Massage Therapy

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays!  I certainly did, with a nice week off of work and (obviously) a week off from blogging… sorry about that!  I skipped Guilt-Free Friday and everything!  I've been really really bad over the holidays though, so I honestly don't have a guilt-free food to share, but I do have some more great information about digestive health and healthy eating choices to share with you for a future post.  I’ve got lots of other ideas for more posts too so I’m excited to jump back into researching and doing your homework for you so we can all be healthier together!

But, as promised, I’m continuing on from my last post about chiropracticcare and sharing with you why massage therapy is so beneficial to your health as well!  And I’m not just trying to get you to come see me, although I wouldn’t complain if you gave me a call :), but I genuinely want you to know how good it is for you, no matter who you choose to see!

I love love love my profession.  Being as passionate as I am about natural healthcare, that’s exactly why I went this route for a career choice.  Massage therapy is an incredibly beneficial natural healthcare option.  It’s great for both healing preexisting ailments and it’s great preventive care too.

I’ve had a couple of people ask, when making their appointment, if I do nails or offer spa packages.  Ooohhh those comments make my blood boil… haha fortunately I don’t get asked that very often.  I DID NOT get into this field for frou-frou reasons or to give you a day at the spa.  I DO intend to give you a relaxing experience and I hope I help relieve a lot of your stress, as stress relief alone has incredible health benefits (more about that shortly), but I got into this field for the betterment of your health, period.  Let me share with you just how good a massage is for your wellbeing!

As you probably know, massage involves manual manipulation of the soft tissues – muscles – to work out tension and adhesions and ease the pain cause by it, and to improve or increase circulation.  To follow up from my last post about chiropractic care, loosening up those muscles around your spine is hugely beneficial for an adjustment.  Equally so, it’s helpful for stiff joints or “pinched” nerves that pass through muscle groups, like the sciatic nerve for instance, which most commonly gets “pinched” by the piriformis muscle in the hip joint.

By working out muscle tension, massage therapy can also improve or increase range of motion in a joint (which is great for athletes!); boost your immune system by stimulating your lymph flow; ease the pain of stiff, weak, or tight muscles and help them heal; assist you in your regular exercise routine; improve your skin; help with the healing process of scar tissues and stretch marks; reduce cramping or spasms (charlie horses); relax overworked muscles (definitely great if you’ve got a job that requires hard manual labor!); relieve headaches and migraines; and, like I said in the last paragraph, increase circulation which helps your blood bring oxygen and nutrients to your muscles and organs.

But let me get back to the stress relief thing mentioned earlier.  Not many people realize what kind of a toll stress takes on your body.  Sure you FEEL it after a hard day at work, after dealing with difficult people, your children misbehaving, or difficult life situations like loss or financial problems or troubled relationships.  But what exactly is going on in your body when you’re under stress?  When your body goes into fight or flight mode, which is the state you’re in under ANY kind of stressful situation from being stuck in traffic to being chased by a bear (let’s hope that’s not all that common for you though…), the hormone cortisol is released into your blood stream, which is pretty demanding on your body preparing your to fight or flee, depending on the situation.  Your sympathetic nervous system is activated, and your brain directs energy and blood flow to areas of your body that you need to handle stressful situations, and therefore deactivating your parasympathetic nervous system, which is what handles things such as digestion and elimination.  The less stress you’re under, the better your body’s systems and organs are able to function.  And one great way to reduce stress is to, you guessed it, get a massage!  Taking that hour to just lie down, listen to peaceful music, and get your muscular tension worked out definitely allows your parasympathetic nervous system to get back in gear and take care of things internally, and gives your mind and muscles a chance to rest and rejuvenate.  Reducing stress has a lot of great benefits, such as helping your digestive system to work better (which helps with weight loss, and who doesn’t want that??) and boosting your immune system to better ward off illness and disease.  You sleep better, your anxiety levels are lower, your concentration is stronger, and your energy levels are higher.  Win!

There are so many ways massage therapy can help you, and I’ve been very fortunate to have great success with easing so many people’s ailments like rotator cuff restriction, scoliosis, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, TMJ syndrome (tightness and restriction in your jaw), headaches, and just plain ol’ stress.  One of my favorite successes has been being able to help people get away from using pain medications, which can have detrimental effects on your body in the long run and can really put stress on your organs.

It’s been a very rewarding career so far, and I’m so happy to be able to help ease people’s pain in such a non-invasive way.  You really can’t beat taking a break from life and relaxing while doing something so healing for your body at the same time!