Massage Therapy & The Nervous System

What if I told you that massage therapy is more about working with the nervous system than pummelling muscles until we no longer feel knots and tension?! 

When you apply a targeted pressure that a client can breathe and relax into, albeit being a bit challenging and uncomfortable at times, we’re activating the parasympathetic nervous system and getting to the therapeutic edge which tells the body that it’s safe, it can relax, it can let go. This helps to switch off the body’s fight or flight (sympathetic) nervous response which in turn reduces hypertonicity of the muscles and encourages and allows the tendons and muscles to let go of excessive contraction, ie ‘to switch off.’

As massage therapists, we cannot force the muscles to release. We cannot knead and work them over and over as this will likely send a response to the brain that it’s in danger; triggering the pain response making the client tense up and further contract the muscles, reinforcing the hypertonicity and placement of trigger points. If our muscles become overtired and are in a constant state of contraction, any associated muscle pain will increase, mobility is likely to continue to be impaired and then we are  FAR more susceptible to injury. 

Therefore, we have to work WITH the clients body, slowly building and deepening the practice with regular treatments to build the muscle memory so it can relearn and readjust to a place of ‘letting go’ and deactivation instead of being in constant contraction. 

I like to use the analogy with my clients as viewing massage therapy just like the gym and building muscle; massage works in a similar way. Working one day at a time, slowly making adjusting and fine tuning tissue work and the muscles, making adjustments to pressure, reinforcing on a regular basis, whilst using our intuition as therapists to guide us to focal points for each session, working with and rewiring the nervous system and ultimately listening to what the body needs and taking ITS lead. Most importantly, respecting our bodies. 

When it comes to muscle adhesions and scar tissue, massage therapy CAN help to reduce these adhesions but most of the time the knots & ‘lumps of tension’ we feel are actually trigger points or hypertonic muscles that need careful, regular attention and can’t be rubbed out or moulded overnight.

-Georgia