Rise Up Therapeutic Massage

“Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we’ve spun, the tasks we’ve assumed, the problems we have to solve. They’ll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.” - Mark Nepo

Read about the importance of retreat in this week's email: https://buff.ly/3lBfYkg

Happy Mother's Day!

Recognizing all the moms this Mother's Day, and thanking you for the way that you impact everyone around you.

Show Up For Yourself ❤️‍🩹✨

I recently discovered in my journey of body love, and self-love, that there are three separate components to my health right now.

1. Food
2. Exercise
3. Health Metrics

By separating these three things, I could see that i have a different relationship with each of these parts of me and it helps me feel less overwhelmed by an overall concept of: I’d like to take better care of myself.

How are you showing up for how you want to feel?

Keep Reading: https://buff.ly/3vSXyl6

Did you know that you are the expert on your body?

In the countless hours that I have spent with clients experiencing pain, I see people who are coming to terms with being the one who is actually in charge of their own healing.

There’s a weight to that.

It can feel like a lot to manage and deal with, especially when it comes to managing the emotional aspects…

Keep reading: https://buff.ly/3C0CusA

Take a few moments this weekend to rest, breathe and think through the following journal prompts:

✨ What can I do in this moment to bring more peace into my being?

✨ What can I do in this moment to get myself some ⠀
nourishment and self-care?

✨ What’s not wrong in my life?
Here are three things that I can think of right now:⠀

✨ Write about all the places where you currently feel tension in your body. Write about all the areas that feel relaxed.

✨ What fears or stresses am I holding onto that are no longer serving me? How can I release these?

We store trauma in our body.
What is happening in your body when you feel overwhelmed or anxious?
By beginning to get curious about what’s happening in our body, we can start to notice if there is a thought or meaning we are making of how we feel, an emotion we can name, an image we can bring up of the sensation, any senses like smell, texture, or color that we can relate to this feeling.
We can look at the way our body is responding and wanting to move…

Keep reading: https://buff.ly/3BPT5jQ

Creating Sacred Space
https://riseupmassage.com/new/creating-sacred-space/

✨ Creating Sacred Space ✨ With any change, no matter the quality or desire and willingness to evolve, there is also loss. I am a person who has adapted well to having many long nights on my own, puttering, self-caring in ways that unfold naturally. Lots of space have I had over these years of widowhood and solo-mama hood. Lots of natural healing time, alongside the loneliness that can bring. Yet, it’s how I’ve been in most of my motherhood. What I have realized since this big merge, is that I am in desperate need of sacred space, rituals, and routines that connect me to me. In a two-bedroom home with three boys, two adults, and a dog, I have found myself delighted to be locked in the bathroom with my morning coffee and my journal a few times. Ha! I am a creative soul. I’ll get my quiet where I can. I began to read Mark Nepo’s teachings this year and his commitment to cultivating that deep relationship with your soul self has really stuck with me. How important it is to befriend yourself, what that looks like only you can know. But you must create the intention and willingness to go there to discover it. Whether it’s going to nature or just sitting to be in silence. When we are connected to ourselves, we can be more at peace in our human lives. It’s beautiful really because alongside that flame can live our deepest sorrows but also our deepest joy. I have felt this profoundly in my grief healing journey and creating the space to hold myself wherever I am at is crucial for me. I crave it and long for it. So I knew I would need to find my space in this new dynamic of my life. As the seasons changed and my massage hut in my backyard no longer felt viable weather-wise this year, there was my solution for a space for me to rest, read, meditate and hold my morning routine. I am committed to a morning ritual that is an evolving set of things that fuel my mental, physical and spiritual health. I have been delighted to work on tiny habits like just getting my journal out and seeing what happens or just stepping on a yoga mat to stretch and see how my body feels like moving. No presh, I’m learning to just show up. It's a gift to myself each day.

I have some seriously vulnerable things to share with you!!!
I just survived my worst nightmare and am living to tell you about it….
Healing through sharing…here goes.

I just went on a tropical beach vacation with my favorite people in the world…in my most voluptuous body of my life in a swimsuit.

That’s it!

I’m embarrassed to say that this to me was an actual nightmare.

My body was living this as if I were going to die.
I was not ready for this.

It was dawning on me that this intense amount of body shame I have had for myself my whole life was a real, living thing. I knew that I was a product of our Western world’s diet body-shame culture. But this felt so over the top here.

Packing and preparing for this trip was completely anxiety-producing – almost debilitating. I was having panic attacks and couldn’t sleep. And I was about to go to paradise and be with my best friends to have the time of our life.

My head could find little logic in any of this.

I am actually a LOVER of people in every way, all shapes and sizes. I massage and touch people every day and adore bodies. I geek out on healing and am fascinated by nearly every single thing about our amazing human experience through this lens.

I appreciate my clients in all of their ways of being. Always. Never a judgment or harsh thought on any of the thousands of butts and legs and tummies and backs I’ve seen.

Bodies are beautiful, all shapes, sizes, and versions of any of us and I know that those bodies change. I really love watching people evolve and hold them with so much compassion and love.

So WHAT is happening here?

Why this stress, lady?!
I am going to my best friend’s wedding. On an island.

First of all, I’m so grateful and feeling majorly privileged to be able to go. It’s a pandemic, first of all. Super complicated, I haven’t been on a plane in how long?

Plus, I really never imagined this kind of trip for a girl like me. The Bahamas feels like… pretty fancy. It’s a dream! I should be so excited, elated, over the moon.

Yet here I was TRIPPING OUT on how much my body had changed since I’d seen these friends.

Keep reading: https://riseupmassage.com/new/radical-self-love/

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately feeling into what it means to love my body, to truly love it, all of it.
I am familiar with the resistance I feel to this, to loving all of me. The wrinkles and the curves and the parts that don’t fit like they used to.
The pressure to be different.

But how do I want to live?
What’s on the other side of fully embracing this gorgeous miracle of life that exists within and without this body?
Wouldn’t I rather see what’s on the other side of holding judgments and pain and self-loathing?
Wouldn’t it be cool to see if there is more freedom, lightness, and joy just on the other side of this baggage I’m bringing to my mirror?

I find so much love for my body when I feel into what does feel good.
I find so much compassion for my body when I see how solidly I am built and how well my body adapts and restores itself.
My body is strong, able, and alive.
My body loves to move, to move gently, to move regularly, and to play.

What do you want to do today, body?
How do you want to feel?

The body speaks and I listen,
I can feel the relationship of being in my body and connecting back into myself.
Gentle, witnessing awareness.

Thank you, body.
Thank you for your patience as I learn to love all the parts of you!

As one year ends and another begins, allow yourself to be drawn back to the things you love.

If you’re like most of my clients, you’ve been just trying to make it through for a WHILE now.

A client recently summarized, in just a few minutes, the entire last pandemic year for all of us:

so many changes

so many unknowns to navigate

unresolved anxiety and trauma

lots of family hurts and feelings to manage

a big job shift

unsure of how to move forward socially

in a really bad place with their body

It’s time to think of sustainability for our bodies. It starts with self-care.

Your Journal Prompts For The Holidays

💭 As the holidays approach, how are you feeling?
Check-in with yourself. Be honest with yourself.

💭 What are some ways you might nurture your healing during this season?

💭 How might you nurture healing in others during this season?

“Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.”
- Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Discover how taking the space to return to the preciousness of what's important will help you see life in a new light.
https://buff.ly/2Z0JQPq

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
– Soren Kierkegaard

💛 What in your life feels the most chaotic or fast-paced right now?
Why does it feel this way?

💛 What steps can you take to pause and “retreat” - even if just for an afternoon?

💛 How might the space to retreat and reflect impact your life?

Happy Thanksgiving!
We are so grateful for you, and we hope that you are able to celebrate with those you love!

Felipe was known for often being the weirdest guy in the room, delightfully so. He truly didn’t care what anyone else thought about him, in all the best ways. He’d take this depth of our blessings everywhere he went, taking long silent pauses in restaurants or anywhere he ate, just eyes closed, going deep into his still moment of gratitude. It was always a beat too long for me--slightly uncomfortable--but where I might feel self-conscious, I could take his lead and just try to go inside for that pause....

Keep reading:

On Gratitude & Being Yourself – Rise Up Massage On Gratitude & Being Yourself Posted on November 10, 2021November 14, 2021 by [email protected] ON GRATITUDE & BEING YOURSELF  In this time of the year close to Halloween and Day of the Dead, it is said that the veil is thin. The boundary between the living and the dead is blurred. Our own fam...

“Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.” — Seneca

I have been taking a beautiful course and journey with my teacher, Amba Gale called Crossing Thresholds. We reach these moments in our life, these thresholds that we encounter where we get to choose to cross over and see what lies on the other side for us.

Keep reading: https://buff.ly/2YIyCPE

You get to decide what comes with you and what stays behind in your life.

✨ How does that make you feel? Does anything come to mind that you might benefit from letting come with you or letting stay behind?

✨ Are there things present in your life right now that you sense the need to let go?

✨ What might it mean for you to forgive and give closure?

As you go into the middle of the week, what is it that your body and soul need the most? Check in with yourself.

Perhaps you’re craving community, rest, or security. What could help you to find this right now, in this moment?

I'm starting to learn how to inhabit my body in a deeper, more loving way. I had a realization about "stress" recently. I saw how in extra busy times in my life, even when I feel generally like things seem " Ok, we're doing this, I've got this, " there can be subtle yet specific symptoms that will alert me to the stress I'm actually feeling. Ways that my body is absorbing the stress before I may even be consciously aware of it.⠀
⠀
My own body's particular way of cueing me into my stress are: knotted up stomach, difficulty sleeping distracted, inability to focus, really falling off of my self-care routine (food choices and exercise ~ which is doubly counter-productive as these are the things that can keep stress under control! I'll think: I'm way too busy to slow down for that right now. So much to do, etc... ⠀
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I have even found some sneaky tells of my stress like obsessing over the relationships I have with those around me and overthinking things. I've learned to see those clearly for what they are (sometimes it takes a minute- or a while to realize!) and I can say, "Oops! I can stop thinking about that now because I'm just stressed out. I see you, tricky mind!" I'll try to remember to focus back on something peaceful in my life rather than others in that moment. I'll try to catch a break, go on a walk, be still and quiet somewhere. ⠀
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If you can learn to catch yourself with those early cues that your body and habits are telling you, you may be able to recognize what's happening deep down inside before things get unmanageable. You get to have an entirely different experience with your stress and sometimes, maybe really appreciate it as that cue to shift and try something different. ⠀

Keep Reading: https://buff.ly/3C0CusA

The soul always knows what to do to heal itself.
The challenge is to silence the mind.
– Caroline Myss

Journal Prompts For Finding Closure & Moving Forward

🖊 You get to decide what comes with you and what stays behind in your life.
How does that make you feel? Does anything come to mind that you might benefit from letting come with you or letting stay behind?

🖊 Are there things present in your life right now that you sense the need to let go?

🖊 What might it mean for you to forgive and give closure?

Just like any other important aspect of our lives, rest needs to become a priority.

Getting a sufficient amount of rest and relaxation can:
🍁 reduce stress and anxiety
🍁 improve mood
🍁 decrease blood pressure
🍁 bring chronic pain relief
🍁 improve immune health
🍁 build a stronger cardiovascular system

We can't help to take away the stressors in your life, but we can help as you prioritize restorative rest. We are here to support you as you seek a mind-body connection

Book a massage today: https://buff.ly/2Xzjp28

Life is a moving, breathing thing. We have to be willing to constantly evolve. Perfection is constant transformation.

Nia Peeples

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another – and ourselves.
- Jack Kornfield

As you go through this week, we are here to support you as you seek to find peace and release the stress you've been holding in your mind and body.
Come see us at Rise Up Massage and let us support you in restoring your mind-body connection.
Book a massage today: https://buff.ly/2Xzjp28

I have been studying Somatic Experience work in this last year and a half since the start of COVID. Somatic Experience helps people “build awareness, coherence, and self-regulation. The result is a deeper understanding of the body/mind connection with an improved ability to release and regulate emotions. It also helps manage stress, resolve issues related to trauma, heal from and navigate life transitions, relationships and build resilience.”

An idea developed by Dr. Peter Levine, he believed that humans (like animals in the wild) possess the same ability to release physical energy from stress but often thwart it by “keeping it together” following trauma. We all probably have direct experience “keeping it together” through a difficult experience...

Keep reading: https://buff.ly/3BPT5jQ