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Benefits of Aromatherapy During Your Massage and Facial

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Before we can discuss the benefits of aromatherapy, you may be wondering “what is aromatherapy?”.  Aromatherapy incorporates the use of scented essential oils. 

The essential oils are 100% natural, highly concentrated plant essence, they will be diluted before use and are applied along with lotion during the massage or facial.  The massage involves alternating between gentle and harder pressure while using essential oils.  

Not only is your body benefiting from the direct contact with the essential oils, but the oils are alleged to have specific healing properties upon inhaling after exposure. 

Aromatherapy can reduce stress, relieve anxiety, increase calmness and relaxation, increase contentment, decrease muscle tension, provide pain relief, and reduce the symptoms of depression.

Benefits of adding aromatherapy to your massage and facial

Essential Oils are Harmless

Your therapist will evaluate your skin type and discuss any issues you have or what you need to work on and use a selection of oils that will benefit your skin.  If you do not have any healing requests such as nerves, muscles, or joints, you can ask for a more general essential oil such as energizing, uplifting, relaxing, or decongesting.

Stress-Relief

Receiving a massage or facial is a way to relax and ease your emotions, by adding essential oils to your massage or facial your experience and results will be enhanced because these oils have stress-relieving properties.

Detoxes Your Skin

Essential oils get down deep into your pores and work on the inner layers.  Aromatherapy facial and massage literally purifies the skin from within and not just externally.  This washes away all the impurities and hence, skin is detoxed.

Relieves Dryness

There is no better solution if you are suffering from dry skin, especially in the winter, when skin becomes extra dry, essential oils can be used as exfoliators in the form of a scrub or peel.  You will soon feel your skin texture turn smooth.

Treats Poor Skin Conditions

Are you looking for that magic skin treatment to deal with blemishes, acne, dark spots, and similar problem?  Aromatherapy helps to improve the texture of the skin as it has excellent anti-inflammatory properties. Removing dirt and all other impurities from the skin.

Improves Blood Circulation

A natural and healthy glow is what we all want to see in our skin, right? This is mostly triggered by the betterment of blood flow to the skin cells.  The movement of blood to the skin gives it a healthy glow and releases skin cells with necessary nutrients and water, which reduces the presence of wrinkled dry skin.

Want to add aromatherapy to your massage or facial? Book online or call Precision Wellness today!

Pregnancy Massage

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Therapeutic massage has been used for centuries to improve overall health, reduce stress, and relieve muscle tension. Massage and pregnancy have often received ambivalent responses from the health community regarding the safety and purpose of massage during pregnancy. Modern investigation and research are proving that prenatal massage therapy can be a very instrumental ingredient in women’s prenatal care and should be given careful consideration.

Benefits Of Prenatal Massage

Studies indicate that massage therapy performed during pregnancy can reduce anxiety, decrease symptoms of depression, relieve muscle aches and joint pains, and improve labor outcomes and newborn health. Massage therapy addresses different needs through varying techniques, one of which is called Swedish Massage, which aims to relax muscle tension and improve lymphatic and blood circulation through mild pressure applied to the muscle groups of the body.

Swedish Massage is the recommended prenatal massage method during pregnancy because it addresses many common discomforts associated with the skeletal and circulatory changes brought on by hormone shifts during pregnancy.

Hormone regulation

Studies done in the past 10 years have shown that hormone levels associated with relaxation and stress are significantly altered, leading to mood regulation and improved cardiovascular health, when massage therapy was introduced to women’s prenatal care. In women who received bi-weekly massages for only five weeks, hormones such as norepinephrine and cortisol (“stress hormones”) were reduced and dopamine and serotonin levels were increased (low levels of these hormones are associated with depression).

These changes in hormone levels also led to fewer complications during birth and fewer instances of newborn complications, such as low birth weight. The evidence points strongly to maternal and newborn health benefits when therapeutic massage is incorporated into regular prenatal care.

Reduction of swelling

Edema, or swelling of the joints during pregnancy, is often caused by reduced circulation and increased pressure on the major blood vessels by the heavy uterus. Massage helps to stimulate soft tissues to reduce the collection of fluids in swollen joints, which also improves the removal of tissue waste, carried by the body’s lymph system.

Improvement of nerve pain

Sciatic nerve pain is experienced by many women in late pregnancy as the uterus rests on muscles of the pelvic floor and lower back. The pressure of the uterus spreads tension to the muscles of the upper and lower leg, causing them to swell and put pressure on nearby nerves. Massage therapy addresses the inflamed nerves by helping to release the tension on nearby muscles. Many women have experienced a significant reduction in sciatic nerve pain during pregnancy through regular massage.

Other potential benefits of prenatal massage:

  • Reduced back pain
  • Reduced joint pain
  • Improved circulation
  • Reduced edema
  • Reduced muscle tension and headaches
  • Reduced stress and anxiety
  • Improved oxygenation of soft tissues and muscles
  • Better sleep

Precautions For Prenatal Massage?

As with any therapeutic approach to pregnancy wellness, women should discuss massage with their prenatal care provider. The best way to address the risks of prenatal massage is to be informed and to work together with knowledgeable professionals.

Body position during prenatal massage

Many professionals consider the best position for a pregnant woman during massage is side-lying. Tables that provide a hole in which the uterus can fit may not be reliable and can still apply pressure to the abdomen, or allow the abdomen to dangle, causing uncomfortable stretching of the uterine ligaments. Consult your massage therapist before your first appointment to verify what position they place their clients in during the massage.

Seek an appropriate massage therapist

It is important to seek care from a certified prenatal massage therapist.  Certified therapists have received training beyond the national standards for massage therapists and know how to address specific pregnancy and massage needs and sensitive areas of the body.

Be aware of sensitive pressure points

Trained prenatal massage therapists are aware of pressure points on the ankles and wrists that can gently stimulate pelvic muscles, including the uterus. Certified prenatal massage therapists are trained to avoid very specific and intentional pressure to these areas during pregnancy. Any woman who has experienced pre-term contractions or consistent Braxton-Hicks contractions should alert her therapist to that fact so that pressure points can be avoided completely.

Women with the following conditions should speak with a health care provider prior to receiving a massage:

  • High risk pregnancy
  • Pregnancy Induced Hypertension
  • Preeclampsia
  • Previous pre-term labor
  • Experiencing severe swelling, high blood pressure, or sudden, severe headaches
  • Recently gave birth

Is Prenatal Massage Safe Throughout The Entire Pregnancy?

Women can begin massage therapy at any point in their pregnancy – during the first, second, or third trimester. Many facilities will refuse to offer massage to a woman who is still in her first trimester because of the increased statistics for miscarriage associated with the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Prenatal Massage As Part Of Prenatal Care

The benefits of massage can improve overall prenatal health for many pregnant women. Along with the guidance and advice of a prenatal care provider, massage therapy can be incorporated into routine prenatal care as an emotional and physical health supplement proven to improve pregnancy outcomes and maternal health. Consult with your midwife or obstetrician before beginning any new therapeutic practice.

Massage and Allergies

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Allergy Basics

According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthmas, and Immunology, allergies affect more than 50 million Americans, making it the country’s fifth most chronic disease, third among children.

We spend around 7.9 billion dollars a year on treatment—about 4.5 million on direct care and 3.4 billion on indirect care, including lost work.

Allergies are, in the simplest sense, the body overachieving. “Your immune system is reacting to things it shouldn’t be reacting to,” says Leonard Bielory, MD, director of the Asthma & Allergy Research Center at New Jersey Medical School. “Your body goes on high alert against normally innocuous substances, like cat hair, pollen, or peanuts.”

In this reaction, the body’s mast cells, which are loaded with chemical-like histamines and other granules, break open and release these substances, which in turn hurt the body. The result can be everything from life-threatening anaphylactic shock to the more benign runny nose, foggy thinking, and low-grade chronic cough. Of course, you can suffer in many other ways as well, including gas and bloating, eczema, sinusitis, earaches, headaches, and even joint pain, migraines, and depression.

Relaxing the Symptoms

Many Americans rely primarily on conventional treatments, including antihistamines and steroids, both of which can have some adverse side effects. Massage therapists, however, can help relieve some allergy symptoms by reducing stress, increasing circulation, releasing muscle tension, and reprogramming the body’s panic reaction, which can exacerbate symptoms.

“It’s not to take away from the biological, inflammatory component of the disorder,” says Rosalind Wright, MD, a pulmonist on staff at the Harvard Medical School. “But if you use complementary modalities, including massage therapy, you could optimize the results.”

Few studies researching massage therapy and allergy relief exist, but we do know massage helps with stress, as shown in the 1992 Touch Research Institute study where 30-minute body massages on depressed adolescents decreased saliva cortisol levels.

And stress definitely impacts allergies. A 2008 Harvard Medical School study co-authored by Wright showed that mothers-to-be who expose their unborn children to stress may increase these kids’ vulnerability to allergies and asthma.

Wright says that these stressors act like “social pollutants” breathed through the body, influencing the body’s immune response. “Just as you can breathe in an allergen like dust mites or ragweed, you can breathe in stress,” she says. “You take it into your body and it operates in similar types of pathways.”

So just getting clients to relax may help their allergies. “Most experienced massage therapists know the immediate relief from sinus congestion that can result from just lying face down,” Lies says. This position gives you a chance to work on the upper back and shoulders, where many sinus trigger points are located.

Getting More Specific

Roy Desjarlais, a massage and craniosacral therapist, and vice president of clinical services at the Upledger Institute says that calming the muscles around the clavicle and neck area is also helpful in mitigating the fight-or-flight response brought on by allergies, along with its concomitant symptoms, such as hiking the shoulders, holding the breath and tightening the throat. “Anything that works with upper chest and neck will … engage an area relating to the reticular alarm system, which is the system in our autonomic nervous system that responds to fear and anxiety,” he says.

Specifically, Desjarlais recommends working the sternoclemastoid muscle, pectoralis major and minor, the subclavius, and all the posterior neck muscles going into the occipital muscle. You choose the type of strokes, he says, as long as they’re calming. “This is where the art of massage comes in,” he adds.

Desjarlais also recommends referring to a simple reflexology chart to activate the trigger points on the feet for the thymus gland, the master gland for the immune system, and the pituitary gland, the master gland for the endocrine system.

The head offers its own relief, too.

“When muscles tighten up around the head, it restricts blood flow and closes up sinuses,” says Lies. A simple head massage can help loosen these muscles.

Another technique that can help allergies is lymphatic massage, which can help reduce inflammation, remove toxins and support the immune system. “The lymph system is the system best suited to move those accumulated protein molecules and other wastes out of the area,” says Roger Hughes, a therapist and certified Dr. Vodder Method of Manual Lymph Drainage practitioner.

He’s had successes over the years working with long-time allergy sufferers, including children with food allergies who also have frequent ear infections. In the Vodder method, the strokes are light. “Forty percent of the lymphatic system is right under the skin,” Hughes explains. “Therefore, light, pleasurable, rhythmic touch is the mainstay of the Vodder method.”

Also, one-third of the lymph nodes are in the neck. Hughes begins his sessions there, where he says he’s “opening the lymph faucet.” Although Hughes encourages therapists to honor the practice of referring to certified practitioners of lymph drainage for expert treatment, “working with mindfulness, presence, and intention is more powerful than people realize,” he says. “You’re helping that person let go of himself, and let go of unconscious tension. This, in turn, will let all the fluids in the body—the blood, lymph, and nerves—flow more easily.”

Desjarlais agrees and says setting an intention is a practice like meditation—to continually bring yourself back to the issue at hand. It’s a practice he brings to his work in craniosacral therapy, an osteopathic discipline that uses specific techniques to move the cerebral spinal fluid and to calm the nervous system.

Other craniosacral techniques impact the immune system through the endocrine glands and increase overall fluid exchange, all very helpful in allergy relief. Craniosacral therapy also helps to change some deeply patterned responses.

“Sometimes the reason we react to an allergen is habitual—we get grooved neurologically and physiologically, and sometimes when we break these groove reaction cycles, the body doesn’t react to the allergens anymore,” says Desjarlais.

This happened to Desjarlais himself, who had a longtime allergy to shellfish that caused his throat to swell and his stomach to cramp.

Now, he can eat shellfish with only a mild scratchy throat afterward.

Part of the beauty of craniosacral work is that even taking beginning courses can allow you to incorporate some of the techniques into your practice. “Anyone can apply it to their own work,” says Desjarlais.

Massage and allergies can go quite well together!

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