therapeutic massage
Healing Hands
Massage is used to treat a wide range of conditions such as muscular strains, sprains and spasms as well as simple nervous tension or anxiety. Massage is useful to 'spoon feed' stress management. You cannot help but feel relaxed after a massage, therefore you can readily differentiate between relaxation and tension and become more able to participate in backing off and preventing future muscular and nervous tension. A massage treatment can be isolated to an area of injury or, for stress management, the back and neck are treated.
Before and after massage you are left in privacy to change into/out of a cotton gown with under clothes left on. It is important that you feel as comfortable as possible with your treatment. To facilitate this there is no reason why you cannot bring a friend with you to your appointment for your personal comfort.
Back injuries are said to be the most common reason for loss of working hours. Contrary to popular belief the spine is not a crane. The spinal vertebra can only effectively take heavy weights in the vertical plane and so should be kept more or less in an upright position so that the individual bones along the length of the spine rest on each other and do not slide forward as a result of incorrectly applied force. There is much to be said for the Chinese exercise programs that are performed at the beginning of the working day in factories across the country.
For most people with back pain the damage is already done. The body lets a person know quick smart when they do the wrong thing and push the back past its level of tolerance.
The structure of the back works something like this: You have a tent pole and a rope running from it to the ground to hold it up. It is pointless trying to force the pole to stand upright by pushing it to one side or the other. Every Boy Scout knows that you need to alter the tension on the rope to pull evenly to either side of the tent pole. When these forces are equal the tent will be able to withstand the strongest winds. It is the same for the human spine. There are a series of ropes (muscles) attached along the length of the mast (the spine) and when equal forces are applied the structure stays strong. There may be cases where the mast is bent and needs to be gently 'panel beaten' back into shape. More often than not it is the muscles (the ropes) that hold the spine in place that need attending to.
Therapeutic massage goes a long way to re-establishing the correct tension in the muscles, muscles that are often left switched on for too long until they begin to spasm. The person loses control over the muscles and finds it difficult to switch them off. Many people, when asked to relax, tense up even more, believing subconsciously that they need to put physical effort into everything they do because that is what they do all day. I think of therapeutic massage as physically taking the person step by step through what it feels like to relax the set of muscle that have given them migraines or headaches or sciatica for the past twenty years. In doing this, the responsibility and ability to relieve the pain and discomfort of the sore back is put back in the owner's hands. It turns out that it wasn't just the chair at work that was the problem but the way they were sitting in it all day without a break.
The spine acts like one of those big underground telephone cables. It carries electrical messages to and from the brain to the rest of the body. Injury to this vital communication link is not only very painful, indicating as it does the body's efforts to guard against further trauma, but it will also effect the flow of these minute electrical messages and thus the control of the conscious and unconscious commands of the brain. This is why massage to the spine can improve the function of all the organs and body systems because it helps get rid of static in the telephone line and make way for clearer messages.
Manipulations to the spine without readying the area first can disrupt the messages sent along the spinal cord. Disruptions may not become apparent immediately after manipulation. Irreparable harm comes from repeated cold manipulations to this extremely fragile area of the body. The spinal cord, which runs through the centre of the vertebra, is actually an extension of the brain. In the same way, you can become woozy after a bump on the head if the spine is manipulated without being warmed up first. I always recommend that if a manipulation has to be done the patient must have at least a fifty-minute massage to loosen the tightly knotted ropes before the tent pole is pushed into its correct position.
Herbal medicines can help loosen muscular spasm and prevent it in the first place. When control over the muscles is lost and they tighten up, seemingly out of the person's control, there may be a deficiency of substances that the body uses to switch the muscles and nerves on and off. Magnesium phosphate is one of these. This mineral salt found in our food allows the body to switch the muscles and nerves on and off completely. When nutrients such as these run low, the person will have trouble starting and stopping, such as getting up in the morning and winding down in the evening.
Valerian and chamomile may be of assistance here because they supply the body with high amounts of magnesium to help relax the nerves completely.
There are many herbs that also have an anti-inflammatory action without a lot of the strong side effects found in pharmaceutical varieties, although they are not as strong in action and may not exert a strong enough effect in severe cases. Naturopathically, I would look to supplying the body's needs and discovering the cause of inflammation in the body. The use of anti-inflammatory medicines, whether from medical drugs or herbal medicines, only goes half way toward healing back injuries. Adequate nutrition and proper rest must form an integral part of the healing process. Bones need silica, magnesium and calcium to mend and strengthen. We spend thousands of dollars getting renovating and making our houses structurally sound. Why then do we not pay the same attention to our body?
Massage is used to treat a wide range of conditions such as muscular strains, sprains and spasms as well as simple nervous tension or anxiety. Massage is useful to 'spoon feed' stress management. You cannot help but feel relaxed after a massage, therefore you can readily differentiate between relaxation and tension and become more able to participate in backing off and preventing future muscular and nervous tension. A massage treatment can be isolated to an area of injury or, for stress management, the back and neck are treated.
Before and after massage you are left in privacy to change into/out of a cotton gown with under clothes left on. It is important that you feel as comfortable as possible with your treatment. To facilitate this there is no reason why you cannot bring a friend with you to your appointment for your personal comfort.
Back injuries are said to be the most common reason for loss of working hours. Contrary to popular belief the spine is not a crane. The spinal vertebra can only effectively take heavy weights in the vertical plane and so should be kept more or less in an upright position so that the individual bones along the length of the spine rest on each other and do not slide forward as a result of incorrectly applied force. There is much to be said for the Chinese exercise programs that are performed at the beginning of the working day in factories across the country.
For most people with back pain the damage is already done. The body lets a person know quick smart when they do the wrong thing and push the back past its level of tolerance.
The structure of the back works something like this: You have a tent pole and a rope running from it to the ground to hold it up. It is pointless trying to force the pole to stand upright by pushing it to one side or the other. Every Boy Scout knows that you need to alter the tension on the rope to pull evenly to either side of the tent pole. When these forces are equal the tent will be able to withstand the strongest winds. It is the same for the human spine. There are a series of ropes (muscles) attached along the length of the mast (the spine) and when equal forces are applied the structure stays strong. There may be cases where the mast is bent and needs to be gently 'panel beaten' back into shape. More often than not it is the muscles (the ropes) that hold the spine in place that need attending to.
Therapeutic massage goes a long way to re-establishing the correct tension in the muscles, muscles that are often left switched on for too long until they begin to spasm. The person loses control over the muscles and finds it difficult to switch them off. Many people, when asked to relax, tense up even more, believing subconsciously that they need to put physical effort into everything they do because that is what they do all day. I think of therapeutic massage as physically taking the person step by step through what it feels like to relax the set of muscle that have given them migraines or headaches or sciatica for the past twenty years. In doing this, the responsibility and ability to relieve the pain and discomfort of the sore back is put back in the owner's hands. It turns out that it wasn't just the chair at work that was the problem but the way they were sitting in it all day without a break.
The spine acts like one of those big underground telephone cables. It carries electrical messages to and from the brain to the rest of the body. Injury to this vital communication link is not only very painful, indicating as it does the body's efforts to guard against further trauma, but it will also effect the flow of these minute electrical messages and thus the control of the conscious and unconscious commands of the brain. This is why massage to the spine can improve the function of all the organs and body systems because it helps get rid of static in the telephone line and make way for clearer messages.
Manipulations to the spine without readying the area first can disrupt the messages sent along the spinal cord. Disruptions may not become apparent immediately after manipulation. Irreparable harm comes from repeated cold manipulations to this extremely fragile area of the body. The spinal cord, which runs through the centre of the vertebra, is actually an extension of the brain. In the same way, you can become woozy after a bump on the head if the spine is manipulated without being warmed up first. I always recommend that if a manipulation has to be done the patient must have at least a fifty-minute massage to loosen the tightly knotted ropes before the tent pole is pushed into its correct position.
Herbal medicines can help loosen muscular spasm and prevent it in the first place. When control over the muscles is lost and they tighten up, seemingly out of the person's control, there may be a deficiency of substances that the body uses to switch the muscles and nerves on and off. Magnesium phosphate is one of these. This mineral salt found in our food allows the body to switch the muscles and nerves on and off completely. When nutrients such as these run low, the person will have trouble starting and stopping, such as getting up in the morning and winding down in the evening.
Valerian and chamomile may be of assistance here because they supply the body with high amounts of magnesium to help relax the nerves completely.
There are many herbs that also have an anti-inflammatory action without a lot of the strong side effects found in pharmaceutical varieties, although they are not as strong in action and may not exert a strong enough effect in severe cases. Naturopathically, I would look to supplying the body's needs and discovering the cause of inflammation in the body. The use of anti-inflammatory medicines, whether from medical drugs or herbal medicines, only goes half way toward healing back injuries. Adequate nutrition and proper rest must form an integral part of the healing process. Bones need silica, magnesium and calcium to mend and strengthen. We spend thousands of dollars getting renovating and making our houses structurally sound. Why then do we not pay the same attention to our body?