This week I’m going to show you how to massage your own back and possibly and hopefully lose weight. There is no way you can massage your own back without using tools and the tool I’m using today is this foam roller.
Before I get into the demo here’s the theory behind why it may help you lose weight. There are two kinds of fat. White fat and brown fat. The white fat stores calories and it makes you look fat and flabby. This is the kind of the fat that you want to get rid of.
Brown fat, on the other hand, looks brown because of the presence of mitochondria. And because of mitochondria, this fat helps you burn calories and produce heat. Babies are born with lots of brown fat but as we get older we lose brown fat. But some brown fat can still be found in adults often around neck and shoulders area between the shoulder blades. So by stimulating these brown fat cells you make your body burn more fat.
Now I could not find this theory in English. Only in Japanese. However, I saw a Japanese TV segment where this girl who couldn’t lose weight just from running and diet lost 30 kg or 66 lbs in one year by adding this every day so that’s enough for me to give it a try.
So to massage the back and stimulate the brown fat in the upper back, you simply lie on the foam roller placed under the shoulder blades or scapula and move up and down. The put the roller under the spine and roll side to side. To add more stimulation to the muscles between the shoulder blades, move your elbows in a circular motion, up and down, open your arms and move your arms up and down. And move your arms up and down in front of you. Do this for 10 minutes every day.
Another benefit of lying on the foam roller is that it really opens up the front of your body. As you get older your body starts to curl up and contract forward like a fetus position. My massage teacher always said to extend and open up your body to stay young.
Whether you want to lose weight, loosen the back muscles or open up your body to stay young, you cannot go wrong with lying on the roller. I’ll put a link below for Amazon http://bit.ly/foam-rollers but you can easily make your own roller by rolling the big towels and put tapes around it to secure it.
Massage Monday #342 – Self Back Massage to Lose Weight Possibly http://bit.ly/mm-051517