Massage
Massage
The Touch That Heals
Back in the days before aspirin, heating pads and whirlpools, humans treated their sore bodies the old-fashioned way: with massage. When a caveman twisted one of his Neanderthal knees, he rubbed it. When a Greek princess developed pain in her temples, she rubbed them. And when folks ate too much at one of those ancient Italian toga parties, they did what the Romans did: They rubbed their aching bellies.
In many ways, massage is the most natural of natural remedies. Touching your body where it hurts seems to be a basic instinct, like running from danger or eating when you’re hungry. And experts say that massage, no matter how humble or low-tech it may seem, can be a powerful healer.
“It really makes you feel great, and it can be a great aid to healing,” says Vincent Iuppo, N.D., a naturopathic physician, a massage therapist and director of the Morris Institute of Natural Therapeutics, a holistic health education center in Denville, New Jersey. “Massage is one of the best ways to help with blood circulation, sore joints, headaches and lots of other problems.”
Massage has come a long way over the centuries. People around the world have developed special techniques, from the famous Swedish massage to the lesser-known but growing forms such as Hellerwork, Trager and craniosacral therapy. Many of these require years of training to master and can’t be done on yourself. But experts say there are self-massage techniques that you can use to help with many common health concerns. You can rub away stress, headaches, restless legs, muscle cramps and more—all with techniques that require only practice, a warm, quiet spot and a little massage oil, which you can make from ingredients in your kitchen.
How Swede It Is
Massage has been around for at least 5,000 years, Dr. Iuppo says. Artifacts show that the Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and just about every other culture practiced some form of body manipulation to ease pain and prevent or cure illness. In different languages, massage has been referred to as toogi-toogi, anmo and nuad bo-rarn.
In the nineteenth century, a Swede named Peter Hendrik Ling began to develop what is now the most widely known and studied form of massage in the Western world: Swedish massage. Ling, a fencing master, incorporated gymnastics, movement and massage in a health care regimen that he called the Swedish Movement Cure. He was the first westerner in modern times to systematize massage, and he set up an academy in Sweden to teach his techniques. Ling’s followers have refined his techniques into a series of maneuvers.
If you’ve ever been treated to a full Swedish massage, you know how relaxing it can be. But many massage experts believe that it offers other benefits as well, including:
- Reduced muscle tension
- Stimulated or soothed nervous system
- Enhanced skin condition
- Improved blood circulation
- Better digestion and intestinal function
- Increased mobility in joints
- Relief of chronic pain
- Reduced swelling and inflammation
A therapist trained in Swedish massage uses soothing, tapping and kneading strokes to work the entire body, relieving muscle tension and loosening sore joints. Swedish massage therapists use five basic strokes, which anyone can learn and use on themselves and others. They are:
- Effleurage, a French word that means “stroking.” It’s a warm-up technique that lets a person get used to the feel of the therapist’s hands. The gliding stroke primarily improves circulation, says Elliot Greene, past president of the American massage Therapy Association, the largest and oldest national professional association for massage therapists.
- Petrissage, a technique in which you lightly grab and lift muscles, pulling them away from the bones. You can then “knead” the muscles, rolling and squeezing them. Massage therapists believe this stroke helps relieve sore muscles by clearing away lactic acid, a by-product created by your muscles when they work extra hard. Petrissage may also increase circulation to muscle tissue.
- Friction, which involves using thumbs and fingertips to work deep circles into the thickest parts of muscles as well as around the joints. These circular motions may help break adhesions, knots of tissue that form when muscle fibers bind together. Greene says friction may also make soft tissue and joints more flexible.
- Tapotement, which includes all of the chopping, beating and tapping strokes in Swedish massage. These can be used for two purposes. A few seconds of tapotement can invigorate your muscles, stimulating them and giving you a burst of energy. But if you use the technique for a longer period, it will begin to fatigue and thereby relax the muscle—a welcome result for muscles that are cramped, strained or in spasm.
- Vibration, whose strokes involve pressing fingers or flattened hands firmly on a muscle, then shaking the area rapidly for a few seconds. This may help stimulate your nervous system, experts say, and could boost circu lation and improve the function of your glands.
For specific instructions on these techniques, see the illustrations beginning on page 570.
A Touch of Relaxation
Even though massage is older than any history book, since 1920 there has been relatively little scientific study of how it affects the body. Still, a revival in research has begun to unravel the mystery behind how massage works, says Tiffany Field, Ph.D., director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
For one thing, massage may slow the body’s release of the stress hormone cortisol, Dr. Field says. In a study of 52 hospitalized children, a daily 30-minute back massage seemed to inhibit the body’s production of cortisol, and nurses also reported that the children were less anxious and slept longer. Dr. Field says that massage before bedtime also seems to lengthen the deepest phase of sleep, allowing your muscles and other body parts more time to regenerate.
In addition, massage may increase your body’s production of another hormone, serotonin, which can improve your mood, boost your immune system and possibly ward off migraine headaches, Dr. Field says. And a study of 28 cancer patients showed that men who received a ten-minute back massage reported significant short-term pain relief immediately after their rubdowns.
Different Strokes
Sweden is only one country, and Swedish massage is only one form of massage. According to Greene, some of the most common forms in the United States, such as deep tissue massage, sports massage and neuromuscular massage, are refinements of Swedish massage.
Deep tissue massage targets chronic tension in muscles that lie far below the surface of your body. You have five layers of muscle in your back, for instance, and while Swedish massage may help the first couple of layers, it won’t do much directly for the muscle underneath. Deep muscle techniques usually involve slow strokes, direct pressure or friction movements that go across the grain of the muscles. Massage therapists will use their fingers, thumbs or occasionally even elbows to apply the needed pressure.
A therapist may use Swedish massage in combination with deep tissue or other forms of massage, Greene says. “I may do Swedish massage techniques until I find muscles that need deep tissue techniques,” he says.
Sports massage is designed to help you train better, whether you’re a world champion or a weekend warrior. The techniques are similar to those in Swedish and deep tissue massage, but Greene says sports massage has been adapted to meet the athlete’s special needs. Pre-event massage can help warm up muscles and improve circulation before competition, but it can also energize or relax an athlete and help him focus on the competition. Post-event massage can push waste products out of the body and improve recovery. Sports massage can help athletes prevent or work through minor aches and pains accumulated during training and can allow them to train more effectively. Massage also helps athletes recover from injuries and aids in rehabilitation. The massage is faster-paced than Swedish or deep tissue massage, Greene says.
Neuromuscular massage is a form of deep tissue massage that is applied to individual muscles. It is used to increase blood flow, reduce pain and release pressure on nerves caused by injuries to muscles and other soft tissue. Neuromuscular massage helps release trigger points, intense knots of tense muscle that can also “refer” pain to other parts of the body. Relieving a tense trigger point in your back, for example, could help ease pain in your shoulder or reduce headaches.
There are many other, lesser-known techniques that differ from the Swedish massage tradition.
“There really is a whole world of techniques out there,” says Dan Bienenfeld, a certified Hellerwork practitioner, a massage therapist and director of the Los Angeles Healing Arts Center, a holistic healing practice that offers massage and other natural health alternatives. “You can find all sorts of massage, from gentle touching to pressure points to pretty vigorous stuff. Each offers you something different, a different way to heal.”
Some massage therapists call these techniques bodywork. Here’s a sample of some of the major types and the benefits you might expect from each.
Rolfing seeks to re-educate your body about posture. When posture is poor, Bienenfeld says, it can be reflected in a number of health problems, such as backaches, headaches and joint pain. Rolfing seeks to realign and straighten your body by working the myofascia, the connective tissue that surrounds your muscles and helps hold your body together. The ten-session, head-to-toe Rolfing program used to be rather painful, but Bienenfeld says new techniques that employ a therapist’s hands and elbows are quite tolerable and just as effective at improving your posture.
Hellerwork is an offshoot of Rolfing that adds both mental and movement re-education to the physical work. In a series of 11 sessions, you get instruction on how to break bad posture habits—and you also get a massage that focuses on returning your muscles and other tissue to their proper positions. The result can be dramatic. “Sometimes we can greatly increase the spaces in your joints to the point where you may grow three-fourths of an inch taller before you’re done,” Bienenfeld says.
Craniosacral therapy focuses on the skull and spinal column. Therapists use very gentle pressure—no more than the weight of a nickel—to massage the bones, membranes and fluids that support and bathe your skull and spinal column. The theory is that these manipulations will reduce tension and counteract any physical trauma you may have experienced to your head over the years. Craniosacral therapy can be effective with jaw problems such as temporomandibular joint disorder, experts say. Bienenfeld says that it can also seem spiritual, since “it can really send your head spinning with relaxation.”
Aston-Patterning, another offshoot of Rolfing, was developed to teach people to maintain the improved alignment that they got through Rolfing. Aston-Patterning uses posture re-education and stresses physical fitness techniques.
Feldenkrais treats every body as an individual work of art, with different postures and different movement patterns. Practitioners seek to teach their clients ideal patterns of movement through slow, gentle, exercise-like sessions. It also includes a gentle massage that is designed to teach a person how to expand his range of motion. Bienenfeld says it’s often useful for victims of stroke or accidents who have lost movement.
Trager uses gentle, rocking massage to help release the body’s harmful “holding patterns.” If you injured your left shoulder as a child, for example, you still may unconsciously carry it lower than your right shoulder, throwing your body off balance and robbing you of energy. Therapists employ very light, gentle shaking techniques that are unlike traditional Swedish-style massage. The idea is to make people more aware of their bodies, especially the way they move and hold themselves. Trager work can be uplifting, Bienenfeld says. For some reason, freeing people of physical holding patterns also seems to rid them of emotional stress that they associated with the prior injury, he explains.
While most massage types focus on rubbing, stroking and swirling techniques, others have an entirely different basis. Therapists who use techniques such as shiatsu and reflexology believe that you can unlock your body’s healing energy by manipulating pressure points on your body. For more information on these techniques, see the chapters on acupressure (page 11) and reflexology (page 108).
Do-It-Yourself Relief
Self-massage isn’t always the perfect answer to your health concerns. It’s tough to give yourself a decent back rub, after all—and you can’t get perfect relaxation in one part of your body when you’re flexing muscles in another to do the massage.
But if you’re in a hurry, can’t afford a massage therapist or don’t have a partner to massage you, there are techniques that you can try on yourself. Most of them are Swedish massage methods that you adjust for self-care. You can easily massage cramped muscles in your legs or rub your shoulders for a little stress relief. For hard-to-reach places such as your back, you may be able to use tennis balls, rolling pins or other objects to help massage your muscles.
When you use self-massage, be sure to find a warm, quiet place, free of drafts and distractions. Take along a pillow and a blanket, so you can stay warm and comfortable. Many techniques call for using a lubricant, so your hands can glide over muscles smoothly and gently. You can buy massage creams, oils and scented lotions in many health food stores or other shops that sell beauty aids. If you want something handy, you can just use vegetable oil from your kitchen. Dr. Iuppo says the fatty acids in the oil will work into your skin, leaving it soft as a baby’s bottom. “But if you’re going to use vegetable oil, be sure to use a sheet that you don’t mind getting rid of,” he says, “because it will stain anything it touches.”
If you’re looking for a general massage to get you started, try a ten-minute foot massage from Elaine Stillerman, L.M.T., a massage therapist in New York City. “It can be stimulating or incredibly relaxing,” says Stillerman. “Feet take a beating, no doubt about it. A general foot massage is powerful, soothing and relaxing.”
Instructions and illustrations for this massage begin on page 572.
