Text Box: A Vacation From Cancer Most of you are aware of the physical benefits of receiving massage (ie: reduces pain, reduces blood pressure, relaxes tension in the muscles, encourages deeper and easier breathing, and promotes rehabilitation after surgery or injury just to name a few). Some of you, however, may not know that it may even be compared to going on vacation. It’s been said “My massage was like a vacation from cancer.” When you enter one of PCI’s massage rooms, we encourage you to leave your worries at the door (you can pick them up on the way out if you like). Once you are lying on the soft, warm, cozy massage table, the focus is on you—the WHOLE you—not just the parts of you affected by disease. You may then close your eyes and go anywhere you want to for that hour. That hour may become days. If you allow yourself the pleasure, you can enjoy all the senses of your destination. The salty taste of an ocean breeze, the feel of warm sun on your skin, the sounds of a trickling mountain stream, the intricate designs on the wings of a butterfly, or the smell of honeysuckle. Anywhere and anything your heart desires is at your fingertips. You may even be perfectly well and perfectly happy for that hour. Your massage therapist at PCI is trained to give you a completely safe massage so there is no need to stay in the room with her. Feel free to consider this time an opportunity to travel.

Knead To Know...

A Living Example….

Once I cared for a  lady that was experiencing a significant amount of pain—she came to see me for massage.  Once we got her onto the heated       table and in a comfortable position, I began the   massage using warmed lotion.  It was about 5 minutes into the massage that she began to drift—awake, but     drifting.  I was there caring for her body, but she had drifted somewhere else—I could feel her leave.  When the

massage was over, she told me that she went to her  birthplace—Japan.   That she hiked Mt. Fuji.  She was alone on the mountain, but didn’t feel lonely.  She could see and feel the snow, but was not cold..  All around her was the beauty of mountains and she felt connected—connected to EVERYTHING.  For that hour, she felt free and well and happy. 

 

She left the massage room with a  rejuvenated spirit, a lightened heart, and felt she was no longer a  prisoner of cancer.  She may still have had cancer when she left, but with her mini    vacation, she had the strength to continue her journey.  

    ~Amy