Bodywork by John Tacchi

I push on the squishy bits and make you feel better. At the other end of the explanation spectrum... you're not listening. Your eyes glazed over.

Every colour in this image is a different type of molecule doing a different job. What looks like abstract art is a working city at a scale smaller than anything you can see.

This visualisation was built by assembling data from three separate imaging techniques. X-ray crystallography reveals the atomic structure of proteins and molecules. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy maps how molecules move and flex in solution. Cryoelectron microscopy captures biological structures frozen at nearly absolute zero, preserving their shapes in near-native conditions at nanometre resolution. No single technique can see everything. Combined, they produce what you are looking at here.

The large purple structure near the bottom is a mitochondrion, the organelle that converts nutrients into ATP, the molecule your cells use as direct fuel. Every movement your body makes, every thought your brain generates, every heartbeat, runs on ATP produced by structures that look exactly like this.

The tangled rope-like structures running through the image are the cytoskeleton, a dynamic scaffolding network that gives the cell its shape, moves cargo between organelles, and pulls chromosomes apart during cell division.

The dense cloud of multicoloured dots filling the spaces between larger structures are individual proteins and enzymes, thousands of them, all moving constantly, colliding, binding, reacting, and separating millions of times per second.

A single human cell contains roughly 42 million protein molecules. Your body contains approximately 37 trillion cells. The scale of coordinated molecular activity happening inside you right now, silently and automatically, is genuinely beyond any number the human brain can feel.

Medicine works by intervening in this. Cancer happens when part of it goes wrong. Ageing is what happens as the machinery gradually loses precision over decades.

Everything you are runs on this.

Do you think massages are healing or just relaxing?
For those who want relaxation, massages can be that. I would argue however that massage is healing-promoting, and that as a byproduct feels relaxing.
Massage compressions the tissues and aids circulation. Most of the fluid in your body is not in your blood vessels, it’s within the cells and between the cells. Massage compresses the tissues, like a sponge, and pushes this interstitial fluid back into circulation. It either gets there by going directly back into the blood vessels, or gets pressed into the lymph vessels which eventually dumps back into the venous blood. Either way, you’re getting fluid to circulate through the liver and kidneys (and arguably lungs) that helps break down compounds and to expel others. (one could say ‘toxins’ but that is a semantics issues I won’t get into.) So, getting biological waste out is good, but then the release of the compressed tissue draws in fresh fluid. The fresh fluid contains dissolved minerals, hormones, oxygen, etc. All things the cells need to maintain their function. Among those functions is repair and division. Healing of the body’s cells are very energy and resource consuming, so circulation is fundamental to the body’s repair.
There are massage techniques that are selectively destructive in their nature. This aids breaking down structural tissue that was created following injury. I’m talking about scar tissue. It was needed at the time, but scar tissue inhibits range of motion. Once the body has recovered from an initial injury then comes the process of breaking up the scar tissues so the body can resume it’s original function, as best as possible, potentially better. The human body has the biological processes to build up and break down every tissue and massage aids this.
Compounding these healing benefits, massage is calming, even the kind that beats you up can be calming. That calm is the transition from sympathetic system dominating hormone levels, to the parasympathetic system dominating hormone levels. This also aids in healing the body.
Skin is shed, hair grows, your nails grow. All your life your body is constantly repairing, and massage helps in many ways. A good massage, you’ll know it. An ok massage… that was relaxing. I would encourage you to not settle for just relaxing, when you can be better.

This was a question from Quora that I answered.

Out door spaces become outdoor massage spaces.
Massage house calls offered.

Pre-pandemic I kept a 15 minute window between appointments. Now it’s a 30minute window. No need to push the traffic laws and risk a ticket, I’ll be here. Chill.
I want you low stress ‘before’ and ‘after’ the massage. Help yourself going into the appointment. Take it eeeeeeeeeasy.

Shot #2, done. In two weeks, I’ll be considered vaccinated. Also in four weeks all the staff at Whole Athlete will be vaccinated as well.