Resistance by Therapists to Self Massage

Deep tissue massage and pressure-point work are gaining increasing recognition as powerful healing modalities. At the same time, the current focus on containing health care costs has combined with the rise of holistic awareness to create a growing movement toward patient education and self care.

Electric Massagers We carry the largest selection of massagers available. Massagers for your back, feet, neck and more.. Electric Massagers to fit every budget and meet every need from the professional to the occasional home user

Natural Herbal Heat packs that work both hot and cold A couple of minutes in the microwave and you are on your way to relief

Back braces back braces support the lumber region with compression and/or semi rigid panels

Chiropractic Pillows Some pillows feel good others make you feel good.

Improve bone strength Natural supplements to improve bone strength and joint health. A Lot of options for arthritis sufferes.

Massagers - Hand Held Massage tools that make giving a professional massage a snap. Give a longer more penetrating massage without tiring.

Given these facts, one might expect that health professionals would be eagerly exploring the possibilities of patient self-massage. Most practitioners of soft tissue work, in particular, probably feel that many of their patients really need more than they can possibly give them in once or even twice a week sessions.

There is significant resistance or just benign neglect by the body work professionals and health care practitioners to self administered deep tissue massage. One reason for this, is a lingering feeling that deep tissue massage and the various forms of pressure-point work, such as trigger-point, acupressure, and shiatsu, are too technical for most patients to grasp and too difficult or bothersome to employ on a regular basis outside the professional’s office. For many people this is true. They are very unaware of their bodies, and many may be disinclined to make much effort to help themselves at home.

But these obstacles indicate a need for more education not a lack of engagement. How different would our health system look if there was not the educational efforts, educating their patients and encouraging them to make changes in areas such as diet, exercise, and stress reduction. It may take time and some extra attention, but most people will make some headway and some will make significant improvements in their lives.

Self-massage is no different from other self-care modalities. Patients first experience the bodywork in their sessions with the practitioner; they feel the quality of touch and degree of pressure, and the way it is applied. If they are then shown even one or two points or strokes that they can practice at home, they are already that much better off.

A second problem with self-massage is the sheer physical difficulty of it. How can a person do to their own body what a practitioner can do to them? In particular, how can they work on hard to reach areas like the back, how can they avoid straining their hands and arms, and how can they work on themselves and still relax—which after all is a major point of this work—as they would when being massaged by another?

The solution to this problem is massage tools. With the aid of some simple, inexpensive, well-designed massage tools and a little training and experience almost anyone can learn to give themselves deep massage on any part of their body, in a relaxed manner with little or no strain.

Simple, non-electrical massage tools are particularly well suited to deep pressure massage, in which you are not moving around a lot over the skin but focusing on one area at a time. And since I believe this sort of work is of exceptional therapeutic value, self-massage turns out to have exciting possibilities as a vehicle for personal healing.

Site map