Rooted Restoration Pod

11/03/2026

✨Introducing the oils you’ll experience in my bodywork:
Songbird wax is a sensuous, meditative blend of beeswax, olive oil, grapeseed oil and arnica- it’s great for grip on smaller areas
Grapeseed oil is light and slippery for larger areas. It's particularly wonderful for the face with its nourishing vitamin and antioxidant profile.

09/03/2026

✨It turns out March is already incredibly busy, I have assignments and case studies to work on. It's all incredibly exciting and interesting and equally exhausting.

What is fun is getting to fantasise and design the vision of building a treatment pod and micro sauna for our community.

I should be studying a 6 hour long module right now but I've had to pause and dip out for some of the fun side of business and acknowledge when I've reached my limits.

You've got to give yourself permission to rest when you're on the brink.

So enjoy this vision with me. I'm so far through part of my holistic massage course, the intensive practical part of my course is complete. Case studies have already begun this week and I have 2 assignments and 2 exams to work towards over the next few months.

I have a Digital Marketing course presentation to give in the next two weeks which is entirely based around setting up my business as well as a local fundraising event on the 22nd March. Really hope to see some of you there. If you're interested in signing up to be on the waiting list for treatment when I qualify or want to hear about events and offers please visit my website and fill in the contact form.

Let's dream together and make things happen ✨

08/03/2026

✨ Celebrating International Women’s Day through the healing power of touch.

Many women learn to guard themselves from touch, fearing it may always come with expectations or lead to something more. In doing so, they can miss out on the deeply nourishing experience of safe, caring, skin-to-skin connection.

Massage therapy offers a space where touch is respectful, professional, and restorative—a place to simply relax, receive, and be supported.

04/03/2026

Huge congratulations to BASc alum, Rachael McGrath, whose Capstone research on shared sauna rituals and wellbeing has now been published in one of the world’s leading social science and health journals.

This publication is a major milestone and a powerful example of the rigorous, interdisciplinary work LIS students are capable of producing!

Working alongside Dr Martha Newson and sponsored by Community Sauna Baths CIC, Rachael explored how collective sweat bathing rituals enhance wellbeing, not simply through physiology, but through social connectedness, belonging and emotional synchrony.

The findings show that improvements in wellbeing were strongly linked to how connected participants felt to others in the session, with particularly significant benefits for those from lower socio-economic and minority backgrounds.

The research also highlights the growing relevance of these rituals for modern healthcare conversations around thermal contrast therapy and community health.

Congratulations to Rachael and everyone involved in supporting this journey.

Read the paper here: https://lnkd.in/eU9X8PRn



https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lis-london-interdisciplinary-school_lis-capstone-project-is-published-in-leading-activity-7430575274943193088-8jpw?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAk4aSkBDm4mwwrG1JDeCVNKf4JA8jD9u_k&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

Huge congratulations to BASc alum, Rachael McGrath, whose Capstone research on shared sauna rituals and wellbeing has now been published in one of the world’s leading social science and health journals. This publication is a major milestone and a powerful example of the rigorous, interdisciplinary...

03/03/2026

Important for therapists and clients.

The Biomechanics Behind Shoulder Impingement

Poor posture is not just a cosmetic concern; it fundamentally changes shoulder biomechanics. When we sit in a slouched position—especially during prolonged mobile or laptop use—the thoracic spine flexes, the shoulders round forward, and the scapulae move into protraction and anterior tilt. This altered resting position sets the stage for dysfunctional movement patterns.

Under normal biomechanics, shoulder abduction follows a coordinated pattern known as scapulohumeral rhythm, typically described as a 2:1 ratio between glenohumeral motion and scapular upward rotation. As the arm elevates, the humeral head rolls superiorly and glides inferiorly while the scapula upwardly rotates and posteriorly tilts. This synchronized movement maintains adequate subacromial space, allowing the supraspinatus tendon and subacromial bursa to move freely beneath the acromion without compression.

In a forward shoulder posture, however, the scapula rests in protraction, downward rotation, and anterior tilt. This positioning reduces the subacromial space even before arm movement begins. During elevation, altered rotator cuff force coupling may allow excessive superior translation of the humeral head. As a result, the supraspinatus tendon and subacromial bursa become mechanically compressed under the acromion, increasing the likelihood of subacromial impingement.

Muscle imbalance further compounds the issue. Tightness of the pectoralis minor contributes to anterior scapular tilt, while dominance of the upper trapezius and weakness of the lower trapezius and serratus anterior disrupt efficient scapular upward rotation. Without proper dynamic stabilization, the shoulder complex loses its biomechanical efficiency, and repetitive overhead activity becomes increasingly provocative.

Over time, this altered movement pattern can manifest as a painful arc during abduction, discomfort with overhead tasks, rotator cuff tendinopathy, or subacromial bursitis. Addressing the problem requires more than simply correcting posture visually. It demands restoration of thoracic extension, optimization of scapular alignment, and retraining of the stabilizing musculature to reestablish normal force coupling.

Posture influences joint positioning, joint positioning influences mechanics, and mechanics influence tissue health. When we restore proper biomechanics, we not only improve movement quality but also reduce pain and prevent long-term shoulder pathology.

03/03/2026

I'm loving reading about the community and social benefits of sauna as well as the (re) connection with nature. There's something about the smell of warm wood, herbs and the cool after-sauna air. A really memorable sauna for me was in the woods on my birthday with a couple of close friends, stepping out afterwards into snow and a huge full moon above.
The delight of being offline, in nature and intimately chatting with others is unbeatable.....

"The UK’s growing sauna culture can better connect us to nature and to each other.

There’s also something powerful about reclaiming and reimagining the communal bathing traditions of the UK. Sweat bathing exists in many (if not most) of the world’s cultures, but decreased in popularity in the British Isles in the 1600s-1700s due to hygienic and moral concerns about people intimately sharing space, and a lack of firewood caused by widespread deforestation. It’s poignant, then, that the Hackney Wick Community Sauna Baths have found a home in a former bathhouse, and the design of the Haeckels Community Sauna echoes the Victorian sea-bathing machines invented in Margate, the UK’s earliest sea bathing resort."

Just as sea bathing used to be a significant part of UK culture, so too did communal bathing – including sweating together. It’s fitting that just as cold water swimming has made a decisive return, so too has its opposing, more immediately comforting, force: the sauna. Claire Bracegirdle, who mo...

23/02/2026

An invitation to the future.
Come with me, and imagine an intimate space on the edge of Minchinhampton Common where you can spend quality time relaxing and resetting and breathing.
However you want to gift yourself that time, there is a space for treatment, warmth of a sauna and the expanse of the common to explore. The only choice you have to make is the order.
Bring a friend and alternate treatments. Then walk together.

My dream and vision is to make this happen.

If you'd like to be a part of that dream, please donate to my gofundme - link in bio

22/02/2026

This.
This is sauna culture. Building connections and making time and space for ritual and conversation.

🔥

22/02/2026

🔥 Sauna culture isn’t just about sweating.

It’s about how we gather.

I’m not dreaming about putting a wooden box in a garden just to call it a business. I’m dreaming about building something slower than that. Something rooted.

In places like Finland and Estonia, sauna has always been more than heat. It’s where women gathered. Where life changes were celebrated. Where silence isn't awkward. Where you could speak honestly, be heard and not fixed.

Heat warms & softens the body. It also softens conversation.
It slows the nervous system, brings us back into ourselves.

Sauna culture invites pauses, ritual, community.

So when I talk about building this project, I’m not just talking about a sauna.

I’m talking about building a way of gathering & resting. A way of being together that feels deeply human in a modern online world.