Why Should I Get A Massage

If you’ve ever known the pleasure of having an exceptionally wonderful massage, you’ve probably found it’s difficult to settle for anything less. A terrific massage leaves you feeling healed -- physically, emotionally and mentally. There’s an afterglow that follows a great massage, a feeling you don’t want to ever end and you can’t wait to re-experience. What’s more, the euphoria you feel is totally healthy, natural and legal! I’d like to suggest some physical and emotional reasons why an absolutely wonderful massage makes perfect sense for you and your body.

* Fight-or-Flight: Our physical bodies are wired to be incredibly resilient and adaptive to the hectic wear and stress our lives demand every minute of every day. But we tend to let ourselves exact total alertness to every nuance; we remain ready, able and willing to immediately react to life’s twists and turns without pause; we constantly live in The Now. Technically, this state of being is described as the “fight-or-flight” or “acute stress” response of the sympathetic nervous system.

* Something’s Wrong: The problem comes when we no longer allow recovery time so we can relax, reflect, laugh and be happy. . . not even in small proportions. Efficient and well-wired as our bodies are, when we don’t allow deviation from constantly remaining on Red Alert 24/7, our nervous system loses the ability to differentiate between life-threatening stress and everyday, normal stress. Most of us don’t even realize how or when we bought into the resultant pain or dull numbness. But sooner or later our bodies and/or emotions have a way of telling us something’s gone wrong.

* Do You Remember? Do you recall a time in your life, possibly some time ago, when you felt light, with no pain, when you felt completely, totally relaxed and took for granted you would always feel the incredible surge of being alive with happiness, hope and well-being? When you’ve experienced your first truly great massage, you have not only begun physical healing, you’re also mentally and emotionally returning to a time in the past you never meant to forget. Technically, massage allows you to reconnect to your parasympathetic nervous system -- the “brake” to the sympathetic nervous system’s “accelerator.”

When the parasympathetic system takes over, your body saves energy, blood pressure decreases, your heart beats slower, and digestion can start. The body heals itself when it rests. Emotional restoration begins when you remember how good it is to feel absolutely wonderful by releasing hormones such as serotonin and endorphins into your brain.

* Emotional Baggage: Speaking of emotions, massage can play a vital role in getting your psyche back into balance. We are taught from a very early age how (and how not) to show our emotions. Anger, rage and frustration are discouraged if we want to be accepted – if we don’t suppress “improper” emotions, we face punishment, criticism, ostracism and shame. Emotional conformity was engrained as quickly and efficiently as the language we were taught as toddlers.

* Emotional Storehouse: The problem here is that suppressed emotions are literally absorbed into our bodies. We tense the muscles in our neck instead of frowning, we hold our breath instead of crying, we clench our jaws instead of yelling, we quietly absorb the rage we feel. When these patterns are repeated, we eventually form the habit of stifling our emotions, conveniently becoming unaware that we’re suppressing them. The patterns are then funneled to the subconscious mind and our bodies become a storehouse for unexpressed, unconscious feelings -- hence the development of anxiety symptoms.

* Letting Go: Anxiety symptoms include anxiety attacks (aka panic attacks), anxiety disorders, stress disorders, sleep disorders and depression. Because everyone has a unique chemical makeup, the symptoms and intensity varies from person to person. Anxiety symptoms lead to muscle tension, one of the main storehouses for suppressed emotions. Massage relieves tension from stress that has been building up for a long time. By relaxing muscles and reducing tension, massage frees the pattern where the unconscious feelings are stored. Once the tension is gone, the subconscious mind can lose its grasp on suppressed emotions. The supportive touch offered in massage calms the nervous system, changing the mind-body pattern, creating freedom for feelings in a safe, supportive, nonjudgmental environment.

* Healing Touch: In summary, massage is a wonderful conduit in aiding the body to heal itself, physically and emotionally. Directly and indirectly, touch impacts each and every system in our bodies.  Touch was mankind's first healing tool and it's a universal inborn language that we all recognize.