Healing Hands

Ok, check it out.

So, I won’t deny Burke Williams is pretty much the best you can get as far as spas go. But, if you don’t need five hours to spend with cucumber water, hot tubs, steam rooms, and attendants walking around with fruit bowls—if what you’re after is a massage, you know, just someone’s hands on your back grinding out the knots and gnarls, then there are other *cheaper places you can go. Of course, you will always have reservations, like

“Maybe this place is cheaper, but will my masseuse be ugly?”

Or
“This price is too right. The spa must be dirrrty…”

Or
“I don’t know if I can live without my cucumber water.”

Still, the fact does not change that your actual massage can be amazing and small fraction of the price of a Burke Williams outing.

For example, I tried out Healing Hands on Crescent Heights and 3rd, and my masseuse there rocked my knots. I paid $55 for and hour of heaven. And I’m very particular.

There’s a science to how you approach a massage. You have to start at the source and work out—the way you would approach a tube of toothpast: you’ve got to start at the end extremity, press the toothbrush flat against the tube and push up along the length of the tube, squeeze all of the minty goodness up to the spout and release the contents. When you approach someone’s back, you have to warm it up, loosen the nerves a little, get the person accustomed to your touch, and then you find the source. Say we start with the neck, work your fingers down through the meat of the neck from the point at which your spine reaches your cranium. Knead down, squeezing the tension out through the neck down to the tops of the shoulders. Then you have to continuously push that tension out from the shoulders under the shoulder blade and down the spine to your waist, or from the shoulder down the arm to the elbow joint, through that tender meat around your bony forearm to the wrist, out through the muscle of your thumb, into the palm, and finally out the fingertips.

The buttocks is another source. Do not fear the touching of the buttocks. It is essential. All the tension in your legs and lower back is fed from the buttocks. You can relieve yourself a lot of pain by letting a stranger massage your butt. An elbow is your best tool for this: press in and hold your weight in one place to really give the muscle time to give in to the pain. The worst thing you can do is tense up and defend your body against a masseuse’s advances. Let go. Kneading out from the buttocks down the back of the thigh into the hollow behind the knee. Another essential. No matter the pain, you must knead out the unhappy nerve endings in the knee in that soft vulnerable spot. Then from the knee down the calf, really grinding into that muscle, and to the ankle, over the heel into the arch, and out the toes.

The sides of your thighs, the sides of your torso are wonderful little sneaks hiding your caged up nerves like tense, little, bonded slaves. Right underneath the arm, the muscle that binds your triceps through the shoulder to your back--that lovely little area we women know as where your bra sinches your back fat—is a source of a lot of tension, in me at least. It’s a really uncomfortable place to be massaged, because there’s so little muscle over your ribs that you literally feel like that muscle is being ground into nothing over a metal washboard. But, once it’s all over, the masseuse can release even more tension out from under your shoulder blades. You can even feel the effect of the release on the tops of your shoulders in the muscle that links up to your neck again.

I’ve made my point. I care. I dissect what a masseuse does in sessions with me. I’ve learned to sense when a massage therapist actually knows why they are massaging in certain patterns, and when they are doing it just because that’s how they were instructed to do so. You can tell the anatomy buffs when you feel one.

So, I did. Feel an Anatomy Buff. At Healing Hands, I might as well have been at the chiropractor, if my chiropractor had that sensual distinction of focusing on the return of pleasure and relaxation as opposed to the return of physical therapy and 20 follow-up appointments to “fix” my mini-might-multiple-sclerosis.

The atmosphere was calm, an unexpected oasis from the street scene just one floor below. The facilities were beautifully kept, a local artist had paintings and prints hung on the wall (for sale) that tied in nicely with the décor. The receptionists and staff were friendly and considerate, the masseuses, knowledgeable. The only thing I might mention is, the clock in my room ticked audibly even over the mood music. But as someone put it in an online feedback forum, At least I was certain I was getting my hour’s worth.

Take a moment to check out their services. Really, they have great deals, and equal worth to Burke Williams when it boils down to the masseuse. They also feature Acupuncture and Chiropractic services.

So yeah, check it out. And save yourself a buck or 100.

Healing Hands Wellness Center
Massage ∙ Acupuncture ∙ Chiropractic
Open 7 days
10am-9pm

www.healinghandsWC.com

414 N Larchmont Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90004
(323) 461 7876

303 S. Crescent Heights Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 782 3900