Volunteering

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A few hours spent volunteering to help others can ease stress and improve your health.

It is always nice to help others. I volunteer giving touch/massage to hospice patients at Northfield Hospice and have provided my services to the patients since 2011. It is difficult to see my patients die, but giving touch of massages to the patients is very rewarding. I remember one of my patients said to me when I said good bye to him before I went to visit my family in Thailand in 2011. He said “I am glad that you are part of my life”. The other patient said “You made my day”. These are some of supportive that keep me alive and glad to be part of people’s life and health.

Please feel free to contact me if you are a nonprofit organization or charity and are interested in Thai chair massages at your fundraising events. I would love to donate my time to provide a ‘Thai chair massage’ or donate my gift cards for your auctions.

Below are some recent events I have been involved in:

• New Orleans – March 24th – May 1st 2007. I donated Thai chair massages to other volunteers, and also helped gut damaged houses. People in New Orleans still need more help! Whether you are a massage therapist and would like to provide treatments to other volunteers, or would simply like to help out local residents in other ways, please contact the Lutheran Social Services.
 All photos on this page are from this New Orleans volunteer trip.

• Northfield Just Food Co-op. October 2006. I donated Thai chair massage services; all proceeds were donated to their education programs. I also donated one 60-minute, one 90-minute and one 120-minute Thai massage sessions for their annual meeting event.

• Prairie Creek Community School. August 2006. I donated a Gift card for a 90-minute session for their auction. The proceeds went to support students.

• Volunteering Thai chair massage services, December 2003. All proceeds went to help a Northfield lady who had a serious illness.

• St. Olaf College Banquet, September. For several years I have donated Gift cards for a staff prize drawing.

• All year long. I have donated Gift cards and chair massage services to many nonprofit organizations / community auctions.

A few hours spent volunteering to help others can ease stress and improve your health.

When John Niro, a 27-year-old headhunter for an IT firm in Los Angeles, started losing his hair, he knew he needed to change his stressful life. So he left his job for one with more flexible hours and signed up as a volunteer tutor at author Dave Eggers’s nonprofit writing center, 8261A. Almost immediately, he noticed a change in his mood. “Within a few weeks of tutoring, I was happier, I became a better boyfriend, and hair stopped falling out,” says Niro, now 29. And in contrast to his unfulfilling corporate job, volunteering was rewarding – plus it took just one afternoon a week.

The link between stress and the development of chronic disease is well known. A growing body of research has shown that volunteer work – especially when it involves personal contact with others – can help reduce stress and improve your mental and physical health.

In the late 1980s, Allan Lukes, executive director of the youth mentoring organization Big Brothers Bis Sisters and author of The Healing Power of Doing Good (iUniverserse.com, 2001), surveyed 3,000 adult volunteers. A full 95 percent reported a “helper’s high,” which is characterized by feeling of energy and euphoria. Many also noticed better health – everything from fewer colds to less pain. Since Luke’s ground breaking survey, the health – boosting effects of charity have been corroborated by additional research, including a 1999 study from the University of Michigan that followed 1,211 seniors for about seven years and found that those who volunteered just 40 hours a year lived longer than those who didn’t volunteer at all.

These findings aren’t surprising to anyone who regularly donates time to charity. “Volunteering revitalizes me,” says Tax Tagore, 33, who left behind a high-powered business career to found the Reciprocity Foundation, a homeless-youth program based in New York City. “In the corporate world, it was hard to recharge my batteries. But with the kids, I give and I get and I feel energized. The loop is closed.” Niro agrees: “At 3p.m. on Thursdays, I find myself closing my eyes and giving a quick thanks that I’m in a room with a bunch of kids, helping them learn.”

Source: Natural Health magazine. April 2007 page 15-16.