Currently, the Past Experiences and Guides meditations have been recorded, and Brian is working with a studio program to piece together the recorded parts into one piece.  Once all of the meditations are done and finalized, he will be looking into methods of getting them printed and methods to distribute them digitally.  He hopes all of these tasks are done within the next couple of months so they will be available to those that want them.  

Caring Palms currently has two treatment rooms for rent by some holistic arts practitioner. This could be massage, acupuncture, hypnosis, herbs, counseling, or others. The rent for each room is $400 per month. If you are a holistic arts practitioner, or you know anyone looking for space for their business at a reasonable rate, have them contact us. We are looking for others to come and be part of our healing arts center.

Caring Palms has received an award from the Jacksonville Beach Award program.  It states that Caring Palm’s massage therapists are 2016’s Best of Jacksonville Beach.  

Caring Palms Looking for Female Massage Therapist for Part-Time Work 

Caring Palms is a great place to work, located at Jackonville Beach in a busy shopping center. Compensation is 50% + tips. Any discounts come out of Caring Palms' end. The sessions are spaced half an hour apart so you don’t feel rushed between clients. This is an awesome position for like-minded individuals who are interested in healing others and learning new things. We are looking for a female LMT who would like to find a spiritually receptive work environment for part-time work. Experience or a natural gift is necessary, as well as up to date license and insurance. Technical skills are a plus. Please call us at 904-246-2206, or send resumes to brian@caringpalms.com.

"Normal"

by Faith Stansbury

I’ve had a lot of clients tell me that I was the first massage therapist they’ve seen who will try to figure out what is causing their musculoskeletal issues. I don’t want to just make someone feel a little bit better temporarily. I want to help relieve their discomfort in the present, but also educate them on how to take better care of themselves. I want to help them heal from past injury, but also identify what is causing those problems and help them prevent injury in the first place.

We live in a culture that treats symptoms. Symptoms don’t define illness or injury. They can point you in the right direction, but too many health professionals ignore the signs, or are unfamiliar with specific ailments. People could walk through life these days in a haze of pain, never knowing what’s wrong, because they don’t know what to share and others don’t know what to ask. Sometimes, those same people are embarrassed to say what they are experiencing because other people told them it was normal and they were making a big deal out of nothing.

Don’t second guess yourself. If you feel like something isn’t right, you are probably correct. Even if other people tell you something is normal, that doesn’t mean it should be normal. High blood pressure, anxiety, depression, obesity, and diabetes are all considered “normal” these days. If you are walking around in pain, it may be “normal,” but it isn’t right. Also, if the doctor tells you it’s normal, why does the doctor still medicate you?

Massage therapy can also treat symptoms. It can improve circulation, relax, and reduce pain. Sometimes, treating symptoms is all a massage therapist does. This isn’t completely their fault. Sometimes, a client chooses not to inform their therapist with a medical history that has all the information they need. When this happens, many times, the therapist will simply assume the client is there for relaxation. It’s not the client's fault, either. Most people are simply uninformed about what massage can help with, what it can’t help with, or even that it can help anything. Some people think it’s just a luxury service.

Massage therapy can be so much more. It can help to correct posture that contorts the body. It can help break up and prevent scar tissue and ossification (when inflamed muscles develop bony deposits) of injury sites. It can also return lost range of motion, help with lymphatic drainage, boost the immune system, reduce blood pressure, and tons more. It is also important preventative care. I’m sure we are all familiar with the old saying “prevention is better than the cure.”

So this is a little reminder for everyone out there. When you see your massage therapist, try to give as complete a medical history as you can. Different health conditions call for different types of massage, and sometimes performing the wrong massage can do more harm than good. Make sure to tell your therapist if you are on blood thinners, have high blood pressure, diabetes, neuropathy of any sort, or if you have joint stability issues or pins from previous surgeries. Also make sure you tell them if you are fighting cancer or have one of the million other systemic diseases or syndromes that might be causing some of your pain. There may be a certain massage for it or an alternative, more appropriate treatment option. Letting us know ahead of time if you have fibromyalgia can help us determine the most effective pressure used before we test your pain threshold. Certain stages of cancer can make massage dangerous if the practitioner is unaware, but if aware the practitioner can use lymphatic or light touch techniques that could benefit the client. Reiki is excellent for achieving a sense of well-being and peace for most people, which can help the client’s ability to fight off infection or recover quickly from chemotherapy. It also helps to relieve some of the anger and grief that comes with accepting when it is our time to move on.

Not everything can be solved with massage, but it is not really meant to be just a relaxing service. It is meant to promote your health. And while massage therapists aren’t qualified to diagnose illness or write prescriptions, because we specialize in muscle health, we might know something about it that your general practitioner does not. Many doctors don’t specialize in the musculoskeletal system, with a few exceptions. I will personally tell you if I can’t treat your condition and what I think might help if massage won’t. I will also recommend specific modalities to those who need them, whether or not I practice them. I don’t need to perpetuate pain in my clients to achieve job stability. People are always going to hurt. I feel, if I do my best to help them, they will come back when they need me. And hopefully, they’ll refer people they care about. 

Forms

by Brian Dean

When you first come in to Caring Palms, you are asked to fill out some paperwork, usually four or five pages.  The information we look for is basic in a sense.  We look for contact information so we can get a hold of you if we need to.  We look for health information so we know what is going on with you, and so we don’t hurt you.  We also ask where you heard of us so we know what advertising is working, and we ask you to read and sign a paper describing what is entailed in the session you are here to receive.

This all sounds like a lot, but it is necessary.  And the most important part in that is the health questionnaire.  We need to know what is going on so we can help you the best. 

A lot of people don’t give us all the information that they should (as Faith mentioned in her article).  It is a joke with my students that do massage when I ask how often their clients give them all the information they need.  Their answer is usually “never”.  This is why I scan people’s energies to see where their problems are.

Many won’t give their birth date as they don’t want people to know how old they are.  Unfortunately, this could be as crucial as any of the other information.  Whether we like it or not, our age can be a determining factor on what type of massage we get. 

Others leave out crucial information.  There was one client years ago that did not mention that she had bone spurs in her neck.  My scan revealed that she had neck issues, and I discussed this with her.  I then worked deeply into her neck, and she loved the work while I was doing it.  Later that day, she was in pain from the work I did.  This could have been avoided by her being honest in what she told me, or put down on paper. 

I have had a few people that were completely honest, and put down things that could have been life threatening if I had done massage on them.  One person had thrombosis which is a lot of stuff in the blood stream waiting to break off and clog the heart or brain.  Since massage increases blood flow, this was definitely something to be avoided.  And although he told me he gets massage other places, I was not willing to take the risk of killing him.  

As I have said many times before, massage is not just that luxury of relaxation that one expects from a European spa.  Massage is healthcare.  We fix people, or try our best to do so.  We align bodies, remove pain, return people back to full health after injury.  We take problems that have persisted in people for months and sometimes years, and make them better.  We use physical methods or energy methods.  If one service does not work, maybe we have another that will.  If we know something that might be helpful, but it is something we don’t do, we will recommend someone else. 

We are here to help make you better if we can.  We can do all the nice relaxing stuff you usually think of when you think of massage.  But we do a lot more than that.  We are here to help, and the best we can do will be determined on how much you tell us, and how well we follow our intuition.  As Faith said, we don’t want to be chasing symptoms.  We want to find the cause, and fix it if we can.  Sometimes this means working in other places from where it hurts. 

As Myofascial Release (MFR) teaches, find the pain, find the cause elsewhere.  Believe it or not, MFR teaches that the best treatment for headaches is to align the pelvis.  So, we are all connected, and a problem in one place may be caused by something somewhere else. 

But if you help us, and let us, we will do our best to make you better.

Intuition

by Brian Dean

What do you know?  What do you feel in your gut?  What feels right to the base of your soul?  Is this what you follow, or are you swayed to follow something else?

As humans, we are told that we have five senses, sight (ophthalmoception), hearing (audioception), taste (gustaoception), smell (olfacoception or olfacception), and touch (tactioception).  But in truth, we have six senses.  It has long been believed that this sixth sense is simply a tool of science fiction, or a gift only to psychics.  But everyone has it.  It is that gnawing feeling when you are about to do something wrong, or that certainty when you know exactly what you are about to do is absolutely right.  We could even call it intuition.

We pick up energies all the time, and those energies come into us through our third eye located in the forehead.  This is how we receive information that we don’t pick up with our other five senses.  But what do we do with this energy, this knowledge?  Most times, we ignore it.  Other times, we overthink it, then ignore it.

We need to start listening to it.  We need to start paying attention to what it is saying, our lives depend on it.  We are going through a very important time in our country’s history, in fact the world’s history.  How we act, how we see things will determine the fate of billions of lives on this spaceship we inhabit called earth.

The question is… what feels right to you?  What does your gut say?  Yes, your gut.  While there is always a constant battle between heart and head (what we want and why we can or can’t do it), the gut is usually where we feel the truest information.  It gets nervous when we are about to do something wrong.  This is how it tells us to take another look at what we are about to do.  It feels sure when we are about to do something right.  When that moment comes and for some reason, you are absolutely sure that this is the correct action, this is your gut speaking to you.  In both cases it is intuition which is formulated by the automatic compiling of energies which expresses itself in a certain feeling.

But we often overthink what we feel.  Our gut is saying do something, it is totally right.  But our head looks at it and says “this is crazy” and talks us out of listening to what our gut wants us to do.  We need to start paying more attention to our gut rather than our brain.  It is our brain that tries to temper our feelings, or emotions.  It tries to put limits on what we think we should or should not do.  It looks at ideas and dismisses them because they might be too far “out there”.  But sometimes, it takes that stroke of genius and waters it down to something less amazing to the point that it is not amazing at all.  Our brain says this is best for us, even though it may not be.  It says listen to groups and what they say and do.  It tells us to follow group logic even though your gut is telling you to stand on your own.

What does your gut tell you?  Should you be spreading hate?  Or love?  Should you be working to bring us together?  Or break us apart?  Should you be helping?  Or standing by watching? 

Currently in the world, there is too much misinformation.  In fact, it seems to be that if you repeat something enough times, people believe it.  I actually want to start something myself.  From now on, a foot is really 13 inches.  Keep telling everyone that and eventually it will become truth.  Or not. 

While we want to think and make decisions with our intellect, it is hard.  Because of the flood of misinformation, we can’t really tell what is true and what is not. 

This is where the gut, and interpreting the sensations you feel based on the energies it has received, comes in.  When the mind can’t make the decisions you need to make, you need to fall back on what your gut is telling you.  You need to follow your intuition.  Go with it. 

Intuition forms around that feeling in the gut.  It makes an overall sense to follow some path, some logic, some feeling.  It does not follow groups, or ideas.  It follows energy, as energy is where the truth is.  Let go of all your precepts.  Release all your emotion.  Strip away that logic that has been driving you.  And do the one thing that feels right, the one thing you are being told inside of you that you are doing the right thing.  Trust your gut.  Make your decisions based on that.  Only then, can you be sure.