Why Massage?
Many people recognize the value massage therapy offers for stress relief and injury recovery. A growing number of people have also included regular massage visits in their on-going healthcare routine. Oftentimes, your level of activity can create different challenges to your overall health. Whether you are experiencing aches and pains from high or minimal activity, a consistent routine of therapeutic massage can help you manage these challenges.
High activity of physical labor, intense exercise and constantly stressful work environments keep our bodies running in "high-gear" to the point of physical and mental fatigue. Common pains can develop such as muscle cramps, strained or "pulled" muscles, headaches and general aching throughout the body. The body is constantly working over-time to repair itself.
AMH recommendation: Regular sessions of therapeutic massage (1-2 times per month) can often help a person decrease high levels of harmful stress horomones; this decrease can allow the person's body to more efficiently regulate and repair itself.
Additional Consideration: If you experience intensely stressful episodes only periodically throughout the year (seasonal or school-year related), then your need for massage visits can follow the same pattern. You may want to schedule 2-3 sessions within your most stressful month, to help keep your body's stress levels manageable.
Minimal activity associated with everyday office work or frequent driving often forces our bodies to maintain stationary positions for extended periods of time. The result can be over-worked postural muscles throughout the back and neck, creating challenges to muscle and structure balance. Specific muscles can shorten, forcing their opposing muscles to constantly be over-stretched. This imbalance can perpetuate complaints of frequent pain, "knots" in the muscles and general fatigue.
AMH recommendation: A series of corrective massage therapy sessions can address the on-going challenges presented by muscular imbalance. Depending on the severity of your imbalance and your commitment to change, a person can often notice a significant difference within a four to six week time period, having 1-2 sessions per week.
Additional Consideration: Keeping the issue of muscle and structure balance in perspective, a person must consider the amount of time a specific imbalance has taken to develop. Ask yourself these questions:
- What is my primary stationary position? [oftentimes it is sitting: at a desk or while driving]
- How often am I in this position? [4-6 hours per day, 4-6 days per week]. Now, multiply that by the number of months or years you have repeated this pattern.
- Have your symptoms and complaints been periodic episodes of moderate to severe pain in generally the same area with gradually more intense and more frequent occurances over the past few years/months?
- Have you actively done stretching, exercising or self-therapy activities to consistently help change the development of this muscle imbalance pattern?
- Do you think this pattern can suddenly reverse and the symptoms disappear completely after a couple of therapy sessions (be it massage, physical therapy or chiropractic)?
- If you have spent years training your body to sustain a certain position, and now it has gotten to a point where the symptoms and episodes of pain have become less manageable (to the point of seeking out professional help), then would it make sense that it might take a little bit more time than a week or two to retrain your muscles and possibly correct the problem?
These same questions can be considered for people who experience repetitive motion in their everyday work or leisure activities. When you work with AMH massage therapists, we continue to ask questions, and help you discover for yourself which of your common activities (or lack thereof) possibly perpetuate any of your on-going complaints of pain. We also recognize the value of teamwork and referring to other healthcare providers when your healthcare needs go beyond our professional scope of practice.