The Benefit of Massage

Body Massage
Massage gives you a roadmap of stress areas in your body. Many times people don't know how much stress they're carrying until they have a massage; then they're able to feel it and let go of it. As the massage therapist stretches and loosens muscles and connective tissues, stress and muscular tension are released. Once you have an awareness of where stress lodges in your body, you can begin to do something about it. You start to educate yourself and your body, and you reverse a negative cycle. Neuromuscular and Lymphatic Drainage massage, often prescribed for injuries and conditions of pain, works at softening the muscles so that the therapist can move in more deeply to break up adhesions. This allows muscles to become really elastic, the way they should be. The body then may be freed of spasm and pain, increase its range of motion, and have the ability to avoid injury.

A Powerful Ally 
There's no denying the power of bodywork. Regardless of the adjectives we assign to it (pampering, rejuvenating, therapeutic) or the reasons we seek it out (a luxurious treat, stress relief, pain management), massage therapy can be a powerful ally in your healthcare regimen.
Experts estimate that upwards of ninety percent of disease is stress related. And perhaps nothing ages us faster, internally and externally, than high stress. While eliminating anxiety and pressure altogether in this fast-paced world may be idealistic, massage can, without a doubt, help manage stress.

This translates into:
Decreased anxiety.
Enhanced sleep quality.
Greater energy.
Improved concentration.
Increased circulation.
Reduced fatigue.

General Benefits:
Massage feels good, it is pleasurable.
Increases body awareness and sensitivity.
Reduces stress.
Calms the nervous system and has a centering effect.
Relaxes and clears the mind.
Relieves tension-related headaches.
Helps to improve posture.
Massage helps to fulfill the need for caring and nurturing touch.
Promotes self-esteem and a feeling of well-being.
Massage reduces levels of anxiety.
Increased the awareness of the body-mind connection and emotional awareness.

Circulatory System's Benefits:
Produces a dilation of the blood vessels thereby improving circulation.
Reduces the lack of blood, reduces pain due to the irritation of free nerve endings.
Speeds the elimination of the waste products of metabolism.
Enhance immunity by stimulating lymph flow, the body's natural defense system.
Massage helps to reduce swelling.
Massage increases the number of red blood cells in circulation.
Massage has the overall effect of lowering blood pressure.
Facilitates tissue healing through the enhancement of circulation.
Massage reduces the pulse rate.

Musculoskeletal Systems' Benefits:
Increases the blood supply and nutrition to the muscles. massage increases circulation to the bones, benefiting their nutritional needs and aiding in their growth and repair. Joint pain as experienced with arthritis can be reduced by circulatory drainage.
Alleviate low-back pain and improve range of motion.
Relaxes muscles, reducing spasm, tension and cramping.
Exercise and stretch weak, tight, or atrophied muscles.
Help athletes of any level prepare for, and recover from, strenuous workouts.
Reduces adhesions (knots) and fibrosis.
Massage can break the cycle of spasm and pain by decreasing both.
Improves the circulation and nutrition of the joints and can increase joint range of motion.
Helps muscles recover more quickly from exertion and fatigue.
Helps to reestablish proper tone in muscles.
Reduces muscle and soft tissue pain.
Reduces joint strain and compression through releasing tight muscles and tendons.
Increase joint flexibility. Increases ease and efficiency of movement.
Supports increased work capacity and metabolism.
Massage can stimulate muscle contraction.

Nervous System's Benefits:
Massage stimulates the touch, pressure and proprioceptive receptors of the skin and underlying tissue.
Massage can have a sedative, stimulating or even exhausting effect on the nervous system depending on the type and length of treatment given.
Massage reduces sympathetic stimulation and helps to balance the autonomic nervous system.
Massage relaxes the muscles and helps to reestablish proper tonus through its effect on the neuromuscular reflex pathways.
Known to affect the neurotransmitters of the brain and increase endorphin secretion in particular.
Massage can reduce nerve entrapment through the release of soft tissue or muscular binding.
Massage can reduce nerve root compression caused by muscular tension.

Lymphatic System's Benefits:
Massage increases tissue fluid and lymphatic circulation thus reducing swelling and enhancing the immune and filtering activities of this system.
Massage increases venous and lymphatic flow.
Massage reduces swelling by enhancing lymphatic circulation.

Excretory System's Benefits:
Massage increases the excretion (via the kidneys) of fluids and waste products of protein metabolism, inorganic phosphorous and salt in normal individuals.
Massage can facilitate elimination through the large intestines by mechanically stimulating peristalsis and improving tone.

Skin's Benefits:
Improve the condition of the body,s largest organ the skin. Helps to reduce tension in the skin and adjoining tissues as well as increasing its circulation and improve its nutrition.

Respiratory System's Benefits:
Massage deepens and normalizes the breathing pattern through relaxation, and release of tension in the breathing structures, both the rib cage and the muscles of respiration.
Massage can be used to relieve congestion in the lungs through percussive and compressive movements.

Digestive System's Benefits:
Massage stimulates peristalsis and can reduce cramping or spasm in the digestive tract.
Massage supports healthy digestion through its stress releasing effects.
Furthermore, clients often report a sense of perspective and clarity after receiving a massage. The emotional balance bodywork provides can often be just as vital and valuable as the more tangible physical benefits.

Profound Effects
In response to massage, specific physiological and chemical changes cascade throughout the body, with profound effects. Research shows that with massage: Arthritis sufferers note fewer aches and less stiffness and pain.
Asthmatic children show better pulmonary function and increased peak air flow.
Burn injury patients report reduced pain, itching, and anxiety.
High blood pressure patients demonstrate lower diastolic blood pressure, anxiety, and stress hormones.
Premenstrual syndrome sufferers have decreased water retention and cramping.
Preterm infants have improved weight gain.
Research continues to show the enormous benefits of touch which range from treating chronic diseases, neurological disorders, and injuries, to alleviating the tensions of modern lifestyles. Consequently, the medical community is actively embracing bodywork, and massage is becoming an integral part of hospice care and
neonatal intensive care units. Many hospitals are also incorporating on-site massage practitioners and even spas to treat post surgery or pain patients as part of the recovery process.

Increase the Benefits with Frequent Visits
Getting a massage can do you a world of good. And getting massage frequently can do even more. This is the beauty of bodywork. Taking part in this form of regularly scheduled self-care can play a huge part in how healthy you'll be and how youthful you'll remain with each passing year. Budgeting time and money for bodywork at consistent intervals is truly an investment in your health. And remember: just because massage feels like a pampering treat doesn't mean it is any less therapeutic. Consider massage appointments a necessary piece of your health and wellness plan, and work with your practitioner to establish a treatment schedule that best meets your needs.

Psychological/Emotional Effects:
It is well documented that massage is able to reduce anxiety, depression, stress and the hormone levels associated with it, and give the client a sense of well-being. Massage therapy has a positive effect on our mood states. Additionally, therapeutic massage can also bring forth a release of repressed emotions, which is usually part of a gradual process of the client learning to be more aware of areas of themselves that they have disconnected with.

Pain Control:
Massage is recognized to have a great effect in reducing and managing pain that arises from a variety of sources, such as trauma, post-surgery, headache, fibromyalgia, arthritis and terminal illness. It can address the source of the pain and stop painful nerve firing, it can alter the processing of pain stimuli in the central nervous system (consisting of the brain and spinal cord) and can affect the processing of painful nerve firing by the peripheral nervous system (consisting of the nerves outside the central nervous system).

Preventative Measures:
An important and often overlooked benefit of massage therapy is its use as a means to help prevent injury or other conditions from arising. Athletics will be used as an example. Depending on the sport, athletes may continually overuse certain parts of the body that can cause a build up of tension in muscle tissue and microtears of muscle fibres over time. Muscle imbalances can result causing compensation and therefore altered posture and biomechanics (mechanics of a living body). This will all lead to increased stress on the affected joints, ligaments (connect bone to bone), tendons (connect muscle to bone) and muscles, resulting in possible injury. Before injury, an athlete may only feel the symptoms of tight muscles, mild pain or a mild decrease in range of motion in tissue and/or joints, and disregard it only as symptoms of training. Massage may prevent injury from happening by reducing muscle tension, increasing muscle length and flexibility, and assisting in the removal of metabolic wastes (derived from the chemical processes of cells in the body); therapeutic massage aids in relieving pain and reducing adhesions and fibrosis in injured and healing tissue. This would encourage a more effective and efficient environment for tissue and its surrounding structures to function.

Maintenance:
Another important and often overlooked benefit of massage therapy is its use to assist in increasing and maintaining the health of the body after recovery from an injury or when addressing certain conditions.
An example of how massage is used in the maintenance of our health is as follows. Our homes and vehicles need to be maintained otherwise they start to fall apart or stop working. Our bodies need the same attention we have for anything else in life, if not more. Even though we feel good and have no pain, it does not mean our body no longer requires attention. When symptoms arise, as long as they are not caused by an acute trauma such as a car accident, usually means that there has been some sort of dysfunction going on for some time. This is our own body's way of saying "Enough, I have been trying to normalize whatever you have been doing to me but it is just too much to handle. Stop doing what you are doing or change something. Please."
Massage can maintain tissue health by increasing its circulation thereby removing wastes, supplying nutrition, increasing drainage and decreasing pain. Therapeutic massage can maintain our general health by decreasing stress and stress related hormones thereby maintaining the function of our immune system and decreasing the chance of stress-imposed diseases and conditions. Massage therapy can maintain tissue health by decreasing the amount of fibrosis and adhesions developed from micro-tearing, overuse and lack of proper tissue nutrition; it can maintain our health by positively affecting any of our eleven systems. Massage can maintain our health by aiding in the prevention of injuries and resulting conditions. Massage can maintain our health by addressing, on a regular basis, the changes that occur to our body by the everyday stresses we impose on it, thereby allowing us to continue functioning in the most efficient and effective manner