Most people wait until they’re in pain before coming to see for a massage, but did you know that regular therapeutic massage treatments can actually prevent the pain and soreness from happening in the first place?
It isn’t a big secret that life can be stressful. Massage therapy can be an excellent way to relieve the daily pressures that work, home, and family place on the mind and body, reducing physiological stress responses such as anxiety, mild depression and fatigue. This is a first step and goal in massage, because you must relax the mind, relieve the tension, calm the nervous system and the muscles will follow.
The time to address chronic patterns of tension in the muscles is after you’ve achieved a deep state of relaxation. Treating stress with massage helps to relieve the pain caused by muscle tension, as the soothing touch also promotes a feeling of well-being and calm. After creating the right relaxing atmosphere with music, using essential and carrier oils for scent and touch, our massage therapists will include a focus on and reduction of generalized body aches.
During a massage, your soft tissues, skin, tendons, and muscles are manipulated, which provides stress relief by stimulating the body’s relaxation response. Experts have scientifically proven the link to stress and the exacerbation, and sometimes the cause, of various diseases people suffer from regularly. The normal wear-and-tear of time on our bodies is bad enough, but nothing ages us quicker, internally and externally, than high stress. While eliminating anxiety and pressure in this fast-paced world may not be achievable, massage can help reduce stress to manageable levels. This directly translates into decreased anxiety, enhanced sleep quality, reduced fatigue, higher levels of daily energy and improved mental concentration.
Beyond just immediate stress or pain relief, a massage can also accelerate our own natural healing process by increasing healthy blood flow throughout the body and releasing various helpful hormones.
Relief from pain is the most common reason people seek massage. Our massage therapists integrate a variety of methods which may include a variety of pressure levels from light to deep targeting restoration of normal blood and lymphatic movement, normalizing connective tissue pliability to reduce stiffness, reducing trigger point activity and quieting the nervous system. Muscles can become so contracted that they press on nerves to the arms, hands or legs, causing pain or tingling.
Regular therapeutic massage can prevent these muscle spasms. Shoulder joints are at a high risk of sustaining injury from tight muscles. Due to our modern sedentary life, if you frequently slouch at your desk the muscles in your chest will tighten and contract which pulls the joints in your shoulders forward and causes joint problems to arise. Ankle joints are also at an increased risk of injury, reduced mobility and pain from tightened calf muscles.
Athletes, dancers, seniors and people who live an active lifestyle usually find that regular treatments of proper massage therapy improves the functions of their muscles, connective tissues, tendons, ligaments and joints. Joint flexibility is critical in creating balance in the body and improving mobility. Tight muscles constrict and prevent a joint from performing its full range of mobility and over time the joint may start to weaken. Adhesions are formed in muscles due to tightness and tension. They can cause knots and restrict flexibility. Massage helps to realign the muscle fibers and break down these adhesions. This release restores movement and increases flexibility.
The benefits of massage treatments are many, but in most cases, most of these will not be achieved by a single visit. Taking part in regularly scheduled self-care can play a huge part in how healthy you’ll be. Consider regular therapeutic massage treatments a necessary piece of your health and wellness plan, and work with our massage therapists to establish a treatment schedule that best meets your individual needs.
