No Pain, No Gain: Does It Apply to Massage?
No Pain, No Gain: Does It Apply to Massage?
When you think of the massage and spa industry, you typically think about a soft spoken therapist working in a calm relaxing massage room, listening to soft background music, experiencing pure relaxation. The image and experience are wonderful and have a valuable and necessary place in our hectic lives, but the question is, does a bit of pain and discomfort have a therapeutic value?
The answer is yes! Medical massage often involves releasing contracted hypertonic muscles. This means the therapist is working less superficially and more deeply. A medical or therapeutic massage goes beyond the simple relaxation massage. The benefits are: increased circulation, decreased hypertonicity, and in many cases decreased pain. The deeper muscle work definitely has a lasting therapeutic effect!
The client, while receiving a therapeutic massage, should be communicating their pain or discomfort level to the therapist. I like to quantify pain on a 1 to 10 scale, 10 being intolerable and 7 being therapeutic. It is important while receiving a medical massage, to be in touch with your body enough to distinguish pain that is therapeutic, ( “hurts so good” ), resulting in muscle release and pain that is simply too intense to tolerate. The client should never leave a session bruised or with lasting discomfort.
Medical massage can fall under a variety of different names. Is it commonly referred to as: Myofascial Release, or Deep Tissue Massage. So, the next time you are experiencing pain or discomfort, consider massage therapy as an alternative medical treatment.
By Elline Eliasoff, CMT
