Massage success (and no unwelcome touching)

So last week I left you all with a cliffhanger…I know you've been biting your fingernails, toes curled in anticipation, bums hanging on the edges of your seats wondering how my massage went and whether or not I even went through with it.

Well, worry no more. On Thursday I had my massage with Brittany of Head Games. As mentioned, I was a little leery going into it and, to be honest, most nervous about having certain parts of my body worked on.

When I arrived I was given a form to fill out, asking me the basic health questions, whether or not I have any major medical problems and, what I found to be the most important # were there any areas I did not want my massage therapist to touch? Wanting to make myself clear I wrote as neatly as I could "No butt touching, please - :)" (that smiley face was an addition to my plea, so that she knew I meant business).

I had heard from a friend that they sometimes massage your butt. I also remember another friend telling me that one time she got a massage in Spain and the woman who did it flipped her over and started massage my friends' "chest area." No thanks.

I anxiously waited until Brittany arrived. She was great at making me feel relaxed and I eagerly admitted how nervous I was. I think I probably came across as a bit silly, but I didn't really care. I asked her about the whole butts/boobs thing and she assured me that she does not massage chests but she does, indeed, massage butts. I politely declined, even after being told it would feel wonderful. I knew that I wouldn't have been able to relax enough to enjoy it, picturing the poor girl with her hands massaging a big lump of squishy jell-o and so again, I passed.

I noted to Brittany that I had a pretty good pain threshold and like a lot of pressure so that she could go all out if she wanted # and that she did. There were a few painful spots that I almost had her stop massaging but almost as quickly as it was uncomfortable it suddenly turned and the pain wasn't pain but rather a warm and tingling feeling where I could tell that any knots or tightness I had were being worked away.

I ended up having my back/shoulders/sides and then my arms/legs/top of collar bone area worked on. It was a full sixty minute session and I don't know how Brittany kept up the energy because it certainly seemed like a lot of work. Afterwards I felt pretty good # I was sort of waiting for something phenomenal to happen, but really I just felt a lot more relaxed and not so wound up. I thanked Brittany once more and was on my way.

Cue to Friday morning, 7am, our weekly weigh in session. I woke to find that my left arm was a little tender, which I half expected what with the intensity in which Brittany worked on me. I only became a bit concerned when I realized that the tender area was also puffy and squishy, as if it were filled with some fluid. It hurt the same as a bruise, though it wasn't discolored and when held next to my other arm, it was noticeably misshapen.

I was able to catch up with Brittany later in the day and she confirmed what I thought # because my body was "wound" so tight she had to do a lot of work on it, causing all the toxins and lymph and stuff to be released. The remedy was drinking lots of water to flush it out and I'm happy to report I was squishy area free a few days later # well, at least on my forearm.

The rest of this past week has been relatively uneventful. Because I cannot currently focus and I know I need to submit this blog, I am going to make it easy to follow in bullet point format.

• Saturday morning, 9am, Kettlebell with a man named Joe who looked more like a Ken doll than a real person. He kicked my ass and I may or may not have been the victim of a Guinness and pizza induced hangover, making my workout harder than normal. It was a rather embarrassing 45 minutes.

• Monday morning we had our early weight training session and I made it through, yet again, unscathed.

• Reiki with Catherine at 9am where I was to shuffle through a deck of cards that had fun/pretty/interesting pictures on the front. I sat in the heat suite while doing so. I flipped through the deck pulling out two cards # one with a beach scene and another with an open book. Because I mustered the money to pay my $112.00 library fine (really) and have been in a bookish state of mind lately, I chose the book card solely for those reasons. It turned out that that card was representative of turning off internal chatter in my head, clearing out the negative, the things that make it hard to accomplish my goals or that may try to steer me clear of a positive direction. That was to be what I focused on during my session. I also want to note how cool Reiki is in the sense that our energies really do exist as an entity to be transmitted between people. I had been having really bad pain in my left ovary (I have stage IV endometriosis, which I don't think I've ever talked about here…but anyway…) I had been having this nasty pain above my left hip, which was exacerbated by lying down. A few minutes in our session, without me saying a word, Catherine shifted her hands over to that part of my belly and within minutes the pain subsided. Amazing.

• I came up with a mantra during my reiki session that was supposed to be along the lines of "everything is fine." I was/am to repeat this in times of stress, or when I can feel myself starting to lose it. Well, I nearly lost it multiple times on campus Monday afternoon when after finding out if I could have a letter stating I am near completion of my degree (I am only missing a math class which I am currently taking in order to graduate), I was told I may actually need to take THREE more classes. THREE!!! I already have 140 credits # the three extra classes would have been for a completely ridiculous reason. I kindly told the woman I was about to puke on her shoes if this was true and could she please double check. She did, but I had to check with someone else in another office/department # the entire time I repeated my mantra "Everything's fine. You will not throwdown in this advising office. You are okay" and I made it out alive.

• I did Kettlebell yesterday at The Landing, which was run by John Edmonds. We basically worked on a Turkish Getup which is something they probably refined in Turkish prisons because it sucks and feels like punishment. I was having a bit of a self-defeatist attitude yesterday and kept whining about how fat I am. New mantra : I am not a self conscious fourteen year old girl.

Our second to last weigh in is tomorrow. I was down 5lbs last week from the previous weigh in so I'm hoping my number will stay in that vicinity. I can't believe there's only a week left. I'm starting to become a little sentimental, not for the 6am wakeup calls but because soon I will have to acknowledge that I will no longer get to see this awesome group of people at least twice a week anymore. So sad, but I know we have all come a long way and I'm excited to see what this summer, and the future has in store.