Three is the magic number!

Ok, I admit, any number can be magic, depending on the significance it has with you!

But as many of my followers know, I use my intuition as well as my science background and training to help my massage clients (before, during and after a session!) and the number 3 seems to have huge spiritual imPAWtance, especially in rituals… therefore 9 (3 x 3) has even more power-full significance and 27 (3 x 3 x 3) even more so etc etc etc.

So when one of my shamanic teachers, who is also a content writer, inspired me on LinkedIn today to choose my favourite number and write about it with regards to my business, I was immediately drawn to the number 3.

Because that is the number of sessions that we recommend as Clinical Canine Massage Practitioners as an initial booking package for a few reasons:

• It helps me develop TRUST with your dog and not go in too deep too soon and cause to much therapeutic discomfort.
• The first session enables me to soften the tissue, increase the blood flow through the muscles, pushing any trapped toxins out and away to the lymph system to be excreted, therefore providing a baseline for future discoveries in the deeper muscles.
• This baseline reduces the severity of any healing reactions (aka: the Herxheimer reaction) where the dog may feel a little nauseous or achey, especially if the toxins have built up in the body for a long amount of time (just think of the headaches and sluggish reactions many people have had after their first covid injection where their body was trying to eradicate the foreign substance!)
• It enables me to assess your entire dog, not just the primary area of concern (e.g. lameness in the rear right) but also any overcompensation…. Or whether the lameness is due to overcompensation in this case and the primary source is actually due to a muscle strain from a previous incident… PAWsibly from an injury that happened years ago that they have been “coping with” for all this time?
• Then once trust has been achieved during over the course of these 3 sessions when your dog’s mind and their body start to “let me in” then that’s when the magic often starts to appear and we can see a lot of those pain-related behaviours disappear as you begin to get your old dog back.
• If you can’t see an improvement in your dog after those 3 sessions then why would I make you pay for any more? That wouldn’t be fair on you or your dog!

Depending on the results achieved from these 3 sessions, we can either continue fortnightly treatment if we are seeing benefits (usually signs it was muscular in source) or refer back to your vet if the limping continues (we can’t diagnose as massage therapists but we can discuss the findings of our assessment with your vet who may wish to do further investigative radiographic or medical interventions)

Interestingly, I also remember the number 3 featured highly during my analytical chemistry days when I worked in a laboratory testing trace amounts of ingredients in antiseptic solutions:

• washing the sample 3 times with 30ml achieved much more effective results than just the 1 washing with 100ml (if I could remember how to work that out mathematically I’d explain it more!)
• and sample preparations were always done in triplicate in case 1 result was slightly skewed (Best of three anyone?)
• … meaning that quite often 3 separate samples of 3 separate bottles were each done in triplicate!

So yes, you may be able to see now why I left that particular scientific role behind to pursue working with dogs… but I DO love it how the number 3 shows up with so much power in all 3 of those areas of my experience as I started to think back.

And as a bonus, I just realised that I recently celebrated my 3^rd business birthday too (written in April 2021) so maybe the number IS magic after all as we come out of lockdown and my business and opPAWtunities are starting to grow again… Well we gotta stay PAWsitive eh?

Is there a number that holds significance for you in your life or business?

If you want to know more about how 3 sessions of clinical canine massage can really benefit a dog you know or you wish to pose a question for me to answer in my FAQ blogs then please drop me a message on Hayley.Hilton@HandsOnHeart.dog. or even just find me on LinkedIn or Facebook to swap info on our dogs as I always love to chat about them and find out more of what you all get up to.

Hayley Hilton: not just the Hands that help Heal your Dog but the Heart that Listens to The Owner too.