Herne Bay Massage

If you have Sugaring with me you will be given the exfoliation talk.

Exfoilating

I cannot stress enough how important this is in between your treatments.  Exfoliation is simply the removal of the oldest dead skin cells on the skin’s outermost surface.  When I trained as a massage therapist we covered the skin in a lot of detail but being so young at the time I had no idea how important looking after your skin really was.  I thought it was something only pampered bored girls did who had nothing better to do… how wrong I was.

When I went on my Alexandria Professional® training in 2010 we studied the skin in detail and exfoliating cropped up again.  This time I paid a lot more attention, being 40+ I realized that my skin needed more help.

The Egyptians realized that Sugaring removed hair and also acted as an exfoliation.  We now know that the more you exfoliate the better your Sugaring experience will be. As it keeps the dead skin cells cleared away allowing the hair to pop out of its follicle and therefore you prevent ingrown hairs.

The dermis is the lowest layer of skin and this is where new skin cells are created.  Cells move up to the surface of the skin and become more acidic, they then die and become filled with keratin.  Keratin protects the skin from outside elements so is very important but (and this is what I did not understand when I was 20) through the ageing process (and after menopause) the natural skin erosion becomes uneven, which gives the skin a dry and rough character.

As Sugaring weakens the hair it is less able to push its way out and if dead skin cells are clogging the way it just runs sideways – causing ingrown hairs, bumps and sometimes infections.

Exfoliation removes this uneven outer layer to reveal the newer skin beneath. This shedding of the outer layer unclogs pores, keeps skin clean, and helps reduce acne breakouts.

You will need

1. Exfoliating gloves
2. Dead Sea Salt.

Take a handful of Sea Salt in the shower and gently rub it all over your body in circular movements.

Be sure to moisturize afterwards.

Within 7 – 10 days you will be seeing and feeling the difference.

Ingrown hairs will be eliminated and your whole body will glow.

•  Exfoliation should always be done after cleansing the skin.
• Exfoliation helps exposes the hair follicles
• Over exfoliate and you will get dried and irritated skin.
• The face is the part of the body most sensitive to exfoliation.
• It is very important to moisturize the skin otherwise dry skin can lead to wrinkle development.

I stock the Alexandria Professional® retail pack “I Love My Skin™”… this is exactly the same products that I am using in the salon – only in much smaller bottles.  Regular use of these three great skin care products will enhance your Sugaring and you will really see the difference.

I Love My Skin

Hello to you, welcome to Herne Bay Massage’s first ever party post for the Ultimate Blog Party 2012.

Like all good parties we want everyone to relax at soon as they arrive… so the candles are lit, the music is playing and the lights are dim.  We have been watching from the side how 5 Minutes for Mom blog and we think they are amazing.  Like all parties it can be a worry when you first arrive, so we want you to feel at home here and most importantly we want to know about YOU!

Herne Bay Massage is run by me, Carolynn and I have been a massage therapist a long time.  I love people, I love getting to know people and best of all I like helping people feel great during a massage.  So many times I go into a slightly cold room, hesitate to climb onto the couch and then find it really hard to switch off my brain.  Working,  juggling child care, being a daughter and a mother all takes alot of energy and its really hard to just relax.  That is why when you come to me I do all the hard work in helping you to relax…. warmed couch, scented candles and Hot Stones all go towards the best massage experience in Herne Bay.

So if you have never been for a massage I can help you find a massage therapist near you.  If you are a massage therapist then I would love to hear about your working life experience.

Also as part of my service I offer Alexandria Professional® Body Sugaring – its really not well known in the UK – YET!  If you are already converted then please do tell me all about your Sugaring experience over there in USA.

Its my mission to put it on the map in the UK…

Be sure to tell all your friends about 5 Minutes for Mom

I would love to hear from you – having never done a Blog Party I really do not know what goes on… but hey – don’t go away without at least saying hello!

On 29^th February 2012 I went back into the classroom for two days with Lina Kennedy, President of Alexandria Professional® – it was an amazing experience and totally motivational.

In a mixture of theory and practical we worked hard for those two days – we were models for each other so that we could perform the techniques but also feel them.  None of us could believe our luck to have the President of the company in person. actually Sugaring us and it was truly inspirational to hear all her stories of hair removal across the world.

 There was nothing false about Lina, dressed in her company T Shirt and black slacks on the first day she quickly made us feel at ease and was soon putting on the medical gloves to show us first hand what Body Sugaring is all about.  Turning up the next day in a fabulous “wrinkle” dress that “travels well” she looked a million dollar with skin that radiated smoothness.

 There is nothing like Alexandria Professional® in the UK, it’s only just starting out over here.  Having originally trained and qualified in September 2010 I was one of the first batch of therapists to be trained at the Carlton Institute in Windsor and I went  back again for Continuing Professional Development and am now one of the first in the UK to be trained on the Six Steps To Achieve a Perfect Sugaring Technique™ which guarantees hair refinement and offers wonderful skin that will look and feel smoother than you have had before.

We learned even more about the Sugar Paste, its consistency, its purity, and other manufacturing issues.  Lina has been Body Sugaring for 22 years and she really cares about her Company and the products, alongside the education of her practitioners.

Within the Alexandria Professional® range there are three types of Sugar Paste with the softest being called simply LK Private Stock™.  Having read in their catalog it was intended for practitioners who have mastered their skills I was delighted to be able to have a go with it and within hours of hands on experience with Lina we were all hooked – no one got “stuck”, no one had a meltdown and everyone found the wonderful softness great for really seeping into the skin and extracting really short hairs.   Just what our clients want.

Product knowledge was also discussed in greater detail and the Lina talked at length about skin conditioning and hair refinement.

Products I have available now are:-

Phenomen-all Skin Repair™ cream which is formulated to repair, refresh and rejuvenate skin.

• It’s No 1 Seller across USA and used everyday for treating ingrown hair and skin issues.
• 100% non-irritating & gentle enough to be used on sensitive skin by men, women, and children.
• Replenishes moisture, calms irritation and softens skin cells to help relieve ingrown hairs.
• Great for cuticle treatment whilst also helping to smooth out stretch marks & scars.

Use this fantastic skin conditional treatment and your hair extraction will be easier because the skin will be better conditioned and cause less resistance.

Hungarian Wellness Mud™ is also part of the skin conditioning programme as this wonderful Mud immediately helps reduce inflammation and draw out impurities and purge ingrown hairs.

Also available the “I Love My Skin™” range which is the retail sized products of the professional skin care that I use in my treatments, so that you can maintain your skin between treatments.  Cleanser, Toner and Hydrating Cream all in smaller bottles than I use during the treatments.

I believe this is going to spread across the UK as it has in USA and I intend to be on that journey… come join me…book a treatment and feel for yourself how great you skin can really be this summer.

Tell me you read this article and get 30% discount on  your first Sugaring treatment.

Preparing To Teach In the Lifelong Learning Sector.

I cannot believe that I have this week handed in my completed Portfolio for the Preparing To Teach In the Lifelong Learning Sector (also known as PTLLS).

It seemed such a good idea at the time to sign up with Thanet College and every Thursday attend 3 hours in the classroom.  Like most things in life you don’t know what you don’t know, and as with all adult learning these days its all self directed, which I found out means you have do put in the research and reading to learn what they once upon a time would have spoon fed you on the blackboard.  These days learning is all about facilitating the learner… so alongside 15 other adults we stared across at each other on the first day and wondered what we would make of this.

For me it was the shock of having to write essays that really took my breath away.  Now I know that many of my friends are right in the middle of degrees and 4,000 word essays seem normal to them, but to me 700 words seemed really hard.

Level 4 – Review your role, responsibilities and boundaries as a teacher/trainer/tutor in terms of the teaching/training cycle. Recommended word count 500-700 words.  To say I struggled with this was an understatement, my problem was that I had never written an essay for Level 4 and therefore had no idea where to start.  With a lot of reading, and help from a couple of friends I did manage to produce a reasonable essay – albeit that in my desperate attempt to get to 700 words I did miss out the Boundaries answer but I was allowed to add one final paragraph – phew.

The 2^nd essay had to be completed before getting the first one back due to the October half term.  It used the words review and evaluate which having now got to the end of the course I don’t think I really understood on week 2.  The title was Review a range of different assessment methods available and explain the ones you would use for your subject area.  Evaluate the use of assessment methods in different contexts, including reference to initial assessment.

At the very start I had to learn how to use Harvard Referencing and that alone was something to get my head around.  I did have lots of friends offering to help, offering their old portfolios etc but I really wanted to do this all by myself… once essay 1 and 2 were under my belt it was a case of reading reading and more reading.  I found the whole thing fascinating and having been a School Governor for a number of years it was great to be on the other side of things…. Always in the background was the looming thought that we had to give a 30 minute micro teach with written schemes of work and lessons plans.  I tried to put the thought out of my head but I will admit to thinking about it a lot. I had no idea how to even start this and had little faith in an unknown teacher who kept telling us that by the time it came in week 9 we would be rocking and rolling in teaching skills.

Anyway essay number 3 was Summaries the key aspects of current legislative requirements and codes of practice relevant to your subject and the type of organization within which you work/would like to work.

By now I was falling behind on some domestic duties and with juggling children, husband and my massage/sugaring business I was beginning to feel a little under pressure.  I starting thinking that a     might be needed. No matter how much I told myself that my friends were struggling a lot more (one was doing a full time job along side her paramedics university course) I still felt that my work/life balance was not right.  Anyway I knew it was only until Christmas and so I pressed on.

I celebrated my birthday with a low key party of 30 people and that very weekend laughed instead of worked!  I knew I would be lastminute.com but I also think that’s how I best work… right up to the edge on a deadline.

It was hard when the boys had homework that required some parental input as I often thought I would get my work down whilst the house was in “homework” mode, but it did not really work out.  I was the one up late at night!

Essay 4 was Discuss issues of equality and diversity and ways to promote inclusion with your learners.  Review other points of referral available to meet the potential needs of learners.

Christmas shopping took over but card writing was cut to the bare minimum after one of my lovely clients on my couch in a terrible state told me all her troubles including writing 100s of cards.  Instantly we both knew the solution and so we both agreed to tell our friends that this year cards would only to people who we had not seen since September.  This really helped me and I saved a lot of time and stamp money.  I was really careful to tell everyone how much I loved them and wished everyone a very merry time.. cards are so LAST YEAR!

I found the next essay very interesting Evaluate a range of ways to embed elements of Functional skills, in your specialist area.  I have friends with children who did not do well at school and have themselves gone back to college to increase their functional skills so I felt it was really worthwhile.

Eventually I managed to keep up and before I knew it I was ready for the micro teach.  I made all my handouts, my powerpoint presentation (which is shown on a separate blog) and was ready.

I stood in front of the class and took a deep breath.  I had written SPEAK SLOWLY on the very top as I am known to talk very fast and very loudly when excited or nervous.

It went very well.  I did a small icebreaker, everyone relaxed and they engaged in the activity – it was hand massage demonstration.  The teacher said she had not seen someone enjoy their microteach quite as much as I did!  I remembered to state the aims and objectives, to do an initial assessment, I engaged with the learners, I made sure they were confident with the task and eventually asked for any questions!

So having handed in my schemes of work, my lesson plans, written my rationale and completed all the requirements I sit back and answer the question I asked myself a while ago… Can I teach….?  Until I have the pass certificate I don’t know. However, I think I am ready to give it my best shot.

This is the website I used to help me…

http://ptllsresource.co.uk/resources/ptlls-assignments

Good Luck

Anyone who knows me will be bored by the number of times I say how great massage is, how everyone should get them, how our children should all be taught to give and receive and how wonderful it is.   Over the years I have persuaded a lot of my friends onto my couch and converted them all – they send their husbands, their mums and sisters and that’s how I build up my business.

Relaxing Massage

It’s really hard to explain to new people how a massage can benefit someone.  Scientific studies are difficult to find even today but I recently came across an article from July 2011 in an American medical journal (the wonders of the Internet) entitled A Comparison of the Effects of 2 Types of Massage and Usual Care on Chronic Low Back Pain.  Although only a small study of 406 people had been undertaken the results were interesting.

The two types of massage were, a general relaxation massage, and the other was a more specific Structural Massage.  People were selected who had general lower back ache, no one had a specific problem, i.e. cancer or fractures and they were followed up at 10 weeks, 26 weeks and 52 weeks after their treatments.

I have seen lots of people receive positive benefits to my massage and therefore I was not at all surprised at the conclusion of the research it said“Massage therapy may be effective for treatment of chronic back pain with the benefits lasting at least 6 months. No clinically meaningful difference between relaxation and structural massage was observed in terms of relieving disability or symptoms.”

The article did not shed any light on why or how massage was of benefit, but clearly showed that all reported a favorable outcome.  So I will continue to tell everyone that yes massage really does work and then just hope I can persuade people to climb onto my couch, sink into its warmth and let go of their tension.

Having worked all my adult life in an office I know only too well how stressful it can be.  Using my skills as a Massage Therapist I want to help desk bound office workers benefit from massage.

On Site Chair Massage is when a massage therapist comes into your Workplace, to relax and de-stress everyone, which benefit both the employee and the company.

On Site Chair Massage takes place in a specially designed massage chair in a quite room or at your desk and takes place through your clothing so requires no messy oils.

I bring the massage chair, some relaxing music and everything else that’s needed.

My companies that have regular massage at work for their staff, know it enhances and improves their employees overall performance and they are aware of the many benefits that massage gives including looking after and appreciating their employees.

I believe massage can help relieve physical and mental stress within a company.

It is also a cost-effective way to boost morale and increase your organisation’s productivity.

If you would be interested in having a regular or just a one off special for your staff please contact me.