Benefits of Routine Massage
Receiving regular, monthly massage is one of the best was to do self-care, akin to giving your car regular oil changes and maintenance. As you age, your body requires more self care, much like a classic car requires a lot more maintenance than one that just rolled off the assembly line. Consider a classic cars’ maintenance to be akin to necessary self care, especially for the mature body. Most collectors of these classic cars often spoil their vehicles with the best of care by the owner: the chrome gets shined and polished, the interior is fully restored, the car gets parked in a special garage plus the frequent and necessary maintenance is done only by specialty mechanics. What surprises me is how often I see people giving tremendous care to these wonderfully fun material possessions but neglect what’s most important and that is our own bodies.
Too often clients approach me needing a massage as a way to fix something. They call when they are in pain; they fell, strained a muscle working in the yard, or otherwise injured themselves. Suddenly their body has seized up like an engine without oil and they need an immediate muscle overhaul. While I am happy to help, sometimes the body left untended can’t always be fixed with massage. If you wait too long, you may be on the hook for expensive medical care and/or physical therapy. Monthly therapeutic massage can be a cost-effective way to keep your body tuned up and prevent many of the most common problems from happening, such as frozen shoulder, chronic neck, knee, back and/or foot pain. Many of these conditions are a result of tight and weak muscles, poor posture, lifestyle and bad spinal alignment. They can often be corrected with an overall fitness plan that includes regular exercise, stretching and massage to unwind bound up tissue for the best results especially later in life as these issues only worsen as we age, much like the classic car that needs extra TLC.
As a personal trainer and massage therapist, I have a unique perspective on how regular massage benefits the mature body. Google the benefits of massage and you’ll see that it promotes everything from better posture to improved circulation and a heathier immune system. While all this is true, you won’t find the benefits that I observe in a Google search and that which I find most important of all and that’s the ability to move better. Better movement translates into greater results in less time. If your body is stuck in bad posture as most of us are, you just aren’t moving to your potential when you exercise, causing you to increase your efforts just to get the same result. When you receive regular massage and keep your tissues healthy, you get deeper squats and bigger lifts all the way around because your tissues are moving more freely and more efficient bio-mechanically.
To get the most out of your body give yourself the gift of regular, monthly massage! Call me to get started!
-Selina Sahba
