Last week we looked at Rolfing, explaining that it focuses on fascia manipulation that can be somewhat painful, and that some claim it can relieve pain and improve wellness.
Indeed, the creator of Rolfing, Ida Rolf, was a biochemist who believed that proper alignment of the body’s soft tissues (fascia, muscles, ligaments and tendons) would allow the body to function better and lead to an improved general wellness. (more…)
National Public Radio recently reported on Rolfing as a type of massage therapy that was becoming more popular among the “yoga-Pilates-acupuncture crowd.” While we’re big fans of NPR any way, we’ve linked the story to this post because it does a good job of explaining the ideas behind fascia manipulation and why some people think Rolfing has therapeutic properties while others remain unconvinced.
The story also does a good job right at the beginning of explaining that Rolfing isn’t an average sort of massage. (more…)
As we’ve written in past entries, sports massage can be extremely beneficial to all athletes as massage therapy targeted to key areas of the body can help improve an athlete’s range of motion and flexibility, helping to reduce the chance of serious injury.
This would make its application to baseball seem obvious, as improved flexibility and range of motion would help fielders, batters and pitchers in their performance. But a little more research into the subject of baseball and sports massage shows just how helpful the modality is for the sport. (more…)
CAM therapies are Complementary and Alternative Medicine treatments that help alleviate symptoms without relying on pharmaceuticals or more invasive medical treatments like surgery. While there are many CAM therapies out there, I wonder if any have as many potential diagnoses as does massage therapy.
Consider that:
o Massage therapy has been demonstrated to help treat symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, lowering levels of pain, anxiety and depression while improving physical sensation and muscle movements. (more…)
Last week we wrote about how office massage therapy can help reverse postural problems and the pain associated with them. While there is research that has been done showing that massage therapy can help in many different areas (relieving stress, reducing pain, etc.) it’s always nice to read up on studies that show effective massage therapy in action.
MassageMag has published two such articles demonstrating the effectiveness of office massage in improving employee health. (more…)
One thing that we promote strongly is office massage, as it can be extremely beneficial to employees. We have discussed how workplace massage can be unobtrusive to the general set-up of an office, and how it can help diffuse stressful work environments (see our post here). But office massage is even more important today than before, given the nature of modern office work and its effect on a critical physical feature: posture. (more…)
We’ve written generally about massage therapy and its benefits for athletes (see our entry on Sports Massage), but often times a description of the general benefits can gloss over the specific positives sports massage provides athletes of a specific sport. Today’s Blog will focus on running and how sports massage can help runners. (more…)
Writing about acupressure the past couple of weeks got me curious about acupoints – pressure points on the body where therapeutic results can be realized through the application of appropriate amounts of pressure. Basically, acupoints are the points on the body where acupressure (or acupuncture) should be performed. (more…)
Last week I wrote about acupressure, defining the modality and describing its benefits generally. This week I want to examine the specific benefits acupressure provides, as detailed in recent scientific research.
The first study comes from a 2010 issue of the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which demonstrated acupressure’s ability to decrease pain levels in patients suffering from chronic neck pain. (more…)
Acupressure is an intriguing modality of massage therapy as its methods and potential benefits are extremely expansive. It’s also hard to get a precise definition of what acupressure actually is, which is what we will try to do in today’s blog post.
Simply put, acupressure is the placement of pressure on pressure points of the body. (more…)