Massage Therapy – The First Wealth Is Health
May 5th, 2011 | Author: Pain
Imagine being covered in soft flannel sheets on a warm cushion that contours to your body, soothing music playing in a softly lit room. A hot herbal wrap around your neck, warm booties to taking the chill off your toes, moisturizing lotion – and then, Hot Stones sliding on your skin that feels like liquid velvet.
That’s just the first three minutes of your relaxing, therapeutic massage.
Now, it’s hard to relax when you are in pain. It saps your energy and joy. Pain is frequently associated with poor posture which causes muscle tension: often the result of hours working at a computer, long commutes, pregnancy, carrying small children or previous muscle injuries.
Therapeutic Massage is the rubbing, kneading and stretching of muscles to relieve tension and pain. Each muscle is meant to do a specific job (and with memory so they won’t forget) that allows us to move our bodies in any and every way! But, they need fuel to move and that fuel comes from the oxygen circulating in the blood stream.
The supply of blood going directly into the muscle is small when the muscle is not moving and much greater with active movement or exercise. Prolonged inactivity and constant tension results in lack of circulation. The muscle does not get its fuel and cannot do its job and becomes stressed, tense, weakened and loses its memory.
Nearby muscles will try to ‘help out’, but, that’s not what they were meant to do and they become stressed and tense and can’t do their job, and so on and so on.little by little the pain builds up. Your posture changes, from head to toe, to adapt to weakened muscles. You find you have to turn your whole body to look out the back window of the car when backing up. It’s harder to reach the higher shelf. Your low back, hip, or knee start bothering you do for no apparent reason.
Then, one day you do one simple innocent thing like turning your head when you wake up or reaching down to pick a shoe up off the floor and aawgh!, suddenly you can’t move.
Have you ever found yourself grabbing or rubbing the back of your shoulder? Are you doing it right now? That’s your brain encouraging you to get a massage!
Remember imagining lying on that that warm, soft table, the heat and hot stones? That’s the beginning of real relaxation. Deep tissue or deep pressure massage serves as a form of passive exercise for the muscles. Tension is released, muscle memory is restored and the pain is diminished.
It really can be that easy. It’s the easiest form of therapy you’ll ever have to do. What would you do if you had less pain and more energy?
You could have a wealth of health and happiness.