You Need a Bigger Cup

Clients ask how often they should get massage. My general answer is that getting a massage once a month is very helpful for a number of reasons. How often depends on how intense their activity is.  Are they an athlete, or has their body been through some kind of trauma? But massage functions best as part of a whole program, and is by no means a panacea.

The major function of massage is to place the soft tissues in the optimal state for recovery.  The metaphor I have been using lately, is that massage is the condiment on your therapy sandwich. You need a full physical program that includes range of motion therapy and restorative exercise that counter the physical habits or event that led to imbalance and discomfort. How does the sandwich analogy work with this?

Let's try another analogy. Your body builds up tension all day, like a cup being filled with water. Every time you deal with physical stress (inactivity is physically stressing), or mental stress, your cup fills a little. When you feel pain, that's when the water starts to flow over the top of your cup. Massage helps empty the cup. Yet, it doesn't actually change the cup. Massage makes the cup ready for change. That is, if you get a massage, but don't introduce compensating exercises or movements, then your cup fills up again quickly. However learning new movements to help train your body to deal with stress, increases the size of your cup.  

So consider this, coping with stress requires 2 steps: 1) empty your cup 2) build a bigger cup.