JMavin Massage

I took a snow day today since roads were still pretty icy when I would have needed to start my 30 minute commute. So it was a good day to start preparing for the anatomy class I’m teaching over the next 4 weeks. The cat and I both love my sunny south facing craft room.

Confession time: I hadn’t had a massage since my Colorado spa visit in early October. I’m sometimes really bad at making self-care as a priority, EVEN AS A MASSAGE THERAPIST!

Thanks to my friends for taking care of me today. Love that we have a community full of great providers to call on to help a girl out when her body is angry from being neglected.

Current clients!!!

Check your email for a special offer that helps care for our community while I’m caring for you!

The mountains are my favorite place to recharge. Colorado did not disappoint this past weekend. Where’s your favorite place to run away to when you need a break?

First day (8 whole hours) of teaching completed! This has been a long time professional goal of mine. Learned a lot today about pacing and pivoting when engagement is fading. So thankful to only have to teach for 4 hours at a time for the rest of this week!!!

The world feels heavy for many right now, myself included. Just a reminder that it is okay to not be okay AND that you are not alone.

I have last minute openings available this Thursday!

Book online or shoot me a text to claim!!!

Happy Friday from me and my little furry visitor today! 🩷

Time for my annual office deep clean. I always look forward to putting the current year to rest and resetting to welcome you all into my refreshed space after New Years! I hope everyone has found some time this season for your own rest and reset. See in 2025 lovelies!!!

Don’t miss the Dome for the Holidays event at the this month! As some of you know, my oldest daughter works there and it is one of my very favorite places in Des Moines all year long. You can advance purchase tickets on their website, which I highly suggest as some time spots do sell out!

Back in my group fitness teaching days, I taught a lot of classes targeted for the retiree population. We had a general motto: No toilet handrails.

(Said jokingly and obviously with no shade to those who rely on them for assistance due to physical limitations or challenges.)

Meaning, we purposely worked on functional strength to be able to do activities of daily living, such as sitting down on and standing up from the toilet independently. Or carrying a basket full of laundry. Or carrying groceries in from the car. Or reaching for the good dishes in the top of the cupboard for holiday meals.

Often times when we think about fitness we often focus on physical image of and forget about how it can affect our quality of life aa we age.

Our house is almost 100 years old. It has many features that do not meet modern building codes and standards. One of them is the stairs to our only full bathroom. No handrail. Treads that do not meet depth standards. (The stairs to the laundry in the basement are even more precarious.) And yet the last member of the original family that owned this house lived here well into her 80s. I often wonder if she could travel these stairs near the end of her time here.

While I may not live here into that decade of my life, I plan to be able to safely and comfortably climb these stairs for however long I do. And that requires regular intentional effort to maintain strength and balance BEYOND my regular activities of daily living EVEN with my daily activities being more challenging than average because of the physical nature of the work I do.

Movement for living. That’s what fitness means to me and why time and time again I come back to it as a focus in my life, and professionally EVEN it can be an industry full of disinformation and grifting. Because untimely, if we are lucky, all of us are going to navigate daily life in aging bodies. And my hope is to do so as long as I can without toiled handrails!