Massage Therapy St Albert | What Does Massage Therapy Do
Though massage therapy has been around for hundreds of years, massage therapy St Albert is still growing in popularity. This is due to people having their first massage therapy session and discovering the wonderful benefits of treatments. There are different styles of massage, depending on each client’s individual needs.
Massage therapy is done by a Registered Massage Therapist, who goes to school for three years before performing over 3000 hours of practice before being able to practice as an RMT. Deep tissue massage therapy, sports massage, lymphatic drainage massage and reflexology, myofascial cupping, hot stone massage are just a few of the different styles that can benefit various patients, depending on the reason they are coming in for a massage.
Reduces Muscle Tightness
Massage therapy St Albert is efficient at reducing muscle tightness. Whether the muscles are tight from overuse and exercise, an accident, or disuse, or an underlying condition, such as a neurologic or neuromuscular disorder. A tight muscle is actually a muscle that is continuing to contract after the body has stopped using or flexing that muscle. Most often, tight muscles feel sore, but others might feel more significant pain. In addition to causing pain, sore muscles also prevent full range of motion.
These are the most common reasons why people like getting massage therapy St Albert – the therapist gently manipulates the muscle, encouraging the muscle to stop contracting, to restore full motion. While a full recovery often requires multiple visits, your Registered Massage Therapist will let you know how often to come back for maximum benefits.
Helps Heals Bodies And Reduces Pain
Clearly, when massage therapy St Albert techniques helps to stop your sore muscle from contracting, that will provide a level of pain relief, but that’s not everything that a massage does to reduce your pain! Massage also helps reduce and eliminate inflammation, by increasing blood flow, interrupting the pathways that causes the inflammation in the first place. Therefore pain can be reduced and prevented with regular massage therapy.
While the body’s muscles often tense up due to overuse, another reason the body’s muscles tense up is because they are protecting a sore, sensitive or injured area of the body, and by reducing inflammation and increasing blood flow, the body can heal those injured or sore spots, helping the muscles stop contracting, and reducing pain.
Massage Therapy St Albert | Encourages Relaxation
There are many ways that massage therapy St Albert treatment helps relax bodies! When the massage manipulations help muscles to stop contracting, the body parts are less rigid, making physical relaxation possible. This helps ease the body’s sore spots, also ensuring that relaxation is more apt to take place.
But massage also calms the neurological system – the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems – the systems that control all the involuntary body functions. By calming these systems down, our bodies respond and relax on the inside, helping to lower heart rate, blood pressure, helping with digestion. We become relaxed on the outside and inside.
Massage therapy St Albert treatments also encourages relaxation by reducing the amount of stress hormones in your body. Stress causes cortisol and vasopressin to be released into your body, which can have different negative effects on your body. Cortisol puts stress on your heart, while vasopressin regulates your sleep cycle, just to name two things that can be negatively affected by stress.
Not only does regular massage calms your nervous system, slowing the release of these stress hormones in your body, but massage frequently also triggers the release of happy hormones, known as endorphins that work even harder to decrease your stress levels and improve your mood! It’s much easier to relax when your stress levels are lower, and your happy hormones are lifted!
Numerous Benefits Throughout The Body
While massage therapy St Albert helps muscles relax, reduces pain and inflammation and strengthens your immune system, there are even more benefits to your entire body inside and out from massage therapy. Regular massages can help break down scar tissue, helps re-align your skeletal frame. Massage can drain your lymph nodes, effectively detoxing your body, and improving digestion.
Even your respiratory system benefits from massage therapy, by encouraging clients to breathe slower and deeper while the long strokes on your intercostal muscles help your lungs expand their full range of motion, for full expansion and allow deeper breaths. Massage therapy calms our nervous system – which actually controls the rest of our bodies! By calming this system, heart rate goes down, blood pressure lowers, and our body runs better and has less stress overall.
Massage Therapy Over All Benefits
However, don’t make the mistake in thinking that this will happen after the first massage therapy session. In fact, your body is likely going to be sore from it first massage, or first in many months, as it will not be used to the gentle body and muscle manipulations. Massage therapy is most effective when it is a regular part of your health and wellness routine.
Our final word on massage therapy? Clearly, the science behind massage therapy St Albert treatments shows that it is incredibly beneficial for our body and mind, but at the end of the day, massage also feels good! When something does so much good, and also feels great, more people should get massages! Most employer benefits cover massage therapy, so for many people, it won’t even cost them much. Contact Healing Point Massage Therapy today to schedule your appointment!