There is no denying that we are bombarded with a plenitude of poor influences on our health every single day. Go to any gas station, corner store, movie theater, or entertainment establishment and you are left with hardly any choice but to offend your body.

It benefits us to counterbalance the impact the toxins we are exposed every day has on us.  Especially if you are someone who doesn’t want to take their health for granted. Then finding every way you can, to surround yourselves with positive influences on your health is essential.

What things can we all do to support our health efforts?

I do believe that I can offer some assistance. I’ve come up with 14 ways, in fact. But 14 things is a lot to take in at once, so I’ve broken them up individually.

We will begin with massage and bodywork since it’s the one I personally won’t live without. It was my own beginnings in self-care, and what I personally have to offer as a service to you.

#1 Way to Love and Protect Your Body: Massage and Bodywork 

Often seen as a luxury, bodywork is really a necessity. It’s true, it can make one feel pampered. But there is more to it than that. More precisely, it’s a therapy with medical and spiritual relevance.

In case you aren’t really sure what bodywork is; it encompasses modalities such as massage, acupuncture, chiropractic care, energy work, and other manual therapies that help maintain good health in people’s bodies.

Massage and bodywork have helped many people restore the quality of their lives, so they can continue to do the activities they love, avoid any unnecessary medical interventions, manage physical pain, and lower tension and stress.

{If you are one of those who is looking for good therapist that you can go to regularly, here is a resource to help you in your search – Getting Massage Where to begin…}

It helps mend the wear and tear each day of living creates on the fabric of our being. Used for rehabilitation, bodywork helps speed up recovery time and contributes to more efficient healing. It even prevents injuries and can lessen the blow when physical trauma does occur.

It decreases the likelihood of stress-related illnesses. It decompresses our coiled up nervous systems and lengthens our fuses, so we can manage life with greater capacity. To remain fluid and flexible.

It allows you to reallocate your energy…Less outgoing energy to tense muscles that can’t stop firing because they literally have forgotten how to turn off. Physiologically unable to, because they are so tight and constricted. No nutrients and no oxygen available to them. Even when you are sleeping.  Bodywork helps your body let go, discontinue waststing precious energy, gets stagnant live force moving; so that you have more resources for other functions like mental concentration, stamina for your sport/work, or your relationships.

I believe it also prevents some types of deterioration – like osteoporosis, arthritis, and disc degeneration.

It facilitates a level of bodily awareness that no other thing can, which is great for physical performance and emotional/spiritual healing work.

In its highest form, it is a great way to tell your most loyal companion that you honor it and that you appreciate all that it does for you.

Bodywork, my friends, is not the end all, be all, in natural medicine. But it is one of the absolute best ways you can maintain a healthy ever-healing body.

Besides that, it feels good. Healthy, pleasurable, therapeutic touch is a thing to be grateful for. It’s time well spent. I don’t think people who receive bodywork regret it.

Read: #2 Build a Holistic Health Team

This blog is part of a series. Stay tuned for more Ways to Love and Protect Your Body.


Shalene Zarate, LMT, NMT, CST
Beyond being a massage therapist, Shalene’s calling is to help deepen the relationship her clients have with their own nature, by helping them re-establish a close relationship with their bodies, and with the foods and lifestyles that nourish them.