The Healing Power Of Massage

For many years now I have been receiving medical massage therapy for two herniated discs I have in my back. I go every two weeks and there are times when I am forced to skip an appointment or two for various reasons. But after getting medical massage therapy for all of these years, you start to realize how important it is to your quality of life when you miss just one appointment. Prior to getting medical massage therapy I had seen massage videos and my chiropractor had suggested that I consider it. For some reason I was not comfortable with getting a man massage therapist so my chiropractor had referred me to a very talented female massage therapist. Since then I have been able to live a normal life even with the existence of my back injury.

The particular form of massage therapy I receive is designed around my condition. Any truly knowledgeable therapist should be able to design a program that is beneficial to you. For example, I did not require something as intense as a sports massage for my condition. My condition deals with an entirely different set of muscles and joints than a sports massage would cover. Rather than being athletic my condition is medical. However I have learned a lot about the value of massage therapy and its effects on the body. After each session my massage therapist supplies me with a glass of water to drink. The first time she did that I asked her why. She informed me that, in any capacity, a massage is like a work out for your muscles. The way a therapist manipulates and works on your muscles moves them as if they were going through a light physical work out. During this work out your muscles will need to be hydrated just as you would take a drink while you were jogging on the treadmill. So it is essential, after every therapy session, that you drink some water to avoid your muscles cramping up on you. I thought this was pretty interesting and it is something I would have never expected.

Massage therapy can also be used to help work out the tightness throughout your body that may be restricting your movement on a daily basis. A trip to the massage therapist once or twice a month will help you to feel better and will also help you be just a little more limber as you go through your day. Until you are able to compare life with massage therapy to life without massage therapy you really have no way of knowing the true value of therapy. My therapist would call something like that a bi-monthly “tune up for the body” and no matter how good you feel now, I can almost guarantee you that a regular visit to the massage therapist will make you feel that much better.

Any kind of relief, or tension release, you can get in life can always help. With massage therapy there is a value that you can take for granted until you stop going. But once you start going to regular massage therapy treatments you start to realize that there definitely is a healing power to massage.