INSPIRATION & EDUCATION

In my practice, I treat women with headaches, migraines, ear pain, eye pain, jaw pain, throat tension, dizziness, and a variety of pain patterns in the face, neck, and head. For some women, even at that very first appointment, when they learn about trigger points, the mystery of the anatomy, how the breath affects their necks, and what else creates the symptoms that they have, they find relief. Most of these women have undergone many types of appointments, tests, and even MRI

In my practice, I have seen this manifest in many ways. For instance, I treated a woman who was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia. She had intense face and ear pain (see ear below) and had been to the emergency room many times. She could not drive because of the medication. She was working with her naturopath, chiropractor, ENT, and others. She had taken rounds of antibiotics. What was missing was soft tissue manipulation of the neck muscles—so simple!

The overall state of your central nervous system influences local pain and inflammation and systemic pain and inflammation. If your system is already taxed, overwhelmed, and producing low-grade systemic inflammation throughout the body, you will have a weakened immune system. When new threats arise in another local system, a shoulder or elbow, your body will probably experience more pain, inflammation, and swelling than needed for the repairs.

Willow Health is an online drug company that masquerades as "for your health." Really, they are a company that aims to shape young girls' minds with shameful messages, creating body-dysmorphia and lifelong customers. This blog post contains still images from those ads. Due to their young age, I am blurring the faces with little brain emojis. A young girl grabs an acai bowl from the freezer. She takes a single bite and pushes the bowl away. She walks over to a mirror and holds

If you have had an acute respiratory illness, such as COVID, pneumonia, or just a cold with a bad cough, or a chronic respiratory illness, asthma, allergies, or throat irritating GERD, do a self-check-in with the muscles mentioned in this post.

To heal, you are thinking of reshaping your tissues, stretching and building strength, creating muscle balance in the jaw and neck. But you are also tapping into your nervous system; you are diving into the most important aspect of healing; allowing your nervous system to come to a place of rest. From a place of rest, the nervous system turns down pain signals. I know for sure: women who do these postures, and allow themselves to come to a place of healing rest, report chr

Scalene muscle dysfunction causes neck pain, headaches, migraines, head pain, TMJ pain, whole jaw pain, rib pain, and shoulder pain. The shape of the cervical spine is in-part determined by the health of the scalene muscles. Know this: it is only with gentle and consistent self-love—in the form of neck therapy, stretches, and breathing—that these muscles will take on a new shape, holding onto less tone and tension.

Understanding the function of the scalene muscles is vital to understanding your neck and jaw pain. It can also be vital in understanding your upper thoracic spine pain, rib pain, and shoulder pain.

By working with the top and bottom of the spine, the jaw joint, the upper cervical spine, and the pelvic floor, we are hitting places that mirror each other in tension. We’re observing which muscles are hypertonic and overworking, and which muscles are underactive, even if they’re also tight and sore. Direct physical touch therapy to the top and bottom of the spine is very healing.

Self-love is your untapped energetic potential. You came into this world open, loving, and complete. You came into this world capable of making rooted and intuitive choices regarding your health and wellness. Make no mistake: this culture has created the difficulty within many women. Society bombards women with messages that their stomachs should look flatter and their lips fuller. Advertisers—even those claiming to promote health—often create ads to shame you and then sell y

And yet, most pelvic floor issues result from tension and tightness. Pelvic floor muscles with trigger points (heightened zones of electrical activity) that are pulling on the structures above. A tight pelvic floor also pulls on the SI joint, causing low back pain. A tight pelvic floor pulls on the bladder, and it causes a lack of blood flow and alters the nervous system, causing bladder leakage and varied types of pain.

In this post, I will quickly name some of the TMJ muscles that we work on in a therapy session. In an hour-long session, we are working the head, neck, and TMJ muscles but we won't be able to get to everything. This therapy is slow and detailed, so we may get to different muscles during different sessions. As treatment progresses, more areas will "open up" and treatment can become "deeper."As we work together, we also address muscles such as the psoas, the QL, and the diaphr

You can turn to Ayurveda to understand your reactions, your current state of health and wellness, and how, moving into the rest of your year, you can slowly but dynamically improve your health. Ayurveda is a pattern, a predictable way to see the body and understand your reactions to everything.

Soft tissue imbalances of the jaw are extremely common. And whereas the solutions to jaw symptoms are often not that complicated, in the current culture, finding the solutions is often quite hard. Manual massage therapy of the jaw and neck eases conditions such as TMJ pain, clicking and popping, grinding, ear pain and ear fullness, headaches, migraines, pain under the chin and on the anterior neck, cervical dysfunction, and a loss of range of motion of the jaw and neck.

Curious about pelvic floor therapy? Jaw pain? Neck pain? Reading this article will give you a little insight into my overall experience & how I create health in a woman's pelvic bowl & beyond. PMG PHOTO: JONATHAN HOUSE - Tara Clasen, whom has opened a new manual therapy practice in Lake Oswego, has a particular focus in helping women with issues stemming from their pelvic floor. Here is an article that appeared in the LO Review when I reopened my practice in 2021. By Clara Ho

Need relief from TMJ Pain, Neck Pain, and Pelvic Floor Pain? Find out what women say about the manual therapy offered by Tara Lee Clasen.

Your brain is elastic, pliable, changeable, and full of untapped potential. Vibrant health is not something you buy, but it is something you live. And many women need to change the way they live with food. Whether it’s anxiety, worrying, controlling, or just rushing through the sacred act of eating, your brain needs a new pathway.

By leveraging neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to reorganize and form new neural connections, positive affirmations heal (or are a big part in healing) self-sabotaging thoughts. In manual therapy, we think of how neurons that fire together stay together. You want to couple food and eating with a calm breath, a focus on nourishment, and ultimately lasting self-love. When you are consistent, the repetition of positive statements strengthens neural pathways.

***The following is an excerpt from my digital download PDF about Ayurveda and food combining. For this blog post, I made some changes and included a very simple list of Ayurveda food combining concepts. To learn more, check out my Etsy shop which includes a stylized Ayurvedic Food Combining PDF, Ayurveda Dosha  Food Guide PDFs, and wellness checklists based on the concepts in The Elemental Woman  book and Basic Ayurveda, The Elemental Woman Supplement Guide . So who benefits