Massage and Relaxation

As anxiety and muscular relaxation can’t exist together, massage is a wonderful way of dealing with stress. Massage and deep relaxation can often make you feel lighter and energised, as they allow the body to replenish its energy levels.

When we are subject to stress, our sympathetic nervous system is dominant, raising our heartbeat, increasing cholesterol and insulin production and suppressing digestion and the immune system. When we relax, though, the parasympathetic nervous system comes into play – respiration slows down, and our heart rate and blood pressure drop. The ease with which we move between the two states is an indication of our general state of health.

With the help of relaxation techniques such as massage, we can more easily enter the deeply relaxed alpha and theta states, where our brainwave frequency drops from the normal beta (13-25 cycles per second) to 8-13 cycles or less. Being in this state of lowered metabolic rate is a powerful antidote to stress – it is the level of relaxation most conducive to harnessing the body’s own natural healing powers; just as prolonged stress weakens our immune system, so deep relaxation enhances it. Research shows that muscular relaxation and anxiety cannot exist together, and also that the right sort of touch in itself has healing properties.

Through a variety of massage strokes, massage therapists such as Ravenna can detect and disperse areas of muscular tension. Medium pressure helps circulation, and focused pressure (deep tissue work) disperses the “knots” where muscles have stayed contracted due either to vigorous exercise, not counteracted by stretching, or to mental and emotional stress, which has not found an outlet through physical activity. When a specific type of pressure is applied to the right part of the muscle, this helps it unlock and lengthen back into a relaxed state, ready for use again next time. That’s why you sometimes feel taller and lighter after a massage. This process of unblocking tension also releases waste products or toxins, so it is important to drink more water than usual after a treatment.

Obviously the longer the massage, the more deeply you will relax, and the more frequently you have massages, the less likely tension is to accumulate. Massage nearly always improves sleep patterns, and it can literally put you back in touch with yourself – revealing and dispersing deeply-buried tension that you hadn’t even realised was there (a sign of stress in itself).

Above all, massage helps free things up – mentally and emotionally as well as physically. It helps you unlock your mind and get back your fluidity of thought and feeling. Paradoxically, by switching off, you’re more likely to come to terms with hidden feelings or to get that brainwave you needed. In the same way that anxiety and stress inhibit our intuition, so deep relaxation helps us access it.

Last, but not least, pleasure strengthens the immune system – yet another reason massage is good for your health!