Massage Benefits Are Vast!
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Mobilizing joints and releasing short, tight muscles and soft tissues. Strengthening the longer, weaker muscles to correct the body’s alignment and movement control. Identifying and changing the lifestyle and working factors that are contributing to the underlying problem.
Muscle imbalances
Muscle imbalances are often caused by something we do as a habit and usually due to the little things that we do everyday. One might regularly sit slumped at the computer for a long time, or maybe train one group of muscles but not the opposite group.
To easily explain the muscle imbalance- our body has muscles that are attached to either side of a joint and work against one another to control the movement of the joint. It’s a bit like the handlebars of the bike: you can ride with one hand, but two hands working against each other gives you much better control.
When one side of the opposing muscles is stronger than the other, you have a muscle imbalance. For instance, if you regularly use the muscles on one side a lot more than the other, they get stronger muscles – and shorter and tighter. On the other side, the muscles get weaker – and longer and looser. The shorter, stronger muscles pull that part of your body out of position, and your whole body will end up making adjustments to compensate.
When a muscle imbalance pulls one of your joints out of position, this puts a strain on that joint. When that strain stresses the nerves around the joint, you feel pain. If your body readjusts itself to ease the pain, other sets of muscles can become imbalanced – and the cycle can continue. A small, local problem in some muscles can become a neuro-muscular-skeletal problem that affects distant parts of your body.
Postural problems can manifest in a wide range of different ways such as:
Lower Back Pain
Facet joint and ligament strain
Slipped discs
Shoulder Impingement and Rotator Cuff tendonitis
Headaches and Neck Pain
Trapped Nerves
Sports Injuries
Hamstring tears
Anterior knee pain
What can be done about it?
So, once properly assessed, muscle imbalances and postural dysfunctions are fairly easy to correct. Generally a massage therapist focus on three main areas:
Mobilizing joints and releasing short, tight muscles and soft tissues. Strengthening the longer, weaker muscles to correct the body’s alignment and movement control. Identifying and changing the lifestyle and working factors that are contributing to the underlying problem.
Experts estimate that upwards of ninety percent of disease is stress-related. And perhaps nothing ages us faster, internally and externally, than high stress. Massage is an effective tool for managing this stress, which translates into:
- Decreased anxiety.
- Enhanced sleep quality.
- Greater energy.
- Improved concentration.
- Increased circulation.
- Reduced fatigue.
Furthermore massage can also help specifically address a number of health issues. Bodywork can:
- Alleviate low-back pain and improve range of motion.
- Assist with shorter, easier labor for expectant mothers and shorten maternity hospital stays.
- Ease medication dependence.
- Enhance immunity by stimulating lymph flow—the body’s natural defense system.
- Exercise and stretch weak, tight, or atrophied muscles.
- Help athletes of any level prepare for, and recover from, strenuous workouts.
- Improve the condition of the body’s largest organ—the skin.
- Increase joint flexibility.
- Lessen depression and anxiety.
- Promote tissue regeneration, reducing scar tissue and stretch marks.
- Pump oxygen and nutrients into tissues and vital organs, improving circulation.
- Reduce postsurgery adhesions and swelling.
- Reduce spasms and cramping.
- Relax and soften injured, tired, and overused muscles.
- Release endorphins—amino acids that work as the body’s natural painkiller.
- Relieve migraine pain.
By LMT Jolita brilliant, Licensed Masseuse in Burlington, Massage Spa in Vermont.
