Whats in a Name?
The simple underlying concept behind most massage therapy is that a relaxed and loose muscular structure promotes the flow of energy through the body, which enables the body to maintain health and heal itself, without resorting to drugs or surgery.
Here are some of the more common massage therapy types or modalities to help you understand which might suit you best and what you can expect from each treatment.
Swedish Massage
This is the most common form of relaxing spa type massage.
The overarching goal of Swedish Massage is the ultimate relaxation of the entire body, it is most suited to easing tension while gently encouraging the release of low level toxins, promoting the lymphatic process and increasing oxygen levels in the blood and tissues.
Deep Tissue Massage
Where Swedish massage focuses purely on relaxation and stress reduction, Deep Tissue Massage seeks to access deeper layers of the muscle structure using more targeted techniques to release tension within the muscles and connective tissue.
Trigger Point Therapy
A ‘Trigger Point’ often referred to as a ‘Knot’, is a tightly bound group of muscle fibres which will often produce referred pain in another area of the body when pressed on. A good example of this would be a trigger point in the rhomboid muscle (between the spine and shoulder blade) can often produce a sharp headache like pain at the base of the skull.
Trigger points like these are often misdiagnosed as migraines.
Trigger points can range in severity and discomfort from mildly irritating to completely debilitating.
Massage treats these by the applying pressure directly to the trigger point, moving from light to very deep, (usually within the same session) this causes the trigger point to release and relax.
Sports Massage
As the name suggests, Sports Massage is focused on sporting activity, its aim is to assist the athlete in pre- and -post event, training and recovery.
Pre-event massages set out to warm and gently strech the muscle in order to ensure adequqate blood flow and flexibility, while Post-event massages focus on stimulating healing blood flow and assisting with the removal of toxins and associated by products.
Rather than being a specific technique in its own right as in trigger point or myofascial therapies, sport massage focuses on the goals of athletic performance and recovery and borrows heavily on other methods and modalities to achieve these ends.