If ever there was a sacred treatment, I would have to say it was massage and the art of ‘touch’. The concept of massage therapy goes back thousands of years, although I daresay the art of healing touch is, as a primal instinct, as old as human kind itself. In India and the Orient, touch was practiced to release chi (or energy) that was trapped in parts of the body through some sort of injury or stress, so the body was free to heal...

A backache now and again when you’ve been out mowing the lawn or painting the house is understandable.  However, intense or long-term back pain could be a signal that something is wrong with either the structure of your back or your general health.  One of the main reasons to consult a professional  about your back pain is because it can be caused by things other than the run-of-the-mill suspects like injury, strain, exercise, or...

I am happy to report that my back/hip is doing a little better. I have a pretty good idea of what is causing my discomfort; I’ve been stretching some tight muscles – which is good thing, but while things are loosening up, it feels - temporarily, at least – worse. And when your back hurts it affects everything that you do from that point on. You can put a broken arm in a sling. You can’t put your back in a sling and...

It is the mark of an affluent society to have so many choices on what to eat, and the leisure to consider it at length. At times the choices can seem overwhelming and the concept of eating well means different things to different people. It can be taken to mean gourmet food or the slow food revolution; it can mean eating to promote health  and the idea of food as medicine. Another way of looking at eating well is making choices that...

A few weeks ago I pulled a muscle in the front of my thigh and sometimes it flares up when I dance. It almost put me on the benches in one class I taught, with sudden sharp pain and a weakness that left me unable to put weight on my leg for a few beats. I got through the rest of the class by teaching at a gentler level one. I probably aggravated an injury from a few months back that hadn’t fully healed and left me with a...