Hi! I’m Karin Meacham, Licensed Massage Therapist in the state of Oregon (#12233).
Welcome to part one of my four-part series on the whys and hows of massage therapy as an integral part of a healthy, balanced lifestyle.
Massage as a tool for healing and wellness functions on four distinct yet interrelated levels: It relieves pain; it addresses some of the causes of pain and helps to mobilize the body's healing responses; it relaxes the nervous system; and it reconnects the mind to the body.
#1. Before There Was Aspirin, There Was Massage
Even today, touch is still our first and most instinctual response to pain. Why else would we pinch the bridge of our nose or rub our temples when we feel a headache coming on? Why else would we grab our finger after slamming it in the car door? (You'd think the last thing we'd want to do is put any more pressure on it!)
The answer to this is that touch relieves pain. Out of all the myriad of signals it processes constantly, your nervous system is designed to give the lowest priority to pain: Anything else—temperature, texture, motion—overrides sensations of pain. IcyHot (trademark, copyright, blah blah blah) makes big bucks on this. It doesn't really relieve pain so much as distract you from it. The menthol and camphor—and, in other products, capsaicin—trick your brain into thinking it's feeling heat or coldness, which stops it from paying attention to the soreness in your back, or knee, or wherever. When the cream wears off, the pain usually comes right back. When someone is in REALLY bad pain, they writhe for this same reason: The brain gets busy processing all of the signals coming and going from the muscles and this "busy switchboard" means your perception of pain actually lessens.
Massage is an effective way of getting this same “busy switchboard.” Unlike IcyHot (or writhing), however, it can also do you lasting good.
Next Time…
Part Two: No More Band-Aids!
How massage treats the causes of pain, not just the symptoms.