News:

Reiki Level 1 and 2 classes are now scheduled for the fall!   Check out our calendar for dates or let us know if you and 3 friends are interested in scheduling a private class at your home.

Are you intrigued by the beat of a drum and are wondering how to incorporate this into your personal healing  or meditative practice?  We are offering a drum and rattle making workshop in November which will offer you the rare opportunity to make your own drum and rattle and learn basic shamanic practices and connect with the heart beat of the earth!  A great way to add another level to your practice!

Janet completed an advanced workshop in fundamentals of acupressure in July and will complete her certification training in reflexology in October.  She is taking an advanced workshop on the abdomen in September. 

Please let us know if there is a workshop you are interested in attending or if you have questions about any of our services. We welcome and encourage questions and constructive feedback!

Science is now proving the benefits of massage and bodywork.  With the amount of stress we deal with collectively as a culture, and all of the side effects of medications that are prescribed to deal with stress, why not try massage instead?  It may not alleviate all the meds you may take, but it sure can lower the doses necessary (of course that is while working with your primary care doctor ~ never change your dose of medications without checking in with them first...) .  Enjoy this article from the NY Times!

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Regimens: Massage Benefits Are More Than Skin Deep

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Published: September 20, 2010; NY Times

Does a good massage do more than just relax your muscles? To find out, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles recruited 53 healthy adults and randomly assigned 29 of them to a 45-minute session of deep-tissue Swedish massage and the other 24 to a session of light massage.

All of the subjects were fitted with intravenous catheters so blood samples could be taken immediately before the massage and up to an hour afterward.

To their surprise, the researchers, sponsored by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, found that a single session of massage caused biological changes.

Volunteers who received Swedish massage experienced significant decreases in levels of the stress hormone cortisol in blood and saliva, and in arginine vasopressin, a hormone that can lead to increases in cortisol. They also had increases in the number of lymphocytes, white blood cells that are part of the immune system.

Volunteers who had the light massage experienced greater increases in oxytocin, a hormone associated with contentment, than the Swedish massage group, and bigger decreases in adrenal corticotropin hormone, which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol.

The study was published online in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

The lead author, Dr. Mark Hyman Rapaport, chairman of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai, said the findings were “very, very intriguing and very, very exciting — and I’m a skeptic.”