Bright’s Northfield Restaurant Blog

Self massage is a wonderful, healing activity. Back in Chicago, a neighbor of mine taught me this routine. She was the first woman to introduce yoga to America, in the early 1920s. She was known as Yogini Naradne and was an American woman from Colorado, married to an Indian yoga master. When I knew her, she was in her 80s, still kickin’ and teaching yoga.

The point of self massage is to move lactic acid, a toxin created from eating food, through your body…out of your muscles and out the body’s doors.

Start with the toes and wiggle them, using your brain, your hands, and/or any surface. Stretch them out, bend them back and forth, stand on them, whatever you can imagine. Spend a minute or so on that.

Then move to the ankles. Again, stretch them, roll them around, massage them. Feel into them and in between the ankle bones. Rub them. Spend two minutes or so there.

Go to the calf muscle. A big muscle that needs rolling up and down motion…use a rolling pin if you have one, or a smooth stick. Rub and squeeze that big muscle. Work your hands as you move out those bad toxins.

Now go to the top of that calf muscle, up to where they join the knee area. Rub around in there, get to know that area well. It’s complicated and it’s where
toxins accumulate because some of it doesn’t move that much on it’s own. Rub, rub, rub.

Now, get up to the thigh muscle. A huge muscle. Roll it, massage it. You know the drill by now. Spend some time there. Clean up that thigh muscle.

There is only a small part of the back that I cannot reach to massage. Forget about it if you don’t have another set of hands around your house. Just get to what you can reach. Twist your body from the waist as far to the left and right as you can. This will help wring out some of the back muscles you may not be able to work on by hand. Take care not to strain yourself, especially at first.

If you run across a muscle that is really sore, it might just be lactic acid build up, and you can go ahead and rub it gently until things loosen up there. OR it might be some serious pain in an organ. See your doctor if something seems really wrong. You might have a strain, or just bad air, stuck. Check it out for yourself, or have a doctor check it out. Don’t hurt yourself in any way.

Continuing your self massage;
Move up the sides of your body, into the buttocks muscles, your shoulder joints, elbow and wrist joints, arms, neck and head (all the way around) and even the ears. Use swirling, massaging, pulsing, rolling, rubbing motions…whatever seems to float your body boat.

Finally, lay on your back, bring your knees up to your chest as far as you can comfortably get them, and then squeeze your knees with your arms wrapped around them, into your chest. This will give the organs a massage which they happen to like quite a bit.

Start at the toes, end at the top of the head…finish off with an organ squeeze. That way, you can’t forget any part.

After a few times, a few days go by, you will establish a pattern, a habit of what works well for you. Try to hit as many joints and muscles as possible. Take ten to fifteen minutes every morning and every night if you can. If not every day, whatever you can manage, even once or twice a week, will help your attitude, your hand strength, your self caring, and your body’s overall health.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and I do not mean to give this as medical advice, but I do konw that people around the world do this regularly for their health and well being. Please take care of your self as best as you can and give your self some healthy pleasure.

Massage is a loving and caring thing that you can do for yourself and others, including pets.

We had to leave town today because we spent so much time looking around at the beautiful leaves and trees and such…the people participating in the annual fall rituals, festivals and celebrations…what a lovely town is Northfield…well we did it to the limit and chased the fall colors a little bit further south and right into the Mississippi River wetlands that were created, or I should say, recreated down in Wabasha County. It was startlingly beautiful even though past peak, and perhaps 20-30% left. The colors were just a scrumptious as a plate full of your favorite Thanksgiving dinner. Corn meal yellow, green bean green, vegetable gravy brown, white garlic mashed potatoes with creamy yellow butter and deep orange yams with brown and white marshmallow atop. Oh, and don’t forget cinnamon apple pie red and tan with coffee with cream colored coffee with cream. Yep, all these colors and more were playing chameleon on the bluffs all along the Great River.

And for the first time in my recent life, I said, no camera. I just wanted to relish in the atmosphere without the machine between it and me. I would have pealed off my skin if that would have helped. Weird, I know, but sometimes weird helps you see normal, whatever that is.

Anyway, we stopped a had a decent meal with good, good service at Skyline on Pepin, Lakeside Dining and Coctails located at 1702 Lakeshore Drive, N.
in Lake City, Minnesota 651-345-5353. www.skylineonpepin.com

We also got to see part of the Vikings v Cowboys game, and got home in time to see the last 9 minutes and hooray for the Vikings! So, that rounded off a really lovely day trip. Thanks to Northfield for having so many lovely manicured autumn sites and thanks to the Mississippi Valley for doing the natural thing so well. And thanks to Brett Favre for playing through the pain. He’s one tough fella.