The UnLymphatic Tarlov's Date with Massage

About that Therapeutic Mineral Bath..it rocked. It really is a shame that they went out of popularity. There are several bathhouses on bathhouse row but there are only a couple that are open, only one that has always remained open since 1912. Most of them went out of business around ’69 because the advent and increasing dispensing of modern da medication. The doctors stopped prescribing the hot baths and turned the other direction. As a result of this it is incredibly cheap to get a hot bath, stay in a nice hotel, eat dinner, and go quartz hunting. Ok, on to the tofu and potatoes of my story, after my mineral bath I opted to get a massage. For some reason I feel the urge to talk to her rather than relax and just get my massage like I would normally do. Come to find out her husband was in a really bad accident and injured his spinal cord about two years ago. He was basically paralyzed from the neck down. The neurosurgeons gave them no hope that he would walk again. So, she began researching and landed on acupressure massage (a massage for your nerves is how she described it). She gave him one (alternating areas of his back) daily along with a regular body massage every day and he was walking with a cane by month 13. What an amazing story.

I then explained to her what a Tarlov Cyst was and what I had been doing and trying to do. She was very adamant that she felt I could use this kind of massage to get the fluid out of there and perhaps allow everything else I have been doing to heal it up…this of course this was a mother freaking fabulous thing to hear! She stated, in her opinion, that she felt that changing my diet helped because one of your main lymph drainage point in your body is directly over the sacrum. The lymph system is one of the major components of the immune system. The less irritants (ie toxins) I consume the less irritating it is as I process it out right on top of my cyst. Plus, the lymph system is a manual system, meaning it is not like your blood system which pumps itself via the heart. The lymph system is moved through movement, manually. That is where a good gentle stretching routine and lymphatic massages come in handy. She believed that by adding in acupressure to stimulate my nerves and help to dump the fluid that I could possibly rid myself of this, at the very least she felt confident it would reduce any pain I have. She showed me a technique that my husband has been doing on my lower back every day for about 3 minutes. Directions to follow:

Find the last vertebrae of the spine and call this the starting point. Use two fingers and gently rub in circles straight down to the tailbone. Do this in a sun pattern, fanning across your butt cheeks and lower back. Finish with a firm full handed rub in an ‘X’ motion across the sacrum. Do this for 3 minutes daily.

Now I am beginning to get a weekly 30 minute lymphatic/acupressure massage focused on my back. Today was my first one and I must have had a helluva lot more toxins stored back there then I thought because I feel fuzzy headed, my stomach is upset, and I am exhausted…more signs of detox. I will let you know how that goes!