What is Profound Therapies: Who is my Audience and What do You want to see?

What is Profound Therapies and Tom Maxson, LMBT? What are your movement and stress management needs? Since I started this page and channel way back in October of 2011, before Facebook and Youtube really took shape as the dominant online ecosystems that they are today, I’ve been collecting an extremely diverse set of followers from all directions, quite the unique audience- some are professional colleagues, some are clients who were interested in specific modalities or techniques that I practice, some are fellow educators or students… SO, now I’m at an interesting point in my career where I have studied all kinds of things in the massage therapy field, as well as many more manual therapy adjacent, health nutty topics AND I’m not sure at all now who my audience even is and what you want to hear from me. I’ve been studying up on social media and brand management, during this quarantine downtime, and I’ve come up with a list of potential topics that I’ve talked about in the past online, or teach about in the classroom, or am exceptionally nerdy about. I’m trying to quote “Establish yourself as a Subject Matter Expert” in whatever “Message” I’m putting out into the interwebs, which means to me that it’s best if I stick to subjects that are within my legal scope of practice as a licensed professional massage therapist, or topics I have specific advanced training in and have some sort of certificate or certification. Please Bear with me as I go through the list, this is going a little bit in the weeds and is possibly self indulgent, but I need YOUR help to help decide where the channel goes next. What do you want to hear from me. How can MY expertise help YOU live a happier, healthier, lower pain, lower stress, higher performance life?
Here's the list of 17 topics I have so far:
Myofascial Release Explained Myoskeletal Alignment Explained Posture and Pain Specialist 3 Dimensional Flexibility, Beyond Linear Stretching How the Feet connect to the Body Sleep Stress Management Training your Body from your Brain down Squats (Natural Movement) Barefoot Life: Minimal Running, Unshod Performance Water and Hydration/Fluid movement in the body Foot Reading with Reflexology principles Therapeutic Massage doesn’t have to be Deep Foot Reflexology and Anxiety Relief Research Foot Reflexology as a tool to identify Stress Creative Movement: Dancers from the Feet to the Brain Growth is Better than Gains Mind Body Connection (mental health, relaxation)

Thank you so much for helping me out on this journey of learning together, how to move, function, perform, and recover in the best possible way!

Sleep to Improve Performance

Sleep should be one of the easiest, most natural responses to stress or dysfunction in the body, but a lot of people seem to be really bad at it. Many times it's the first thing to get neglected when we have a big project or important event coming up, to give ourselves more prep time. Sadly, high quality sleep is the thing we need most of all when it's time to lean into the hard work. 

According to an article published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care in 2016, “Chronic insomnia was seen in 33% of the adult population sampled." It's such a high priority issue, that they recommend “...all patients, especially middle-aged and diabetics, should be screened for insomnia by the primary care physician…”

If you fall into the one third of people with chronic sleep disruptions, how bad is it really? It can actually create challenges in many areas of your daily life. The National Sleep Foundation lists several things to watch out for: Fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability, impulsive or aggressive behavior, and relationship difficulties. None of those traits sound like optimal performance to me. Physical or mental performance will certainly be impaired by lack of sleep.

If you are training to optimize athletic performance, quality sleep should be an even higher priority for you. Key body building and repair hormones Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone are only produced during deep sleep stages. Ladies, don't check out on me here, because you have T and HGH in your systems too, doing mostly the same jobs, just in different amounts. Testosterone can only be used by the body to repair itself during sleep. It cannot be stored in the body for use during the day, instead it breaks down into Estrogen, which is stored in fat, typically abdominal fat.

Dr. Shafiq Qaadri says in his excellent book, The Testosterone Factor, “Sleep is when you strengthen your bones, muscles, memories, blood, sperm and new learning. It’s when your onboard diagnostics and your immune system self-heal and detoxify. It’s when you repair both physical and psychological wounds. It’s when you grow both physically and psychologically.” He goes on to explain that “Testosterone leads, triggers, oils, oversees, contributes to, mediates or is involved in all of these restorative processes. The better you sleep, the more testosterone shines.  As this hormone level rises, it also promotes other brain chemicals important for quality sleep including, melatonin, serotonin, and human growth hormone.”

Definitely keep working out, because exercise, especially resistance training and high intensity interval training, pushes your body to produce more Testosterone naturally while you sleep. Just keep in mind, that if you don't get plenty of quality sleep after all the hard work in the gym, the results will never happen.

Thankfully, The Mayo Clinic has some suggestions on how to get better sleep. First of all, you need to keep a consistent sleep schedule. Start your bedtime routine at the same time every night and go to bed at the same time every night. Likewise, if your schedule does not allow for enough sleep at one stretch during the night, keep your daytime naps consistent as well. Another obvious tip is to limit your caffeine intake and even wean yourself off of caffeinated beverages entirely (we're looking at you, Coffee), if you're struggling with severe sleep disruptions.

Another key bit of advice from The Mayo Clinic is to be proactive about pain management. Since I'm a Licensed Massage and Bodywork Therapist, as well as a Certified Reflexologist, I'm obviously going to suggest that you start by managing your sleep disrupting pain by making an appointment with a well trained, properly licensed holistic practitioner, before seeking out pharmaceutical interventions. Sleep aids are notoriously habit forming and Opioid type pain relievers come with a host of side effects, including being extremely addictive. Here are some staggering stats from the CDC about the Opioid Epidemic.

Let's talk about Reflexology as an alternative for pain management and for encouraging sleep. There have been several studies over the past five years, published in reputable peer reviewed journals, that suggest that Foot Reflexology is highly beneficial for those needs. For example, The Journal of Clinical Oncology stated that "...plantar reflexology improved significantly the quality of Sleep" in breast cancer patients. According to the International Journal of Nursing Education and Research, "After receiving foot reflexology therapy, the subjects showed significant pain relief and improved sleep.” Even in a meta-analysis of 44 individual studies, the Korean Academy of Nursing concluded that "... Foot Reflexology is a useful nursing intervention to relieve Fatigue and to promote Sleep."

To find a knowledgeable, certified Reflexologist in your area, you can search on the Reflexology Association of America's site or check out the American Reflexology Certification Board to find one of my Nationally Board Certified colleagues. There are also state level Reflexology associations, like here in North Carolina where I’m a member.

As you can see, sleep is a priceless tool in maintaining your health. Since it can benefit you in so many areas, start taking advantage of it tonight to improve your performance in whatever you’re working on- physical or mental- so you can crush your goals and feel amazing!

The last thing I want to share with you is a Leonardo daVinci quote, "A well-spent day brings happy sleep."

Stress Threshold, Stress Awareness, and Migraines

Here are some thoughts about how we deal with stress daily, hourly, and even down to the second. Every little thing adds up so you have to be mindful of your personal "Stress Threshold" and what triggers set you off, so you can prevent critical events like Migraines or Painful Flare-ups elsewhere in the body. 

Audio Only Version: Download this episode (right click and save)

How Much Do You Squat, Bruh?

I'm not really asking how much weight you can stack on a bar for a set of Squats at the gym. The real question is, "How often do you Squat?" 

A Deep Resting Squat is one of the most natural positions for humans to spend time in, but unfortunately, most of us don't spend much time squatting at all, after we hit school age. If you watch toddlers exploring and playing in their environment, they will frequently squat down to look at something more closely and/or grab it to examine it physically. Soon, however, we start introducing the modern chair and table, which disconnects the lower body from the upper body. We don't need any flexibility or movement from the bottom half to bring things closer to our face and hands for learning. 

In "Developed" or "Western" countries, a typical young student will spend 8 hours a day sitting in a desk like these and maybe another 2-5 hours a day sitting in a cafeteria chair, a bus or car seat, and then some kind of chair at home doing homework. A physical education class or recess period will most likely be less than 1 hour. That's quite an imbalance, in my opinion, which sets up our bodies for failure later. In Traditional Thai Massage there's a philosophy that "Aging begins in the legs."Immobility and frailty of the hip joints are notoriously bad signs for elderly people. It's a shame that we set up those habits culturally, decades earlier. 

I just did some manual therapy on a patient who is an IT professional.  He is working through some lingering low back pain after a car accident, and shared that his coworker was suffering from sciatica. He asked if I knew any stretches for those issues. I told him to squat. Just get in a deep squat and sit for 20-30 seconds. It will feel very foreign at first, but you can slowly build up to longer. Just moving through that full range of motion a few times throughout the day will do wonders for back and hip flexibility.

A deep, comfortable, heels to the ground, body weight squat is invaluable for ankle mobility, plantar fasciitis relief, blood flow, lumbar discs, sciatic pain, and more. Even if you need to cheat by leaning your back into a wall as your tissues get accustomed to this infrequent positioning, give it a try every day for a week and see if you've improved in any way. 

Think about the squatting in terms of growth vs. gains. Sure it's easy to get some quick gains doing consistent sets of squats at the gym. You can rack up more and more weights and lift it easier and easier as you strengthen your ankles, legs, hips and low back over time. You can see and feel a difference. It's trackable in your workout log. That's all gains, but I'm talking about growth. Growth is when your brain figures out the balance of your body in 3 dimensional space, in every tiny, nuanced vector of force and resistance throughout the entire range of motion of the squatting exercise. Even better if you're dealing with uneven terrain during some of your squatting motions, as opposed to a perfectly flat even gym floor. Your brain has to be engaged during the exercise in addition to the gross muscles. Best case scenario, both your brain and muscles work in concert, to produce strong, stable, balanced, consistent, adaptable movement. The more holistic concept of growth is superior, in my opinion, to simple gains in numbers of pounds added to the bar. 


Here is a video that examines squatting vs. chairs and how it affects other movements throughout the body:

Healthy Stress Management vs. Training to Failure

Stress is ever present, so you can't shelter yourself forever. Since you can't eliminate stress, you have to learn to deal with it in an efficient way. Stress shapes who we are and how we interact with the world. All change is basically a form of stress and it's probably the most common source of stress in our modern, fast paced world. That means we have to deal with change to be able to manage stress efficiently.

Like many people, I have a hobby of running that relieves stress. I've been thinking about therapeutic properties of regular, aerobic exercise, but I also want to approach this as if I am building up my health, NOT breaking it down, recovering, and overworking again- cycling through pain and exercise with a "No Pain, No Gain" attitude. That's what I see in many of my clients who do marathons and triathlons, unless they have already taken several years to build up to that elite status.

That being said, we must start slow and steady- a little bit every day. Let's go for a short, peaceful run to build up some oxygen and pump the heart, instead of training to exhaustion. 

Here's a great video about how important it is to use your Brain to understand how Stress is affecting your Body- to have a healthy perspective about it.

How Much Water Should I Drink after a Massage?

The other day I got to speak with a particularly inquisitive massage therapy client, who likes to get each different therapist's unique perspective on his situation, by asking thoughtful questions throughout the massage. I like his questions, because I feel that he takes advantage of my hands and my brain.

When leaving this last time, he asked me, "How much water should I drink after a massage?" I have several stock answers, because it's a common question, but my most common answer is "The most important thing is to stay well hydrated all the time. One half your body weight in ounces- for example, if you weigh 100 pounds, drink 50 ounces of water daily, to maintain normal hydration. Then, drink a bit more, like you've had a good workout, to minimize soreness from the massage."

Hydration is very subjective, however. My inquisitive client got me thinking. Staying hydrated all the time is the key. It's just like sleeping habits. If I only sleep 4-5 hours a night with loud ambient noise and bright lights, most nights, then sleeping 12 hours on the weekend days isn't going to help much. I get clients who come in with a gallon jug of water and start chugging as soon as they stand up from the table. If they are primarily drinking energy drinks, diet soda and coffee most days, and only have a little bit of water daily, that gallon after the massage is an extreme change!

The body doesn't handle extreme changes well. Your body prefers consistent, well balanced habits. The gallon chugger probably isn't going to hurt himself, if he is already well hydrated from consistent intake of clean water as a daily practice. So, like getting a good night's sleep regularly, staying hydrated consistently will keep the body functioning optimally before, during, and after the massage.

Check out this Water Intake Calculator with several unit conversions.

*Notice I didn't say anything about "Toxins." Neither massage nor reflexology are flushing out Toxins into your bloodstream. That's been debunked as the science has advanced. Here's a good article about that from Massage Magazine. 

What's the Difference Between Sports Massage and Deep Tissue Massage?

Yesterday I had a couples massage on a regular client. Afterward, when washing up, the other therapist said that I had done one of the best "Sports Massages" she had ever seen. That compliment was funny to me, because I was doing much more rehab/injury type work than sports work. The client had been working with a Chiropractor daily for a week to resolve some severe lumbar pain and spasm. I was thinking way more about that challenge, than preparing him to get back to training for the half marathon he has coming up. His sedentary desk job was exacerbating the issue just as much as running would have.

I mention this, because I feel like there's a lot of confusion about "Sports Massage" and what that label means. To me, it is applying Myofascial Release, Neuromuscular Therapy, Structural/Postural Alignment, Stretching and/or Flushing Swedish techniques to a specific soft tissue imbalance, in a person who is doing something athletic. I can use this very same definition for "Deep Tissue Massage" except that the client may not be using his body for specifically sports or athletic training. Sitting at a computer several hours a day isn't "Athletic," but it is using the body repetitively. Which is the unifying theme- Repetition.

There's not a list of secret "Sports" techniques that only apply to athletes. I'm going to do whatever kind of massage the client needs for the specific problem area that day. Problem areas usually come from some kind of repetition mixed with imbalance. When the body is not used to doing a movement and is then forced to repeat the movement, you create strain. After strain comes compensation,  creating more imbalance. I'm going to look at any client who comes to me from that perspective; to unravel the compensation, imbalance and overuse to restore the optimal movement in the body. If you want to call that "Sports Massage," I'm happy to take the compliment. If you want to call that "Deep Tissue Massage," we are starting to speak the same language.