Healthy Travel

What’s it Like to Have a Hammer Massage?

NotYourNormalHealthBlog January 14, 2013 3 Comments

a wooden mallet like hammer and dowl used in Tok Sen massage

I’ve recently been trying out massages in Chiang Mai. Yesterday I told you about my Temple Massage experience. Today, we’re going less spiritual and more construction worker come beauty therapist. I’m having what’s known as a hammer massage. Hammer massage, or Tok Sen as it’s traditionally known, is native to…
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Healthy Travel, Spas and Beauty

Spas and Treatments

£2.82 for a massage in Chiang Mai. Ok.

NotYourNormalHealthBlog January 13, 2013 0 Comments

There are many things I love about travelling in Asia – amazing food, smiley people, sunshine, more temples than you can shake an incense stick at – but one of THE best things is that massage can be seriously cheap. I’ve been prodded with tiny Thai fingers in Phuket, massaged…
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Healthy Travel, Spas and Beauty

Spas and Treatments

Could Kaizen Make You Thinner?

NotYourNormalHealthBlog October 8, 2012 1 Comment

It’s not often I compare myself to a Toyota truck, today is an exception. You see there’s a Japanese business theory that, while commonly used to speed up production in places like the Toyota factory, works just as well applied to our minds and bodies. It’s called Kaizen and the…
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Healthy Travel, Weight Loss

Healthy Advice

The WDW Goofy Challenge: Makes you Awesome

NotYourNormalHealthBlog January 8, 2012 4 Comments

A long time ago in a land far, far away (let’s call it New Zealand) I was quite a serious runner. Not a fast runner, but a persistent one. In the years I lived there I ran 20+ half marathons, one marathon……and something called the Goofy Challenge. This takes place…
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Fitness, Healthy Travel

Races

My name is Helen. I'm a health journalist and this is Not Your Normal Health Blog, the little corner of the internet I call home.
Why is it 'not normal'? Well for starters it was launched in a pub, but mostly because this is a place that aims to make being healthy quick, easy and painless. It's not all activated charcoal and £200 leggings.
This is a place for those who exercise so they can eat pizza. It's a place where exercise is fun - and occasionally called off because you had too much Prosecco the night before. It's a place for normal folk who just want to live a healthier life so they can live a longer one. Please, come make yourself at home.