Remember when you were a kid and all you wanted was to be a grown up and do grown up things? How did that work out for you? How good would it be to be a kid again and have the knowledge we have now? Growing up, our elders would say that and we would be like ‘yeah yeah’. And now, well I don’t know about you but the adult version of me would have done a lot different. However, we can’t turn back the clock, nor can we stop it, but we can slow down. We now live in such a fast paced world where everybody wants something yesterday that it’s hard sometimes to check into ourselves and give ourselves some us time. Let’s look at your average person who works full time and has a family that includes children. Before I go any further though I would like to applaud all those who are full time parents. Maybe it’s a maternal thing that I don’t really posses but having children 100% of the time is a crazy task. You are all superstars! Right, back to my average person. You wake up, sort yourself, wake the kids, sort them. Possibly 60+ % of the time they don’t want to cooperate in the mornings or maybe they left their brains in bed and continually do things that make you leave the house feeling more frustrated than ever and you telling yourself your day can only get better. Some people do this on their own and others have their partner to help. Often you get in each others way and frustrate each other just as much as the kids but you manage to eventually get out the door on time and off to work. You work all day, return to pick up children, cook dinner, clean the house, referee a million fights before bed time, and eventually fall in a heap on the couch with about as much energy as a snail in a pool of peanut butter! You are mentally and physically exhausted. You eventually go to sleep and repeat for the whole week. Weekends come and you spend that entertaining the kids or running them to sports. So, when do you check yourself out and what do you do? It certainly isn’t easy to find that time regardless of weather you have kids or a partner because life still gets busy. For me personally, I am at my happiest when I am being creative. Not art and craft type stuff, I love being in my workshop. I love turning nothing into something or making something old new again. I have a massive admiration for beautiful timber, so much so that I get frustrated when people call it wood. You burn wood, you create with timber! It’s when I can let my imagination flow and just tune out to the world. I’m a very visionary person so when I know what I wan’t to do and I can see it in my head it makes me excited when I can bring it to life. On the health side of things, I also enjoy time exercising but most importantly getting my  fortnightly massage. It’s total me time. As soon as I lay on my therapists table I feel my body relax. The phone gets put away and I have the whole hour for just me, bliss. Happiness on the whole comes when you get the mix right. You need time for work, time for play, time for the family, time with just you and your partner and time for yourself. When you go home tonight, ask your partner what makes them zone out and relax. Try to make time to enable the both of you to have ‘your’ time. Just a couple of hours once a week to do the thing that makes you totally happy. If all else fails. book a massage with us and at least let us get you back to your best.

Nikki

In a world where there are so many options to choose from, how do we know what or who is right for us? When it comes to massage, it is such a personal thing. There are many reasons why a client will return to you and also many reasons why they wont. For me, my therapist is not only my therapist. She is a friend, a mentor, a confidante and a therapist all rolled into one. I see her because not only do I like her massage style, but I know I’m guaranteed to have a good laugh, get my grumps out and get some good advice in return as well as walking away feeling 100% better than when I went in, physically and mentally. Hev (my therapist) doesn’t put on what I class as ‘oogie woogie’ music for me, she knows better. Many years ago when I woke from a 2 week coma, I had some ‘issues’ giving a certain sample. I called on Hev, she came and gave my tummy the treatment it needed and bam sample is granted. She knows me and she knows her stuff. But you see Heather isn’t for everybody the same as I’m not for everybody. There are many questions you need to ask yourself when trying to find ‘your’ therapist. Firstly what are you looking for? Are you looking for someone to ‘fix’ an injury or are you looking for someone who can provide you with regular maintenance of the body? Do you want fluffy and light or do you need deep/sports style massage? Are you comfortable with your therapist or do you find yourself feeling anxious and uncomfortable during a treatment? Do you trust in their knowledge and are they showing you their level of knowledge by the way they provide treatment? There are so many questions that only you can answer. I now have 2 therapist working alongside me here at Ellis Remedial. They are both brilliant and yet we are all different. We all have different styles but from all feedback so far, our clients are happy to see any of us for their treatment. That’s a great dynamic to have in a practice especially from an owners point of view, knowing that our clients trust us all. There are clients that started out with me and are seeing my other therapists more regularly now and that is absolutely fine. It isn’t up to a therapist to demand who a client sees for treatment, it is completely up to the client. After all, they are paying for the service. I have absolute confidence in my staff to provide excellent service to everyone who walks through our doors and that’s the way it should be. Let’s say you have an injury that has been ongoing for quite some time. You are seeing a health professional but nothing seems to be improving. That professional insists you keep coming back, even though you are not gaining any benefits from the treatment. This frustrates me! As a health care professional it is in my opinion paramount that you look beyond your own realm of knowledge and refer when needed. Lets look at Fred (we will call him Fred, not his real name). Fred presented to me a few weeks ago with chronic pain in his groin whenever he lifted his leg up to step e.g walking up stairs. Fred has put up with this pain for the past 5 years. Never having massage in his life he thought he would give it a try as scans and doctors sent him around in circles achieving no results for the ‘injury’. His first visit to me was tough for him. He was nearly jumping off the table with even the slightest of touch to his effected area. I released his back, which was like concrete, and the rest of his limbs, making a start on unraveling the mystery that was before me. The important thing here is that I knew I could not help this man on my own. I am not a machine or a physiotherapist and I was baffled at what was actually happening. In saying that I referred him onto one of Hobart’s best physios to help me out. He came up with a diagnosis and together we had some idea what was going on. Fred came back to me after the Physio visit and we worked his Hamstrings. Same result, nearly jumped off the table! What was going on? His next appointment was back with the Physio who performed some dry needling on him (not to be confused with Acupuncture). Feeling like there was some improvement, we had him back in last week for another massage. We massaged his Hamstrings, nothing! We worked on his Quads and Groin, nothing. He didn’t leap off the bed and he didn’t complain at all. We are winning the battle. Now Fred is aware that we can’t undo a lifetime of problems in a few sessions and will continue to see me for massage. He has also seen Wendi for Acupuncture. I guess the important thing about this story is that sometimes you need more than one professional to get to the bottom of an issue. Fred is super happy, he is getting some relief. If your therapist isn’t prepared to look outside the box and refer you on when needed the question remains, are they the right therapist for you?