Benefits of Regular Massage and the Cumulative Effect
For those of you already receiving regular massage, you may attest to the following statements. If so, please feel free to leave comments and testimonials for others! The effects you receive from one of our therapeutic massages can greatly help with the most troubling symptoms and pain relief. Even though this relief may be temporary (or permanent for those lucky ones!), further treatments are often necessary. But what about the other parts of your body that may be contributing to that nagging pain or discomfort?
Typically after each session, we take detailed notes as to what we did, and what we would like to do on subsequent visits. It is highly likely that we have identified several other areas that are either contributing to the discomfort, or are affected by the “problem area”. For example lets take plain old neck and shoulder tension and why not throw in a headache to go with it. We would begin by working the shoulders and neck to see what we find, and to alleviate the primary complaints; but what about the effects this plays on the ribs and chest muscles? Our bodies are a harmonious unit and what affects one area often affects the rest of the body as well. So, since the shoulder is a soft tissue joint (suspended by muscle and connective tissue), the muscle memory of your shoulders is the determining factor for how your shoulders rest. This can take several sessions to try to loosen and retrain the muscles not only of the shoulder itself, but all the connected parts as well. Of course this particular situation is greatly enhanced by proper exercise of the shoulder and related muscles. Here, regular massage can continue to progressively release and reposition the shoulders in order to take pressure off of the neck, shoulder, and that darn headache as well. Subsequent visits will allow us to work on those rib heads and loosen the chest muscles which help to “anchor” the upper torso into place.
While you will certainly want to come in when you are in severe pain, we can sometimes accomplish more when we can work when things are a little calmer. Hence the next benefit to regular massage is that we’ll tend to catch you during those “good days” when you aren’t hurting so much. These times make for a great visit as the area that has been ‘bugging you’ is not acute and inflamed. Now we can utilize our time in a different fashion by spreading out to other areas of the body that may have been missed because when the ‘roof is on fire’ we try our best to alleviate as much pain as possible from the troubled spot. These sessions also allow for deeper and more thorough work. Being on a regular schedule allows for this type of work more often. From a therapeutic approach, we need sessions like this to make for more lasting improvements.
Finally,continueing with regular treatments also allow us to work on those areas of the body which you may not have noticed were tense and sore at all. The key to this is that once we have alleviated some of the major complaints, we are then free to work other areas which we feel could be potential ‘trouble makers’. Since the body is an interconnected unit, we can use this time to try and find the other little subtleties the body has connected to the area that becomes problematic from time to time. There are also areas that help the entire body which we are then able to address, such as the feet, hands, scalp, and hips. The results of the cumulative effect can take you down the road of less pain, greater flexibility, and ultimately a more pleasant daily life.
If you are interested in having regular visits, please consider purchasing a package of multiple sessions. This will not only save you money, but will ensure you are able to make those future appointments, even when times get tough.