsters Arrived!!!

My bolsters have arrived so guess what?!? Restorative yoga and Yin Yoa classes to come! Yin Yoga Thursday nights at 7pm! Reserve your spot melissa@doylelmt.com

Shrug Your Shoulders, Move Your Arms

Ligaments of the shoulder

Sore shoulders are probably one of the most common complaints I hear about in my line of work. It shouldn't be a surprise since my line of work involves working with muscles. Anatomists refer to the shoulder area as the shoulder girdle. Just like a clothing girdle, the muscles and connective tissues keep the arm attached to the body. It's pretty amazing!

In order to keep our shoulders working properly, we need to move them in all the different directions. The arm can move in all different directions and it should move in all different directions. Sometimes we get pains in our shoulder and the pain comes from asking the shoulder to either not move around or do the same thing over and over again.

Pain arises after we have gone too long without moving, like when we sit at a desk working on a computer project. During the four hours you are writing a report at your desk, your arms aren't moving around very much. While you write your report, your body's repair systems are roaming around looking for things to repair, and since your muscles aren't moving, they go ahead and lay down some collagen fibers. You didn't need those muscles, right? WRONG!

How about changing the scenario a little bit? How about this time while writing your report, every 45 minutes you stretch your arms to the ceiling, maybe stand up and swing your arms around to wake up the spine and hips? Snow angel arms are great too. And if your work is really conservative, you can always just shrug your shoulders towards your ears, hold the shrug for a moment, and then release them.  It takes a minute, maybe two minutes. Would that be worth not having shoulder pain? I think so.

I hope you are all moving about today!

Manifest Your Purpose

A train crossing the road in Wyoming

Something about being out west always fills me with this great sense of being ready to conquer the world. The sky in Wyoming is huge and vast, the mountains can inspire your stomach to go topsy turvy just from standing on them (thanks altitude sickness). I visited there a few summers ago, before all these changes I made in my life and it was a wonderful place to just admire the vastness of the planet that seems to be shrinking. Standing on the side of the Big Horn Mountains, looking across the valley towards Cody, WY, I starting thinking about how I could create, how I could manifest what I wanted in my life.

OK, so sometimes the word "manifest" can sound a bit new age-y but come on, the word MANIFEST is an amazing word. It also got a bad rap from that whole Manifest Destiny business back in the day, but I digress. The word manifest is so full of power and shtira. Just the idea that you can create what you want in your life is an amazing concept to me ... the idea that your attitude shapes your LIFE?

A while back I used to get really depressed. I would be lying on the floor, crying, unable to move and when I wasn't on the floor I was moving through a life that I wasn't very interested in and only being marginally successful. I remember one day just asking myself, "What if I just decided to be content?" That one question really shifted my view on life. I began to notice my behavior, and how it was feeding into the depression. Most of the sadness, for me, was stemming from my own thought processes. Just asking myself this question allowed me to begin a long process of discovering my purpose and what I wanted to do with my life.

I was having a conversation with a friend, discussing how I found my path to teaching yoga and being a massage therapist. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, it's been a struggle ... I told her that I kept getting clues that I should change what I was doing, at first they were small clues (tiny taps on the shoulder) and then all of a sudden the hammer dropped, I lost my job and was left with thinking, now what?

A year later, here I am. I'm teaching yoga and doing massage, and I love my life. I get to witness so many amazing things. My job is to create a space for people to look within, it's such a precious job and I feel so very lucky. A few weeks ago, one of my yoga students told me, "I always come to your class so that I don't argue with my husband." I'm personally not doing a thing, but she is. She is coming each week and finding peace on her mat, and I get to make a space for that peace. I've been witness to similar personal transformations on the massage table. Sometimes the best feedback comes when a student or client is able to fall asleep and get some restorative rest. Creating a space to restore is my job, whether it results in a peaceful mind or a nap! My success comes when I put people to sleep :)

Anyways, that is my story. What's your story? How are you manifesting your life? Is your life everything you want?

I hope you are listening to your hearts and enjoying your day.

Listening to Chronic Aches and Pains

Smiley Face Pain Chart

We all have them. We know right where they are, that spot on our shoulder, that hip that always seems stiff, that wrist twinges at the end of the day ... These little aches don't ruin our days, but they are there, and it is possible they are trying to tell us something! Pain / aches show up because something is going on. Our bodies are trying to tell us to pay attention to what we are doing.

It starts off as whisper, perhaps just a little stiffness in your hip when you wake up in the morning. The stiffness is body-language saying, "Hey friend, lets move me around more during the day, get up from the desk and walk us around". And then life gets busy, you get a huge assignment so you're sitting at your desk getting work done. And then, out of nowhere (but not really since that hip has been stiff for two months now), you get a shooting pain from that hip that used to be stiff and is now screaming "YOU DIDN'T MOVE US AROUND ENOUGH AND NOW I'M MAKING YOU LISTEN TO ME!" 

So now you are in pain, you can't move, you can't get any work done, and this pain is making it difficult to move around, so what do you do? 

1. Sit around and do nothing (<-not such a good idea!)
2. Take a look at what kind of activity you are doing that causes that ache. Ask yourself, "Self, is there a way I can do this activity differently so that I don't have this ache?" For example, your right shoulder is hurting and you notice that you always carry your giant purse on the right side. Try carrying the bag half of the time on the left shoulder and see if that ache goes away. If there's a pain, then you might need some help from a massage therapist to help release those trigger points, but I bet over time your shoulder would feel great if you switched that one activity.
3. Move around and stretch more! Pain often shows up in one area in response to something that is going on somewhere else in the body. A good example of this is Upper Cross Syndrome, you know those folks whose should curve forward and look hunched ... well in UCS the muscles in our chest are really tight, pulling our shoulders together and the muscles in our back are overstretched and probably painful as a result. (There are all kinds of syndromes like this, but that's another story for another day!)
4. Go see someone to help you get to the root of this quickly. If the chronic tension is muscle related, there's a good chance you can get some real help from a well-trained massage therapist! Additionally, there are all kinds of folks that can help your aches with all different schools of thought, such as medical doctors, chiropractors, doctors of acupuncture, physical therapists, occupational therapists ... 

Options 2-4 will help you immensely. Number 1 is what a lot of people do, which is too bad because chronic aches/pains are no fun and doing nothing often leads to the ache getting a whole lot worse. We feel good when we maintain our bodies. Body-maintenance is a lot of work but when we do maintenance activities, like eat right, drink enough water, exercise, stretch, relax, get regular massage (I'm not saying this because I want to see you, I honestly think that it is important in maintaining wellness!!!!). We wake up in the morning, ready to face our days with a smile. 

I hope you are waking up with a smile!!!

Spicy Lentil Penne

I was thumbing through La Dolce Vegan last night and I found a recipe for Tomato Lentil Pasta that looked ok, healthy but a little bland for a Saturday night ... I noticed as I was cooking, I kept adding things and the dish that resulted was nothing like the one in the book so here we have it, SPICY LENTIL PASTA. The recipe made 3-4 servings. If you also have a salad and some bread it would definitely make 4 servings. It comes together really fast and was surprisingly tasty!


Ingredients:

• Pasta - 1/2 a box
• 12 ounce can diced tomatoes
• 1/2 package of sliced mushrooms, it should be about a cup
• 1/2 a small sweet onion, roughly diced
• 1/2 a bag of spinach ... I guess 1-2 cups (I think broccoli or zucchini would taste good in this as well)
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 cup lentils
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1/2 tsp sage
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 1/2 tsp ground pepper
• 2 cups vegetable stock
• 1/2 cup white wine (I used pinot grigio, I think it had just enough sweetness for the recipe)

This is how it should look around step 4!

1. Cook the pasta for a few minutes less than the package package says, as my Nana says "al dente" with an extremely thick Boston accent
2. Put the oil, onions and mushrooms in a skillet. Saute them until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms are cooked.
3. Add lentils, spices, garlic, and swish them around the pain for a minute or so. [OK, so I learned this last night, lentils will be on the crunchy side if you cook them with anything acidic or salty ... who knew? I found this website that explains the joys of lentil cooking - if you want soft lentils, cook the lentils in a separate pot and add them when you add the cooked pasta]
4. Add can of diced tomatoes, vegetable stock and wine. Allow it to simmer for about 20 minutes ... it should look a bit soupy, then add the pasta and let it simmer until most of the water is absorbed, takes about 5 minutes
5. Add the spinach and let it wilt by folding it into the pan.
6. Let it cool for a few minutes before eating :)