Fort Collins Massage Therapy from Jan Alexander's Turning Leaf Touch

Healing Warm Stone Massage

The use of stones at variant temperatures for therapeutic benefits is not a new concept. For thousands of years, healers from a multitude of cultures have used hot and cold on the body to alter a response in the blood and lymph to bring about healing.

These healers learned that stones are nature?s best temperature retainers and incorporated them into healing and purification ceremonies. Japanese monks have been known to use warm stones to slow digestion, ancient Hawaiians wrapped castor bean leaves around hot stones and placed them on their bodies to treat nervous disorders while Native American women placed warm stones on their bellies to relieve menstrual cramps.

This specialized use of hot and cold stone therapy is now being reinvented in modern day therapy rooms as an effective way to alleviate stress and tension, and create positive energy flow, when combined with the healing benefits of massage.

WHY IT WORKS
Stones have an inherent mineral makeup that causes them to retain heat or cold and provide an energy resonance. In Stone Massage natural stones of varying sizes and stone type are placed or manipulated strategically on and over the body to bring about healing.

The temperature of the stone is transferred to the body by means of conduction. The longer the application, the deeper the penetration via reflex conductions to muscle tissues and joints. Penetration may reach up to 1.5" into the superficial layer of the muscle. Using massage in addition to stone placement deepens the contact therapy enhancing the total therapeutic effect.

Studies have shown that warm stone application to the body can aid in increasing the heart rate and respiration of capillaries, relaxing connective tissue, increasing metabolism and elimination and increasing migration of leukocytes, which defend the body against infection.

Alternatively, the application of cold stones lessens the inflammation in the muscle fiber. For a short time you push the blood away; then if the cold stones stay in contact with an area for more than four minutes, they start pulling blood back again and re-warming the area. This balance of hot and cold allows for healing to begin.

Utilizing both hot and cold stones during a treatment can be a very effective way to create new circulation patterns to aid in relieving congestion throughout the body. The systemic effect of cold increases the general metabolism and the systemic effect of warming is sedative.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT
Clients who have experienced Stone Massage say that other treatments pale in comparison to the relaxed state that Stone Massage Therapy brings. The stones serve as conduits to all levels of the experience ? physical, emotional and spiritual.

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