The most common complaint I hear from my massage clients is that they would love to have more massage, and it isn’t the cost that stops them coming regularly, it is the time. Particularly with mums – perhaps they feel that their time is better spent with the children, or in the home, or with their husbands, their friends, their elderly parents, or at the school meeting, or at the doctors, dentist, opticians or the million other things that need to be done, attended to or given attention. Nowhere on that list is time for themselves. Are mums somehow less important, or less in need, or are mums a martyr to it all? Would their children, their husbands, their friends, or their parents begrudge them an hour to themselves, to relax and refresh them and do some mums worry about what will happen when they finally stop?

When do you get a full hour to yourself? Lying in silence, being pampered, lowering your blood pressure, regulating your breathing, having the stresses and the strains of the day eased for you? Oh yes, we all take the advice of the magazines and take a time out in the day – read a trashy magazine or the paper, watch a favorite programme, have a bath and a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Trouble is it is usually all at the same time, and more often than not interrupted in one way or another – if not physically by a small person trying to get in the bath, or a grown man asking for the phone number for the doctors then maybe by a guilty thought entering your consciousness, or a mental reminder pinging off if you have forgotten to do something crucial, like take the washing out of the machine…

An hour of massage, reflexology, reiki or a combination, anything where you are in a not-to-be-disturbed environment, are quiet and are paying for it – soon quietens the mind and body and gives you benefits you wouldn’t even imagine.