Lets talk hot stones!

​After working in a spa for the last 4 years, starting my new journey here at Kala Beauty has been a lovely refreshing change! But I’ll admit, there was one treatment I had been missing during my workdays and that’s a hot stones massage! A hot stone massage is such a gorgeous and hugely underestimated treatment with a lot of benefits, so let’s just say it did not take a lot of convincing Angela to agree to bring it as a new treatment to offer you lovely clients!
So I thought what better way to introduce this treatment then by giving you the low down on what its all about.
 
The Beauty without the pain
It’s a hard choice isn’t it?  You want a good firm massage to help ease those sore muscles and tension areas, but at the same time you want to be sent off to dreamy dreamy land! So what do you pick?.. With a hot stone massage you really do get the best of both worlds! I always recommend a hot stone massage for anyone who has a lot of tension but doesn’t fancy being pummeled into the couch with a deep tissue massage! The heat from the stones warms up the deeper layers of the muscles so gently that you can get a deep massage that you could actually fall asleep having!
 
What is a hot stone massage?
Like any massage it can be a different experience wherever you go, and that’s really the beauty of our industry, the freedom you have as a therapist to tailor any treatment perfectly for your clients.
What you traditionally see in photos of a hot stones massage is a lovely lady covered in these big black stones and you think ‘is that it?!’ Well, it most definitely is not!  Yes, you can have what we call "placement stones", where the stones are placed around the body and they begin to heal the bodies energies (click here to see more about stone healing). But we also actually massage with them! There are many different sizes of the stones, bigger ones to give an all over warmth to the muscles and smaller ones we can use to target problem areas like the shoulders. And it’s not all just stones, if you have an area that has been causing you problems and it needs a bit of firm thumb kneading, we can do that! Every treatment is designed just for you.
 
How hot is hot?
To heat the stones, they are placed in a stone heater that’s filled with water, it looks basically like a great big slow cooker. It heats the water and the stones to between 45-50°C. The stones used are not just any old stones that we’ve gone with a bucket down to Worthing beach and picked up! These are Basalt stones, they are smooth volcanic stones that retain their heat. Yes, as they come out of the water they are rather hot but don’t worry we’re not just going to just chuck them on you! No, first your therapist will heat their hands with the stones gradually warming up your skin to adjust to the temperate before introducing the stones. They cool down the longer they are used on the skin and once they are fully cooled they’re switched up for new toasty ones!
 
The summary
With a hot stones massage you have all of the much needed massage benefits such as increasing circulation and the removal of toxins, softening tight muscles, helping with difficulty sleeping, de stressing and promoting relaxation and all of these points improve your mental health x10!
I really could go on and on about the benefits of any style of massage and I can tell you how great a hot stone massage is (because it is!) but the best way to really know is to experience it for yourself!
Get that ‘have a hot stones massage’ ticked off your ever growing bucket list and you’ll be asking yourself why have I not done this sooner?! 
- Hannah