Technique of the month: Massaging the scalp A female friend my age (51) recently remarked that she can’t imagine having her hair done once a week and then not touching or washing her hair the rest of the week, as many women of her mother’s generation did. The scalp needs to be touched and stimulated […]

2007 has been a year of waiting and anticipating. Waiting for the cold to arrive in an unusually warm early January. Paying high home fuel bills in a frigid February while waiting for the cold to give way to spring warmth. Taking on new-car payments for a 2007 Honda when I traded in my 2001 […]

In my bathroom, alongside the monthly Daily Word booklet of inspirational passages that I read each morning courtesy of the Unity Church, is a large white envelope containing pages of affirmations that I copied from a book long ago. They’re meant to boost my morale, keep me thinking positively, self-actuate the Edgar Cayce statement “Mind […]

Begin again. Those were the last words — or at least, in the haziness of time, the gist of the actual last words — of a novel I read in my early 20s, a year or so after I graduated from college. The title I have long forgotten, the plot details have faded into the […]

I don’t remember when I first started thinking about going to massage school. Certainly in the first few years after I started receiving massage on a regular basis in 1989, I crossed over from just benefiting from and enjoying the massage to wanting to be the person who helped others feel as good as I […]

A 54-year-old client wants to spread the word about the importance of men age 40 and older getting a yearly PSA test to check for prostate abnormalities. His yearly PSA test revealed some hot spots that turned out to be malignant. Since cancer claimed the lives of both his mother and uncle, my client did […]

The new year often brings renewed efforts to work out, to shed some unwanted pounds, to eat better. To that list, I invite you to add one item: “Schedule massage.” Massage is a welcome adjunct to one’s health regimen. It promotes heightened body awareness and a better feeling about oneself. It incorporates gentle stretching and […]

What an expansive and contractive year. Like the rising and the falling of gasoline prices (a major element of all areas of my life, and many others’ lives as well), 2006 proved to be a year of traveling far and staying home, of spending money and cutting expenses, of reaching out to others and turning […]

When I was a child and thought about the future, my limited imagination only projected to the year 2000. It was a faraway yet easy and significant round-number milestone marking the end of one century and one modern-era millenium and also marking the year I would turn 44. Beyond that, I didn’t dream. Well, I’m […]

One of the perks of being a touch therapist is the ability to connect with longtime friends in different, deeper ways. And so it was with two people from my childhood. Ariel*, who also lives in Montclair, has been coming to me for massage and CranioSacral Therapy once or twice a year since I began […]