Therapeutic Ayurvedic Yoga Massage for Women

In practical terms, treatments work on the whole body, with more emphasis on the areas that need more work.

• A session starts with an oil massage. This gradually warms up and softens muscle tissues and fascia, relaxes the body and mind, helps breathing and improves circulation.
• We work specifically with the breath to help the nervous system to relax.
• We use natural oils and a powder from the ground root of Acorus calamus, a wetland plant in the sweetflag family. This gives a pleasant exfoliating feeling, but mainly helps improve circulation and warm up the tissues, intensifying the benefits of the massage.
• The oil massage is supported by gentle mobilisations, tractions and assisted (passive) yoga stretches if needed - I'm doing the work; not you. These help lengthen the tissues in a functional way, useful if you’ve had injuries. Through these gentle movements we help relax the tendons and ligaments, and improve the circulation and promote natural healing in joints.

• Therapeutic Ayurvedic Yoga Massage works with both oil massage and movements, meaning your body gains all the benefits of both. I'll take time to understand your needs and your limits so you never feel over or under worked.
• Combining working close to your limits and using breathing to help activate the parasympathetic nervous system helps release tension from even the most ‘stuck’ parts of your body.
• Massaging, moving or stretching tense muscles can cause pain, resistance or agitation. The mindful touch and deep, relaxed breathing that AYM offers helps retrain the nervous system to not react in this way. This is great for moving you out of chronic pain.
• This whole-person approach to Therapeutic Ayurvedic Yoga Massage gives a lasting feeling of being centred, where you are less likely to feel agitated or restless, and experience increased clarity of thought.
• The approach aims to help you develop body awareness.

This depends on the individual: how quickly your body responds; how many parts of the body need deeper work; and your priorities/what you would like to get from your session. If you’d just like to relax and have an amazing full body massage experience then we’d recommend 90 minutes. If you’d like to start working deeper on different parts of your body then it depends how many parts of the body you’d like to work on, how quickly they respond, and whether you’d still like a full body massage as well as the deeper work. Generally, muscles will respond faster if (i) they haven’t been tight for a long time, and (ii) the body is used to yoga/bodywork/something where we feel some pain, breathe into it and then feel better. Then your brain associates being in that condition with relaxation rather than with danger/injury. We can work effectively on some people in 15 minutes, if they’re experienced yoga practitioners and we only work on the tightest part of their body. Many regulars prefer 2-3 hour sessions so they can have a full body massage with extra time to work deeper on the areas needing more attention. It’s really open ended as there’s always more that can be done!

Traditional Thai massage is given with the client fully clothed, so it’s not an oil massage. In AYM we can warm up and soften the soft tissues and promote circulation quicker through oil massage, and particularly with the use of calamus powder. Once the soft tissues are warmed up with the oil massage, we find that the stretches work better. This is the brilliance of AYM, and specifically of Kusum Modak who developed this method.

Therapeutic Ayurvedic Yoga Massage combines massage with tractions, mobilisations, rocking, and assisted stretches. Because it's dynamic we see where the body holds a lot tension, and we can work on getting the nervous system to release where we need it to with whichever tools seem to work best for you. It's often nothing short of miraculous.

During the session, you're typically undressed to your underwear and you have a folded lungi (soft cotton sheet) fashionably worn as a bandeau top (aka boob tube). You're then draped with lungis - acting as soft cotton sheets. These sheets are continuously adjusted to ensure that the you remain covered at all times, with only the area being worked on exposed. Your comfort and modesty are always prioritised throughout the massage experience.