Massage Part 1

Let’s Talk Massage

When I first started on learning massage, I didn’t realise quite how much went into it. But I loved it straight away. In fact, I had loved biology when I was in school. So, I enjoyed the theory and science behind it. When you learn how and why certain pains/tension arise, then are able to apply the practical things to help treat it, applying knowledge to improve people’s wellbeing is a great feeling. Starting up, I was taught by a physiotherapist at college for a City & Guilds qualification. She took on the lecturing post at college. It was a 2-year training, not only learning the practical side and techniques of it but also learning the origins and insertions of muscles. Anatomy was every bit a part of the training: she taught practical classes along with theory. I think it’s great too that she’s kept in touch with her students, I’m connected with her on Insta/FB from a couple of years ago.

In the past, not so much now, (there’s more credit for beauty therapists’ education) but you used to get people asking if it was just painting nails and wax legs? And it is so much more than that. The parts of massage that I learned are just the basics, the starting point. If I wanted to go on and do sports massage/therapy, I would have to have done even more training. So, I am not qualified to treat injuries – which is important for people to understand when booking a massage with me. I can do massage to ease tension and help relax clients. To better their wellbeing. The key essence is to relieve tension and to improve wellbeing. My clients come to me to help them to reduce stress and ease tensions, especially in the neck and shoulders and lower back. I can also help ease achy legs from running. I attribute the amount of tension and stress in those areas to the prevalence of office type work that people do. In cities, you will often find travelling masseuses who go into offices for that reason. They end up doing on-site massages during lunch breaks and earlier morning appointments. Especially corporate places, big oil companies, they employ someone to come and do this for their employees. 

I always chat with my clients during their treatment to see what it is that they do that they think is causing the tensions. For instance, are they a new mum and carrying their baby everywhere, are their jobs quite labour intensive? Are they lounging strangely on the sofa every night in a way that compromises their posture? Often, it’s just that the pressures of working and juggling family life, people will naturally start developing that tension in the neck and shoulders. If you don’t sleep well at night, it might be that the pillow isn’t right, or the mattress is too hard or soft for them.

There can be any number of reasons why someone is getting a sore back or neck or whatever.

So, when I start a treatment, in the first five minutes or so I am diagnosing where the tension is. Muscles with tension will be resistant to pressure. That makes them hard to manipulate. I know the kind of shape of the muscles, so I know kind of how they should be able to move and rest. A soft, flexible muscle, I know how to move them to make them feel good. But a tense muscle will be like a board. Very hard to move, it’s a muscle that has lots of little kinks. Think of the muscles like a nice piece of steak. You can see the long fibres within the meat, and they all go easily in the same direction. So, a nice, relaxed muscle will look like that steak. When it is tense, it will get little chinks or kinks in the fibres. Taking the steak analogy again, it will look a bit bumpy and have more firm areas that do not want to move as well. So, my job is to take those muscles and to smooth those kinks out.