Getting a massage is often considered a luxury. But when you consider how many health benefits a massage has, you might think again, and choose a massage over other forms of treatment, or in combination with other treatments.
Here are just some of the many benefits of massage therapy:
Stress Management/Emotional/Mental/Awareness
- Awareness of mind-body-spirit connection
- Provide a sensation of relaxation and tranquility
- Relieve mental stress and anxiety
- Slows racing thoughts and worries
- Provide time and space for self
- General stress relief
- Ease tension
- Satisfies need for nurturing touch
- Calms the nervous system
- Help focus and clear the mind
- Increased calm thinking and creativity
- Increase relaxation alpha brain waves
- Treat depression
- Enhance self-esteem
Physical
- Reduce heart rate
- Bring fresh oxygen to the body tissues
- Promotes deeper and easier breathing
- Movement of intestinal contents
- Improves sleep patterns
- Relieve muscle aches and stiffness
- Promote healthy, vibrant skin
- Loosen up muscles
- Improve blood circulation
- Strengthen the immune system
- Increased metabolic rate
- Reduces muscle spasms
- Provides relief from headaches
- Increases red blood cell count
- Facilitates flow of lymphatic fluid
- Increases dopamine and serotonin
- May help improve poor posture
- Activates the parasympathetic nervous system
- Reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol
- Decrease levels of noradrenaline
- More efficient removal of metabolic wastes
- Improve muscle tone
- Increase flexibility and mobility
- Speed healing after injury
- Stabilizes blood sugar levels
- Relieves musculoskeletal problems
When you think about it, there is hardly a body system that massage and therapeutic touch does not impact.
With one swoop, one could find a way to do without laxatives, headache pain relievers, depression medications, tranquilizers, just through the physical, emotional, psychological benefits potentially experienced through massage.
Massage is a more natural and less invasive way of treating the body, and the side effects are positive ones, as opposed to the side effects that prescription drugs have, where you take a drug but it causes a problem somewhere else that you must then cover up with another drug. No one part of the body works in isolation and what helps one part of the body will help another.
In a society which is full of stress, massage provides a journey away from the stress, renewing the capacity to relax and to function at top capacity. Most people say that they are stressed, and often they reach out to stimulants or cigarettes to help control that stress. And so, most people could benefit physically and emotionally from a massage.
Consider making room in your budget today for a first professional massage, or find a trusted friend to give you one.
