Choosing the right amount of time to book for a massage is important so your therapist can properly do his or her job. If the main goal is a particular physical therapeutic outcome – like achieving greater mobility in just the neck area – it may not be intuitively obvious how much time you need. Of course, cost and the time you have available for a treatment are key factors;…
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Hot stone therapy has been documented as far back as ancient China and Egypt, where people used heat therapeutically. Native North Americans have long used rocks in rituals with a spiritual significance to symbolize life. Indeed, the stones a therapist chooses can have meaning based on systems of origin from an energic perspective. Most stones used for hot stone therapy are smooth from the action of thousands of years of…
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Why is it that when you come in for a massage, your therapist will work on a different area first before attending to where you told her you are hurting or tight? Sometimes the therapist even starts working more on the wrong side of the body! Or when the therapist gets to where it is painful, she is not spending enough time there and go even deeper and harder. Does…
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Cupping marks can look alarming when you see the circular marks on the skin! It is important to understand thought that these are not real bruises as you would get from an impact. These are from micro-bleeding from capillaries, caused by a temporary suction from the cups (like a hicky!). The marks on the skin can vary in a pattern and colour (from light red to dark purple). They can…
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Since Michael Phelps was seen with prominent cupping marks on his shoulders during the Olympics, cupping has been more recognized and accepted in the west as therapy for athletes. But at the Acupuncture Turning Point we have long time integrated cupping into most treatments that involve chronic musculoskeletal pain, whether you are an athlete or not! Cupping can gently break the adhesions and bring new vigor to tissues associated the inflammation…
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Acupuncture for back pain is one of the most common reasons people come and see us at our clinic. You can hardly find a person 40 years of age in our new society who has never had back pain! We have come to accept it as part of growing older and sitting most of the day. The most common story is to for someone to injure him or herself after…
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The monthly Global TV interview on complementary healthcare for October was with Kendra Tootill. Gord investigated NeuroKinetic Therapy (NKT) with Kendra Toothill. This modality helps her find and retrain muscles that are not firing properly due to old injuries. Read Kendra’s blog about here story of NKT. Enjoying a St. Paddy’s day celebratory beer with a friend was a pivotal moment that catapulted my career into the diversely complex world…
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A recent study shows that massage three times a week can actually lower elevated blood pressure in woman (men were not studied, but I am sure it would work for them too!). They studied woman with “pre-hypertension” (BP is lower than 140/90 and higher than 120/80. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3733180/. This group referred to another study, (Vasan et al. 2001) with a 10-year follow-up of pre-hypertensive people and compared them…
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This month I investigate osteopathy, a diverse discipline that has many facets. Like chiropractic, this discipline evolved over 100 years ago and has persisted as a complementary therapy to mainstream medicine. However, unlike chiropractic, its focus is on the body as a whole system, and not on the spine per se. The traditional practice of osteopathy seeks literal fulcrums, or balance points, when addressing a physical imbalance, and then restores…
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Scoliosis is an unnatural lateral or sideways bending of the spine, where it looks like an “S” Curve or a “C” curve. That’s not good — the spine is best when it is straight when looking at it directly from behind. Structural scoliosis can be a very serious condition, and is to a large part genetically determined. It is most commonly found in young females and can persist their entire…
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