Massage and Healing Injuries – a Simple Guide

Specifically targeted injury massage helps soft-tissue injuries (such as muscle pulls and strains, tendonitis, ligament sprains, and whiplash) heal faster. Massage reduces spasm, pain, swelling, and formation of excess scar tissue. Massage also breaks up excess scar tissue and adhesions (stuck together tissue) that weaken muscles and contribute to further injury.

“Skillful, knowledgeable massage can make the difference between a one-time muscle strain that takes a few weeks to resolve and a painful, limiting, chronically recurring condition… By applying skills to the proper formation of scar tissue, the reduction of edema, the limiting of adhesions, and the improvement of circulation and mobility, massage can turn an irritating muscle tear into a trivial event.  “A Massage Therapist’s Guide to Pathology” by Ruth Werner

When you injure a muscle or other soft-tissue, small tears occur in the tissue fibers. To heal the tears, your body immediately begins to form scar tissue at the injured site.  However, this scar tissue does not necessarily run parallel to the fibers of the injured tissue, which can lead to excess scar tissue that is weak and prone to further injury.  Also, because scar tissue is not elastic, it can restrict movement of surrounding fibers, again setting you up for further injury.

Injury massage creates tension and stretch that breaks up excess scar tissue and helps align the new tissue fibers. This process makes the injured site stronger and less prone to new injury. Massage also increases circulation to the injured area, bringing needed nutrients and removing waste products produced in the healing process.

Massage for injury requires a regular schedule, no less than once a week. In some cases, you will see much faster results with a twice-a-week schedule. For how long? It depends on the nature and extent of the injury, how old it is, and your ability to heal. It also depends on your willingness, when appropriate, to ice the injury, do some exercises or stretches, or identify and eliminate the cause of ongoing injury.

Injury massage is not necessarily relaxing and can leave you feeling sore for a day or two. However, it’s not necessary to be in a lot of pain after the massage—that’s too much work—always let your massage therapist know how you felt after your last massage.

Getting Massage – the Best New Year’s Resolution!

Three out of four Americans (75 percent) claim their New Year’s resolution is to focus on taking better care of themselves and achieving a more complete work/life balance. The study found that a majority of Americans believe massage is an effective way to relieve stress and a great way to relax as compared to other methods such as drinking a glass of wine or another alcoholic beverage or even exercising.

The study revealed that 76 percent of respondents believe relaxation is very important to health and wellness, with 73 percent of respondents rating massage as either extremely relaxing or very relaxing, compared to 51 percent who said exercise was extremely relaxing and 29 percent who opted for a glass of wine or a cocktail to relax. Sixty-nine percent of respondents agreed that regular massage therapy is an important part of overall physical health and well-being, and 52 percent said they would like to receive a massage product or service as a gift.

Many employers are helping to make sure their employees keep to these health and fitness goals by instituting incentives, offering nutritional seminars and discounted or free memberships to local gyms and fitness clubs. And as the study shows, many Americans are embracing the concept of massage therapy as a means of improving their health.

“Massage is no longer viewed as an indulgence, but as a significant component to achieving overall health and wellness and relaxation,” said Roger Padgett, a spokesperson for Brookstone. “People are beginning to recognize that massage helps to improve circulation, alleviate tension and contribute to a more comfortable and stress-free lifestyle.”

So, when the ball drops in Times Square at the end of 2011, will Americans have something to show for their health and wellness efforts? If the results of the Brookstone study hold true, the answer is a resounding “yes.” Will massage become the popular choice for people looking for ways to relax and reduce stress? Massage therapists certainly hope so.  The benefits of massage therapy are well-known, and are enjoyed by millions of Americans each year.

So have a Happy New Year and remember to take care of your well-being!  It’s the best resolution you can make.

Reduce Your Stress During The Holiday Season!

Tis the season when it seems everyone’s stress and anxiety level runs a little higher. Whether it is holiday shopping, financial stress, family obligations, work deadlines or your normal day to day routines, the holiday season always seems to bring with it a sense of increased stress for most people. Increased stress and anxiety levels can manifest themselves in a variety of ways, but almost always involves increased muscle tension resulting in tired and aching muscles. Massage therapy provides so many overall benefits for the body, but one of the most important benefits is in reducing stress levels.

When you get a massage, the relaxation process usually starts as soon as you get on the table. The soft music, warm table, and quiet environment are great ways to help one relax. Then the therapist begins to work through all the layers of muscle tissue and in a sense all the layers of stress and anxiety.

By working through the muscle layers and dissolving trigger points the therapist can stretch and lengthen the muscle tissue, often providing complete relief for muscle aches and pains. As the trigger points are dissolved, more oxygenated blood flows into that tissue, and the buildup of carbon dioxide and lactic acid is moved out of the body via the circulatory system. This often greatly decreases or eliminates pain associated with muscle spasms, migraines, TMJ pain, sciatic nerve pain, and pain associated with generally tired, overused and strained muscles.

The end result is decreased stress and anxiety levels manifested in an overall sense of well being. It goes without saying that when you decrease or eliminate pain, the stress response on the body is automatically decreased. Clients report feeling totally relaxed and rejuvenated after massage. Some people report feeling so relaxed they want to go home and continue that relaxation with a nap, and there are others that report being energized after massage therapy. People often report a decreased frequency of migraines as well as tension headaches with regular massage.

Is Massage Therapy A Luxury?

Some people view massage therapy as a luxury that they may treat themselves to once or twice a year. But there is also a much larger group of Massage Therapy Center clients who consider massage therapy to be health maintenance and preventive care for their body, no different from seeing their physician or other health care practitioners on a regular basis. No one thinks twice about maintaining the maintenance service on their vehicle. We do that because we know they will not continue to take us where we want to go for very long without it, but what about the maintenance for our body?

Thankfully, the human body seems to be able to handle a lot of abuse from us and still manage to keep us functional on some level, but can you imagine how much better one could be if they could keep their stress level down. Many people seem to want to be healthy and get regular massages, but other obligations often get in the way and so they postpone taking care of themselves, thus continually experiencing high stress and anxiety levels. It will often become a viscous circle until they make a conscious effort to change it. Our clients who get on a regular massage schedule find massage therapy to be a great way to keep the stress and anxiety level down and to keep the chronic aches and pain from over used muscles under control.

Wishing you a relaxed Holiday filled with the warmth of good tidings!

Giving Thanks – Gratitude is a Stress Reliever

As massage therapists, we get a first hand experience of the stress that our clients experience in their daily lives, which can produce tension, anger and pain. These negative emotions can lead to physical pain as tense muscles, higher blood pressure and unhealthy coping mechanisms.  Luckily, the practice of expressing gratitude, focusing your mind and energy on the positive in your life. is one of many stress management techniques that can diffuse negativity, replacing it with a sense of goodwill towards all.

Some people seem to be able to maintain a relatively positive attitude regardless of what’s happening around them and  seem to be able to focus on the positive in the face of  negative events. They see the good in difficult people, they see the opportunity in a challenging situation, and they appreciate what they have, even in the face of loss.

You Can Strengthen a Positive Outlook

Fortunately, a positive attitude can be cultivated, with a little practice. Although we are born with specific temperamental tendencies, the brain is a muscle, and you can strengthen your mind’s natural tendency toward optimism if you work at it.  While several factors go into emotional resilience and optimism, studies show that cultivating a sense of gratitude can help maintain a more positive mood in daily life and contribute to greater emotional well-being. Cultivating gratitude can be accomplished in several simple ways. For the next few weeks, try some of the following exercises, and you should notice a significant increase in your feelings of gratitude -— you will likely find yourself noticing more positive things in your life, dwelling less on negative or stressful events and feelings of ‘lack,’ and having a greater sense of appreciation for everything and everyone in your life.

Make Gentle Reminders

When you notice yourself grumbling about a negative event in your life, try to think of 4 or 5 related things for which you are grateful. For example, when feeling stressed at work, try to think about several things that you like about your job. You can do the same with relationship stress, financial stress, or other daily hassles. The more you gently remind yourself of the positives, the more easily a shift toward gratitude can occur.

Be Careful With Comparisons

Many people cause themselves unnecessary stress by making comparisons. More specifically, they make the wrong comparisons. They compare themselves only to those who have more, do more, or are in some way closer to their ideals, and allow themselves to feel inferior instead of inspired. In cultivating gratitude, you have two options if you find yourself making such comparisons: You can  choose to compare yourself to people who have less than you (which reminds you how truly rich and lucky you are), or you can feel gratitude for having people in your life who can inspire you. Either road can lead away from stress and envy, and closer to feelings of gratitude.

Keep a Gratitude Journal

One of the best ways to cultivate gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal. Not only are you combining the benefits of journaling with the active adoption of a more positive mindset, you are left with a nice catalog of happy memories and a long list of things in your life for which you are grateful. (This can be wonderful to read during times when it’s more difficult to remember what these things are.)

Here at Massage Therapy Center, we are grateful for our beautiful healing facility and our wonderful clients. Every day, 7 days a week, we are graced with the opportunity to do healing work and contribute to the well-being of our community.  Thank you!

What is Craniosacral Therapy?

According to the Upledger Institute, CranioSacral Therapy (CST) is a gentle, hands-on approach that releases tensions deep in the body to relieve pain and dysfunction and improve whole-body health and performance. It was pioneered and developed by Osteopathic Physician John E. Upledger after years of clinical testing and research at Michigan State University where he served as professor of biomechanics.

Using a soft touch, generally no greater than 5 grams – about the weight of a nickel – practitioners release restrictions in the soft tissues that surround the central nervous system. CST is increasingly used as a preventive health measure for its ability to bolster resistance to disease, and it’s effective for a wide range of medical problems associated with pain and dysfunction.

How does CranioSacral Therapy Work?

Few structures have as much influence over the body’s ability to function properly as the brain and spinal cord that make up the central nervous system. And, the central nervous system is heavily influenced by the craniosacral system – the membranes and fluid that surround, protect and nourish the brain and spinal cord.

Every day your body endures stresses and strains that it must work to compensate for. Unfortunately, these changes often cause body tissues to tighten and distort the craniosacral system. These distortions can then cause tension to form around the brain and spinal cord resulting in restrictions. This can create a barrier to the healthy performance of the central nervous system, and potentially every other system it interacts with.

Fortunately, such restrictions can be detected and corrected using simple methods of touch. With a light touch, the CST practitioner uses his or her hands to evaluate the craniosacral system by gently feeling various locations of the body to test for the ease of motion and rhythm of the cerebrospinal fluid pulsing around the brain and spinal cord. Soft-touch techniques are then used to release restrictions in any tissues influencing the craniosacral system.

It’s All About Fluid Mobility!

Fluid mobility is the key to a strong and healthy body. And you might not need to stretch to get there—at least not in the conventional sense of the word, according to Charlie Weingroff, former head physical therapist for the United States Marine Corp Special Operations and Athletic Trainer and Strength and Conditioning Specialist.

“Your goal should be to have a mobile body, not a flexible one,” Weingroff advises, “Being flexible is often not very meaningful and doesn’t always translate to motion, which is really the goal.”

Recent studies have shown that old-school static stretches have no measureable benefits (aside from potentially protecting certain athletes like gymnasts and hockey goalies from muscle strains uncommon to the majority of exercisers). What we thought was lengthening the muscles may have been doing no such thing.

Weingroff agrees. “Often an area is ‘tight’ because your body is protecting it, and by pulling on it during a stretch, you’re actually telling the body to protect it more,” he says, “Think of it this way: If you take a rubber band and tie a knot in it and pull either end, all that happens is that the knot gets tighter. The center never stretches. Parts are being elongated, but not the right parts.”

Though static stretching may not be the answer, jumping right into your exercise routine is not a good idea either. Weingroff’s recommends dynamic warm-ups, starting with bridges, then going into single-leg bridges to loosen up the joints. “You’re sort of telling your body, ‘hey, it’s ok to move,’” Weingroff says. You can then go into more actionable movements such as walking, shuffling and skipping.

But if static stretches have always been a part of your routine, there’s no harm in continuing to touch your toes before you take off. Don’t wreck your flow. Weingroff’s advice? “Stay standing while you stretch. That way you’re getting your whole body involved, since ultimately it all needs to work together anyway.”

Another profound technique for improving and maintaining mobility is getting regular therapeutic bodywork.  Massage keeps muscles and fascia supple so that the movement of the body can be fluid and natural.

Charlie Weingroff is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, Certified Athletic Trainer, and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and the former head Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Philadelphia 76ers and lead Physical Therapist for the United States Marine Corp Special Operations.

Prevent Illness by Paying Deep Attention to Your Body

To listen to your body and get a headstart on warding off symptoms, get used to detecting the quieter messages your body sends. It’s important to listen to what your gut says, whether it’s tied up in knots or relaxed — this intuition can inform all your decisions by pointing you to people and situations you’re comfortable with. Also notice your energy level around people. Does it go up or down? Your body picks up on this quickly. Try to surround yourself with positive people. This will improve your health and well-being. Here are some signals your body sends if it’s out of balance. Some of them you may recognize right away.

5 WARNING SIGNS YOUR BODY SENDS (from “Dr. Orloff’s Guide to Intuitive Healing”)

1. Do you ever walk around feeling “off-center?” Oddly numb? Out of focus? Detached? As if you’re somehow missing a beat? How long do you tolerate this sense that your body just isn’t right?
2. Do you sometimes feel “toxic,” as if you’re coming down with the flu, though there are no other signs of it?
3. Have you experienced unexplainable symptoms that may have gone on for years? A knot or emptiness in the pit of your stomach? A lump in your throat? An aching heart?
4. Do you ever have a distressing sense of rawness or feeling exposed? Everything seems to get to you and you feel you have no defense?
5. Are you chronically tired?

If you answer “yes” to any of these questions it’s worthwhile to begin by taking a general inventory of your health and stress level. What areas can be improved upon? Examine everything from the amount of exercise to alone time to your relationships. Make sure you’re allotting enough space to recharge. Though the above changes may seen relatively minor, on an intuitive level they indicate early difficulty. To start, do your best to pinpoint and remedy problem areas.

To detect your body’s warnings, both quiet and loud, requires increasing your sensitivity to the nuances of its messages. The art of listening entails sensing smaller symptoms before they become full blown. Mindfulness is key. Denial is the antithesis of intuition. We must do what we can to get past it. Massage therapists have seen time and again how increasing body awareness facilitates prevention of illness and more vibrant health. Listening to your body is a powerful step towards self-care, which includes getting regular therapeutic bodywork.

-from Judith Orloff’s article originally appeared in Huffingtonpost, 7/13/11

How Listening To Your Body Can Improve Your Life

If you want to see what your body will look like tomorrow, look at your thoughts today. -Navajo saying

Your body is programmed for survival. Heeding early warnings protects your health. Familiarize yourself with how your body speaks to you. It wants you to be well. It will tell you if you are not. Hippocrates wrote over two thousand years ago, “There is a measure of conscious thought throughout the body.” This is practical wisdom you can live by.

In her book “Dr. Orloff’s Guide to Intuitive Healing,” Judith Orloff describes how your body is a richly nuanced intuitive receiver — and how you must be aware of your body’s signals to completely heal. This may require some adjustment of how you think about health. As a physician, she has seen that many people are trained to function from the neck up denying the rest of their bodies. She wants her clients to re-orient themselves — to respect the intellect, but attend to their body’s messages as well. Being aware of the body can open intuition because you’re focusing on your physicality, getting out of your head and into your sensual awareness. This may mean noticing the early signs of pain so you can act on them, trusting your gut about relationships or awakening your sexuality. We can’t afford to ignore life-informing signals your body sends.

It’s vital to re-train yourself to override mechanisms you’ve developed to push through discomfort. To prevent illness you need to pay special attention to physical distress signals. Honor your body’s messages; don’t discount them. Simple, prompt action is sometimes all it takes. If you’re tired, rest. If you’re hungry, eat a delicious meal. If you’re stressed, get a relaxing massage. The price of not listening? You could come down with the flu. Maybe your back goes out. You still don’t listen? Might be chest pains. Ulcers. Depression. The thermostat gets turned up until you pay attention.

Next post will include the important warning signs of distress and disease in your body that you might be overlooking.

-from Judith Orloff’s article which originally appeared in The Huffingtonpost, 7/13/11

Re-Wiring Your Brain for Happiness: Research Shows How Meditation Can Physically Change the Brain

By DAN HARRIS (@danbharris) and ERIN BRADY

From a July 28, 2011 post on ABCnews.com

A quiet explosion of new research indicating that meditation can physically change the brain in astonishing ways has started to push into mainstream.  Several studies suggest that these changes through meditation can make you happier, less stressed — even nicer to other people. It can help you control your eating habits and even reduce chronic pain, all the while without taking prescription medication.

Meditation is an intimate and intense exercise that can be done solo or in a group, and one study showed that 20 million Americans say they practice meditation. It has been used to help treat addictions, to clear psoriasis and even to treat men with impotence.  Corporate executives at Google, General Mills, Target and Aetna Insurance, as well as students in some of the nation’s classrooms have used meditation.

In one study, a research team from Massachusetts General Hospital looked at the brain scans of 16 people before and after they participated in an eight-week course in mindfulness meditation. The study, published in the January issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, concluded that after completing the course, parts of the participants’ brains associated with compassion and self-awareness grew, and parts associated with stress shrank.

Recently, the Dalai Lama granted permission for his monks, who are master mediators, to have their brains studied at the University of Wisconsin, one of the most high-tech brain labs in the world.

Richie Davidson, a PhD at the university, and his colleagues, led the study and said they were amazed by what they found in the monks’ brain activity read-outs. During meditation, electroencephalogram patterns increased and remains higher than the initial baseline taken from a non-meditative state.

But you don’t have to be a monk to benefit from meditation, which is now gaining acceptance in the field of medicine.  Physicians have increasingly started prescribing meditation instead of pills to benefit their patients. A Harvard Medical School report released in May found that more than 6 million Americans had been recommended meditation and other mind-body therapies by conventional health care providers.

Get Nicer!

Perhaps the most mind-bending potential benefit of meditation is that it will actually make practitioners nicer. Chuck Raison, a professor at Emory University, conducted a meditation study in which he hooked up microphones to participants who had been taught basic meditation and those who hadn’t. He then recorded them at random over a period of time. Raison found that these newly-trained mediators used less harsh language than people who had no meditation experience.

“They were more empathic with people,” Raison said. “They were spending more time with other people. They laugh more. They didn’t use the word ‘I’ as much. They use the word ‘we’ more.”

However, even the Dalai Lama admitted that meditation is not the silver bullet cure-all for every ailment or emotion.

“Occasionally, [I] lose my temper,” he said. “If someone is never lose temper then perhaps that may come from outer space, real strange.”

The Dalai Lama also cautioned that meditation takes patience, so new mediators should not expect immediate results.

“The enlightenment not depend on rank,” he said, laughing. “It depends on practice.”

Some scientists believe that in a generation, Americans will see meditation as being as essential to maintaining a healthy lifestyle as diet and exercise.

Clinical Study Proves Benefits of Massage for Chronic Lower Back Pain

In a new study comparing the benefits of adding massage to usual care for lower back pain, researchers report that massage improved pain symptoms and allowed patients to function better than those who didn’t get massage.

That’s good news for the eight out of 10 Americans who will, at some point in their lifetimes, experience the excruciating spasms of back pain that can send people to bed for days, if not weeks.

It’s also helpful news for doctors. Even though it’s common knowledge that an old-fashioned muscle-kneading is a great way to relax and reduce pain, the new findings give that notion some clinical teeth. Having such data in hand is critical for doctors who are discussing options for pain relief with their patients. “We have a huge number of people who get medical tests and treatments for back pain, and we have a huge problem with opioids,” says Dan Cherkin, senior research investigator at Group Health Research Institute in Seattle and lead author of the study. “In spite of all that, we’re not better off in terms of addressing back pain. In fact, the problem is getting worse.”

In the study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Cherkin and his group recruited 400 people with chronic back pain. The participants’ pain was typical of the kind that most of us experience: the result of wear and tear on muscles, or from being tensed up in front of a computer for too long. The researchers excluded those whose back pain was due to injury or a disease like cancer, in order to study more everyday types of back problems.

The participants were then randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: relaxation massage; structural massage, which is more akin to physical therapy and focuses specifically on problem areas; and usual care only. The usual care group simply continued on whatever treatments they were already receiving, whether that included painkilling drugs, back exercises, yoga or any other therapy except massage. The other two groups also continued with usual care, but added massage on top of it.

Participants received massage once a week for at least an hour. After 10 weeks, both massage groups reported lower disability scores, as measured with a questionnaire that asked participants about how much pain and impairment they experienced during their daily activities like climbing stairs or getting up from a chair.

On average, the massage groups recorded disability scores that were 2.7 points lower than the usual-care group. The massage patients also said they functioned better than those who weren’t massaged at 10 weeks. Six months after the treatments, the difference between the massage and non-massage groups had shrunk, but those who received the treatment still reported feeling slightly better than the controls.

The participants in the study had all tried existing therapies but couldn’t find relief for their pain. The fact that massage made a difference when added to existing treatments may shift the way back pain is currently treated. And it couldn’t happen sooner: a recent report by the Institute of Medicine found that untreated or inadequately treated pain affects 116 million Americans and is a “public health crisis.”

“The important thing isn’t so much that massage is an effective treatment,” says Cherkin, “but that the study illustrates that a variety of things are safe and helpful for people who haven’t gotten help from other treatments. So rather than telling patients after the usual things don’t work, ‘Sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you,’ we should tell them that there are a lot of things available to treat their pain.”

For doctors, having a controlled trial that documents the benefits of massage — this one was funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine — can help inform discussions about pain-relieving options. “There are always options, and there is always hope,” says Cherkin.

By Alice Park Wednesday, July 6, 2011,  from Time Magazine Healthland

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/06/aching-back-try-massage-for-chronic-pain/#ixzz1Ul7glGdS