Why should I get a massage threapy session?

Pondering the question of whether you should treat yourself to a massage therapy session ?

• Does Massage Therapy works

  Massage therapy in is various forms including long strokes, kneading, deep circular movements, vibration, and tapping does work in general because it is a kind of passive exercise and stimulant for your skin and muscles — enormous and complex issues, with stunningly complex neurology.

  One covers us, the other holds us together and upright. If they don’t feel good, we don’t feel good. Massage wakes them up physiologically, stirs the forces that keep them fit, and is vital. The human body is designed to work perfectly with a minimum of maintenance.

  The healthiest people alive are the ones who simply get plenty of fresh air, exercise, rest, and high-quality food. Give the body what it needs, and it thrives.

• How Massage Therapy works ?

  There are several forms of tissue in the human body that deep massage and sports massage primarily affect such as fascia, muscles, tendons, and nerves are major components in massage work.

  Giving an example for how massage works let’s take a connective tissue in the body that has a connecting function – the Fascia, which is a malleable tissue that wraps all of the muscles, and all of the individual fibers and bundles of individual fibers that become muscle.

  Fascia comes together at the end of the muscle and becomes the tendon, which attaches the muscle to the bone

  The body’s fascial system can be described as a layered body “suite”, with fascial

   

  sheaths wrapping the muscles and weaving in layers throughout the body. Because of this, the stress in any area of the body affects every other part of the body.

   

  For instance, the tension in the connective tissue of the leg pulls the tissue throughout the torso.

  In its optimal condition, fascia is a loose, moist tissue. When there is continual loose movement and balance in the body, the fascial body “suite” stays loose and mobile, facilitating movement between different parts of the body.

   

  However, under continual stress and lack of movement, the fascia becomes rigid and loses its fluidity. Layers of fascia begin to stick to one another, causing the “knots” you may have experienced in your back or neck. The sheaths of fascia stick in a systematic way, based on your habitual patterns of movement, or more correctly, lack movement.

   

  Although people most often associate tension and stiffness with their muscles, it is the connective tissue that accumulates much of this stress.

   

  My massage work is designed to release ( unfold the suite ), loosen the tension that currently exists in the connective tissue, stretch the tissues back into their normal position, and return the body systematically to an aligned position. reconditioning the body through releasing the rigidity from the connective tissue, and also bringing awareness to and changing the patterns that caused the tissue to rigidify in the first place.

• Why Use Massage Therapy ?

  Massage therapy is preventative health care :

   

  Massage therapy has some potential to prevent some serious pain problems. Clients share how much better they feel not only after a massage, but “all the time”.

   

  Muscles should not be painful :

  Like the rest of you, a muscle is mostly water. It shouldn’t hurt at all when you press on it. If it does hurt — and it often does — something is wrong. Stiff and sore muscles are sick muscles: they have a pathology called “myofascial pain syndrome.” They are full of junk molecules, the waste products of metabolism. They are irritated and choking off their own blood supply, starving for oxygen, nutrients and clean tissue fluids, and unable even to exercise to save themselves. Massage can break this vicious cycle, pulling you back from the edge simply by squeezing sick muscles like used sponges.

  We Need Touch :

  Touch is something else the body needs — especially if the basics are missing — is plenty of tactile stimulation. Unfortunately, we are all touch-deprived, and most people today suffer from a kind of numbness of the skin and deadness of the muscles. Baby mammals literally die without touch — it is essential for the development of our nervous systems. We are tactile beings. To have this simple biological need answered is profoundly soothing, the sensation of relief so intense that it changes lives.

• How Long Does It Take to Get A Benefit From A Massage Therapy Session

  Unfortunately, a common scenario is that people stop coming as soon as their symptoms are resolved. Just as people don’t seek help until something goes wrong, they often stop as soon as the worst of the symptoms are resolved.

   

  Massage therapy even when its sports massage \ remedial or deep tissue massage therapy does not usually work miracles in batches of six treatments.

  It can get you over the hump.

   

  It would take the edge off, and that can be worth every penny. But it can’t fix you up so well that you become magically immune to five more years of slouching in your office chair for ten workaholic hours per day. Chronic pain and stress require chronic care.

   

  Preventative health care for your body is not much different than preventative maintenance for a car.

   

  You have a choice: you can spend a hundred dollars on a widget for your car now, or you can buy a whole new engine in a year. Most people have no trouble understanding that equation.

   

  For some reason, many people have a different attitude about the human body. In fact, most people spend significantly more on their cars each year than they do on their own health care!

   

  Invest in your health! Whether you are healing from a major accident, or simply trying to slow the downward slide into the rigidity and fragility of aging, massage therapy is most effective when it is used as preventative medicine. And preventative health care is simply the best kind of health care there is.

   

  It is easier to keep you healthy than it is to fix you once you are broken. And if you think massage therapy is expensive … try chronic pain.

• Help Beyond Massage

  Massage therapists spend more time with their clients than any other health care professionals, with the exception of the psychologists and psychiatrists.

  And most of that is spent with hands on, as well as in conversation.

   

  I have the time to share my expertise with you. I have the time to listen, to answer all your questions. To teach you whatever you need to know.

   

  To be thorough. To notice things that other health care professionals might miss. A massage therapist makes a great watchdog for your health: we know the warning signals for all kinds of disease and dysfunction, and we are likely to spot the need for a visit to a physician.

   

Does Stretching really help?

• How Does Stretching works

  Stretching works

  Stretching helps to increase flexibility. That is a fact. But what is the value of flexibility?

  The reality is that hardly anyone actually needs to be more flexible. Most people have a normal range of motion — that’s why it’s normal! Unless you are specifically frustrated because you lack sufficient range of motion in a joint to perform a specific task, you probably don’t need to be more flexible.

  Stretching barely registers on any measure of health and function. More flexible people do not die less or fall down less as they age. They don’t have clearly higher quality of life (a tough one to measure, but it’s been done). They don’t have less back pain or injuries, and in fact they may have more. They don’t have lower blood pressure, resting heart rate, cholesterol — those markers of fitness are much more strongly predicted by weight and endurance.

  Flexibility also isn’t linked to the other components of fitness: flexible people cannot lift more, run farther, or slip through narrower cracks. James Nuzzo: “Absence of correlations between flexibility and other fitness components indicates flexibility is a distinct trait, but not one particularly important for health and function.”

  Acrobats, gymnasts, yogis, contortionists, and martial artists have clearly been pushing the limits for centuries, sometimes achieving uncanny mobility. But these are highly motivated athletes with specific and exotic performance goals and stretching regimens that would definitely intimidate the rest of us, and with good reason: they often injure themselves along the way. Indeed, it may even be necessary to injure joints — to traumatize their capsules and ligaments — in order to get them to move that far.

  Fitness and health are not equivalent. You can be fit for a particular athletic pursuit, but that doesn’t mean you are a healthier person: high performance in a narrow category often comes at great costs (such as joint stability). Flexibility is good for a few specialized tasks … and really not much else. It’s useful for gymnasts, for instance.

• How Exercise and movement to help you heal

  In most injuries, even many serious ones, you will have at least some painless movement. And whatever you’ve got, you should use. When you are hurt, the pain-free range is your new best friend: that’s the range you’ll be exercising in for a while. Pain free range of motion exercises are also known as “early mobilization.”

  Research shows that early mobilization is a Very Good Thing. Safe tissue loading is probably actually anti-inflammatory. Early mobilization “reduces range of motion loss, increases blood supply, and reduces the degree of muscle atrophy. This year, researchers in Australia showed that people with hip fractures get better much more quickly if they start walking sooner.

  Pain free range of motion exercises are the “baby steps” that you take at the beginning of a recovery process. When injuries are new, your tissues are fragile and it’s very important to avoid the risk of re-injury, or of collateral injury. The sooner you start, the sooner you can get on to bigger challenges

  As you start to heal, you usually don’t have to continue to be so careful. In fact, later in the subacute and chronic stages of healing from serious injuries, people progress to mobilization exercises, and then usually have to deliberately leave their pain-free range and start doing “no pain, no gain” exercises, endurance and/or strength training, in order to make further progress — the cliché of agonizing daily physical therapy.

• Movement and Chronic Pain

  you are suffering from chronic pain, pain free range of motion exercises,  “baby steps” may once again be necessary in order to heal. 

  How to do it? 

   

  Explore the pain-free range of motion of an affected joint. See how far you can go before it hurts. And then repeat that movement rhythmically for 1-10 minutes per session, 1-10 sessions per day. I am suggesting a wide range of possibilities there, because there are so many different variables. Use your judgement, and generally let pain by your guide: if the movement begins to hurt, obviously you should stop.

  Often it is necessary to make a movement easier in order to make it pain free, and this is where creativity and experience become important. 

  Frozen shoulder — Frozen shoulder is often so painful that there is basically no such thing as a pain-free range: any attempt to move the shoulder is painful. But by “dangling” the arm, tiny muscle contractions can get the shoulder joint moving painlessly — or without any increase in pain, at any rate.

  Ripped biceps — I don’t mean well-defined, I mean torn! A severe muscle strain can make it virtually impossible to contract a muscle without pain. A ripped biceps muscle may not be able to lift the weight of the forearm painlessly … so help it. Reach over with the other hand, and provide enough assistance that the damaged biceps can “lift” your forearm.

  Back pain — Acute back pain can be so severe thay any movement causes spasms. So get into the water, where you are much lighter! Even a bathtub may suffice. It is usually possible to do some hip circles in a pool, or to gently flex and extend the lumbar spine in the bathtub (the heat helps too). Water is a terrific place to do pain free range of motion exercises for injuries that are complicated by gravity.

• Do I need sport or remedial massages if I'm injured?

  If you’re injured, you might feel like a massage would be just what your body needs to heal.

  And while it’s true that massage can help soothe an injury and increase circulation to speed healing, most medical professionals—including sports medicine specialists—don’t recommend massage as part of an initial recovery regimen. That doesn’t mean you should skip out on massages all together after an injury; if you enjoy massages, or even if they help speed up your recovery process, there are plenty of ways to get them without endangering yourself further.

  Simply ask a professional for advice about when (and how often) to schedule massages during your recovery period. Suffering from Plantar Fasciitis? Sports Massage Therapy Works!: Plantar fasciitis is one of those sports injuries that seems pretty harmless at first. The tenderness will go away with time, right? Wrong! There is a problem brewing in your plantar fascia—the band of connective tissue running along your sole from heel to toe—that will have you hobbling around in no time.

  But thankfully, sports massage therapy can reduce tension and inflammation in your fascia, significantly reducing pain. All you need to do is work with a certified sports therapist who knows exactly where on your foot to apply pressure and rub out any trigger points created by overuse (e.g., walking barefoot too much).

  In fact, studies show that deep-force stimulation such as massage therapy has more than twice the positive effects than static stretching alone—so don’t miss out! Fixing Shoulder Pain : How Sports Massage Can Help To keep things simple, we’ll focus specifically on shoulder pain.

  First off: Don’t ignore it! Pain gets worse quickly, but it also gets better quickly when we treat it appropriately. Secondly: You aren’t doomed to live in constant pain until you reach old age.

  Quite simply, sports massage therapy works wonders for relieving muscle tension and stress related to poor posture and repetitive activities like typing or throwing pitches .

  It also helps break down scar tissue in our muscles, something that’s especially important if you’re into high-impact sports like soccer or football. So before reaching for a potentially harmful painkiller or deciding not to run again until it heals, turn to sports massage instead—you’ll be glad you did! Treating Tennis Elbow With Sports Massage It almost goes without saying: Tennis elbow isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  Oh sure, some of us pretend that it goes away only to pop back up every summer once tennis season comes around again, but here’s hoping that someday soon we’ll find a way to fix tennis elbow permanently.