Massage Therapy

The human body was built to move, to be mobile, to be ready for action, so why do so many people experience aches, stiffness or inflexibility?

A look at our environment can provide many of the answers. Each day we are faced with many physical challenges – as office workers holding arms over a keyboard, as construction workers hammering repeatedly, or as bus drivers sitting for long periods with insufficient support.

Workstations are often built to accommodate equipment, not different body shapes and sizes. Society demands performance, but workers don’t get the needed warm-up time before activities. Deadlines, traffic, air quality and many other factors lead to physical and mental stresses that eventually become evident as physical pain.

Massage therapy seeks to address some of these symptoms. While there seems to be universal agreement that massage “feels good”, it also offers many specific benefits. The therapeutic use of massage affects all systems of the body, most particularly circulatory, muscular, fascial and nervous systems. Massage therapy is also effective in the control of pain – both chronic and acute, in stress reduction and in creating a sense of relaxation and well being.

Historical and current research document the physiological effects of massage, many of which are due to the movement of the therapist’s hands over the body, physically stretching the muscles, encouraging circulation, inhibiting muscle spasm and sedating or stimulating the nerves to ease pain or promote function as necessary.