Introducing Hot Stones into Remedial Massage

It’s always tricky looking for new CPD* courses to do each year that will increase my learning, keep me motivated and provide me with more tools to treat clients effectively. Since discovering JING Advanced Massage Training, based in Brighton, I’ve been excited by a number of courses they offer and I’m slowly working through most of their course list!

This time, after a lengthy chat with JING, I opted for their four day Intensive Hot Stone Fusion course. Now, for those of you who know me, this choice has come as a bit of a surprise. What immediately springs to mind when you say ‘hot stones’ and ‘massage’ in the same sentence? Well, for me it says ‘spa’ and ‘pampering’. Two words that couldn’t be further from what I do and how I practise.

Clients will testify that treatments from stephanie blake massage include a lot of Remedial and Deep Tissue work, which often includes use of my elbows, knuckles and forearms to achieve adequate pressure to strip out and relax knotted and distressed muscles. So, why choose a hot stone course?

Hot Stones with a big difference

Unlike any other hot stones course I can find in the UK, JING blew apart the concept of using stones purely for ‘indulgence’. Now, I’m not going to lie to you. After experiencing roughly six hours of hot stones massage whilst on the course it can’t be denied that treatments take muscle relaxation to a new level, BUT (and here’s the awesome part, speaking as a Remedial Massage therapist) they are also excellent for compression work, stripping and reducing inflammation (technically it’s using cold stones that does this but we’ll come back to that later!)

Instead of using my own thumbs etc. I can now use the stones to help with problems such as Piriformis Syndrome (often mistaken for Sciatica as the symptoms are very similar), frozen shoulder and super tight scalenes (and upper Traps) which may be responsible for migraines or frequent headaches.

The heat from the stones means I can get into the necessary trigger points much faster and more effectively too. Oh the joy! But as I touched on before, as beneficial as the heat can be, so too is the cold...

Cold Stones...really?!

We all know that often an acute injury will incur immediate inflammation around the site of pain. We also know that traditionally ice is recommended to help bring that inflammation down (and also provide some numbing effect to help the pain element). There’s always been debate around whether to apply hot or cold to injury, and certainly, after inflammation has been brought under control, I’m a huge fan of heat every time. But how about we combine the two?

Applying colder stones to the site of inflammation has an incredible effect on the body in itself, for reasons explained above, however, then apply hot stones to provide a rush of blood to the area (and therefore speeding up the flush of toxins etc) before applying yet more of the colder stones is, quite frankly a triple whammy of healing goodness!

Therefore...

I often remind clients that massage speeds up the bodys healing process, so by making the massage experience more intense with the use of stones (hot and/or cold) we should be getting better results even faster.

That said I am no way making my elbows and knuckles redundant! However, bringing everything together in a combination treatment in the world of Remedial and Sports is indeed exciting, hopefully for both me as a practitioner and you as the client!

*Continuing Professional Development