What’s your favourite thing to do at break time? I bet it’s not what Lola did when she was at school. Here’s what she told WoW! News:
I used to give my friends massages at playtime. They’d lie on the grass and I would massage their back, their legs.
Lola Savatofski, massage teacher
Massage is when you push and squeeze someone’s muscles to help them relax or perhaps to help ease an injury. If you watch sport, maybe you’ve seen a doctor massage the muscles of a footballer who’s got tired legs near the end of a game.
It runs in the family
Lola learned about massage from her parents. They worked as masseurs and massaged their children regularly to relax them – Lola got massages from her parents when she was still inside her mum, before she was even born!
As she grew up, Lola learned to give massages, too. She found massage was a great way to help relax – like before she did exams at school. It can also help our bodies heal.
Lola wanted everyone to know how to massage. And so, she became a massage teacher when she left school.
Starting young
Since she was 17, Lola has been giving classes to children on how to massage each other.
I was 17 and I wanted to share something I was passionate about.
Lola
She says that people can feel a bit strange at first, having someone touch them and pushing muscles about. But she finds ways to put them at their ease, for example, by playing a kind of blind man’s buff
Try it for yourself
If you’re interested in giving a massage yourself, you could always ask someone in your family. But not everyone will want to be a guinea pig for your experiments. And you should never try to massage someone who doesn’t want it.
If you’re stuck, Lola has an idea though – try giving your first massage to a pet! Take a look at this video below where Lola shows how to massage her cat. Massage is a special way to stroke a pet and it can help them relax.
And if you think the cat looks chilled out, Lola says she even managed once to put a dog entirely to sleep, just by massaging its forehead!
Feeling close to others
For many people, the past year of lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, has been particularly difficult because it has meant not being with friends and family. Most of us need to feel close to people to be happy. Lola says that giving a massage, or getting one from someone else, is a great way to feel close.
Watch these videos, where Lola gives her sister Prune a massage to demonstrate her technique.
