Tuesday TOESday for Ashiatsu Massage Therapists … here’s a new tip to make your Ashi more Awesome. (If you have questions about the support strap we use in our myofascial ashiatsu sessions, READ THIS LINK FIRST!)

Massage Therapists from across the country are asking me about my Ashiatsu straps and how to use them. These extra supports are something I’ve had in my practice since my first year practicing Ashiatsu back in 2003, and since then I’ve been influenced by Aerial Yoga, Slacklining, Chavutti Thai and my own pure laziness and love of hammocks to better utilize the assistance it offers.

When I broke my wrist in 2011 and still needed to teach Ashiatsu workshops in San Antonio, and provide the deep stretches from Ashi-Thai services to my clients while I was in a cast – my strap kept me working, kept me balanced, and offered the leverage I was missing from my hand that was stuck in a sling, so the straps helped me provide 1 handed, 2 footed massages!

Having a strap with your bars is a great tool to help you hoist yourself up onto your table anywhere in one easy step, rather than just at the head or foot ends of the table. It will help you to save your hands even further, by not needing to death grip the bars anytime you need to lean out.

A strap helps you avoid the temptation to hang like a monkey (which honestly causes you to drop out any potential pressure – so by hanging you are only working harder to go deep.) The creative angles that your strap will support you into really helps to give you smooth leverage during the FasciAshi strokes we’ll teach you in our courses. You can lean back into the strap at varying angles, and it’ll have your back like a hammock. You can use it like puppet strings to move your client around. You can even lay on it like a hammock!!! This tool is a staple to this new generation of Ashiatsu, and is just as necessary as the overhead bars.

Whatever you do – safety is the main factor, with “making your life easier” in second place. My straps are a great tool that assists me in providing endless Ashiatsu sessions with ease.

The Ashiatsu-Strap allows me to work effortlessly on a diagonal angle to engage the lateral fascial line and offer different vectors of pressure, still utilizing body weight and gravity to create tension in the strap that gets translated back into your client, without pinchy or insanely deep pressure – as what might happen without this extra support strap. You still have to be smart, think on your toes, and be aware of where the strap is at all times so you don’t lean back into nothing, or tangle yourself up mid stroke.

Check out what I’ve been doing since the beginning of my Ashi career across Washington state and Texas since 2003!

An added bonus? If you are Barefoot Massage trained for a modality performed on the floor, like say, Fijian Barefoot Massage, Thai Massage, Shiatsu or Rossiter Technique, you can save your hands even further by using the strap instead of any kind of under-hand support you might be holding onto – like the back of a chair, couch, or gymnastic-style parallel bars. The strap will be dangling right there within reach to assist you with your balance – just hold on lightly as needed, and work your barefoot massage magic!

Why not those underhand bars or the back of a chair? My experience is that overhead support decompresses the typically compressed and overused joints of the hard working deep tissue massage therapist. However, underhand support can tend to compress your wrists, or compromise the stability of your shoulders from pushing or bracing yourself up. Plus, why push off of something and hold yourself up if you are trying to drop your bodyweight and use gravity to sink down deeper into your clients? There’s an opposing force of energy there that is making you work harder.

The straps can help make life easier, and they are a BIG part of our FasciAshi classes.

Save your hands even further with the support of these straps!

For those of you eager to try it out based on pictures, come to class and learn whats up. A lot of hardware out there is not strong enough to support our style of diagonal forces. The strap has evolved since 2003, and only continues to be refined based on how myself, my staff, students and instructor team are using it.

Don:t reinvent my wheel, just come learn the most tried, tested amd safe way to use it.

Come to a FasciAshi class to find out more about the ashi-straps!!!!!