Healthy Retreats: Make Time For Bodywork

By Selena Lee

So often we think of a healthy retreat being far from our everyday life; separate from arduous routine and unending exhaustion. This is why we feel the need for escape, for soft sand and warm sunshine. How is it that we get so caught up in the rigmarole as to lose the ability to have balance and make choices that let the sunshine be a part of our everyday lives? When we can create a life style that includes self-care and balance, we offset the feeling of needing to escape. We can make choices that help in creating a daily life that is in line with our values and beliefs, one that is invigorating rather than exhausting.

We all feel and experience life differently; we all take care of ourselves in different ways. We know how to pamper ourselves while on retreat. Incorporating the same self-care into our daily lives can create balance, increase wellness, and shed light in new directions. Many of us have trouble planning and squeezing in time for ourselves. Finding a nook or cranny of time each day, or a block of time each week, to spend on our selves can prove to have long lasting effects on health and wellness.

Massage has been acknowledged lately within the medical community as a way to reduce stress and increase health and vitality; to recover from injury or trauma; or to balance out a wellness program. Whether it is Swedish, Acupressure, Shiatsu or Deep Tissue, massage is a time for us to relax, to go inside, and to give our bodies permission to slow down.

Scheduling a massage once a week can be the answer to the pressures of unending work days, or sleepless nights of insomnia. Furthermore, the health benefits of massage are countless and astonishing. Not only does regular massage help reduce chronic tension and muscle aches and pains, it can also lower blood pressure, strengthen the immune system, improve the quality of sleep, increase mental clarity and reduce anxiety. In recent years, massage has also become an important alternative to drugs in the treatment of cancer, successfully reducing patients' nausea, pain, fatigue, and depression. Even newborn babies sleep better, eat better, and are generally healthier when being gently massaged by their parents.

Massage is not a modern invention, either. It is an ancient wellness practice, going back to before recorded history, being found in some form in every known culture in the world. Hippocrates and Aristotle have recommended massage, and Alexander the Great reportedly had his own massage therapist. The beauty of massage, however, lays not only in receiving it. Giving massages can be just as relaxing and meditative as receiving them. It's a privilege to touch people, to help them find that precious balance in their lives, to assist them in taking care of themselves. Not surprisingly, massage is becoming the career choice for many looking for the right livelihood.

Massage is all about balance. Bringing balance into peoples' lives requires being balanced, and thus the giver becomes the receiver and vice versa. So whether we are seeking out massage as the one hour per week that helps us relax and recuperate, or looking to become a massage therapist, we are creating a healthy retreat, enriching our lives and the lives of those around us.

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