Benefits of Massage
By: Kassandra Sousa
There can be many reasons a person might go for a massage. It’s great for anything from simply de-stressing and relaxing, to working more deeply and caring for chronic issues. Another question one might have is frequency. How often should we be going for a massage? It’s a question with many variables.
If you are a person who overall is pretty conscious with self-care, regardless of age, you might only need to go one to every two months. That’s considered more of a maintenance massage, like a wellness check with a doctor. Nothing is really wrong with the client, they just either want to relax or have been working out more and want to help with recovery.
Someone that has an injury, whether that be something that just happened, or something that the person has been living with for a period of time, requires more precision thinking and treatment plans for the best possible outcome. Otherwise you might feel better for a little while, but the pain or tightness will come back.
Massages for injury-related work need to be grouped together in order to break the pain cycle. Someone that is more on this side of the scale might end up having a treatment plan look more like a 60 minute or even 30 minute massage once a week for 6 weeks, for example.
The specifics of your treatment plan would be determined by the conversation after your massage with your therapist on the changes that you see immediately after compared to before the treatment. From there you’ll decide on a course of action and start building the groundwork to a more mobile, less pain-filled life.
You can find some more resources about massage for pain management and its benefits from Harvard Health Publishing here and TIME here.
Lastly, deep-tissue does NOT have to hurt! Actually, it can harm more than it can help. Deep-tissue, contrary to popular belief, doesn't necessarily mean jam an elbow til’ it hurts. It simply means working the deeper muscles in your body. Slower massage techniques help work the fascia in your body.
Fascia is the connective tissue that holds all of you together; mostly composed of collagen. When you stretch or get a massage, you are stretching out your muscles and all of the fascia in your body which in turn helps pump blood and lymph through your body. When your body runs more efficiently, you are in a better mood, you can think clearer, and be more productive.
Massage has been proven to lower blood pressure and help with anxiety and depression among many other things. If you are on the fence about trying it, or are looking for a sign to jump back into the world of bodywork, you absolutely should. Your mind, body, and spirit thank you!