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Do You Know the Secret to Massage for Stress Management?
“There’s more to massage than simply rubbing sore muscles …”The key to understanding massage for stress management is to understand that massage is a tool for unlocking the mind-to-muscle connection.Stress affects the body. HARDCORE Stress Management™ is fundamentally an exercise in understanding the way in which stress affects the body, and applying specific stress management techniques that are informed by that fundamental understanding. This is as true for massage for stress management as for any other HARDCORE technique. I’ve discussed this topic at length in my articles “Stress & Your Body” and “Stress Affects Health” which you should read for context. One of the most basic ways that your body responds to stress is to store tension in your muscles. Your muscles can really only do one of two things, contract (shorten), or relax (lengthen). What I mean by “storing tension” is that your muscles shorten or contract in response to a perceived stressful event, but fail to relax or return to their original “pre-stress” length. Common physical areas where your muscles store tension include: • Jaw Different people store tension in different places in their body. While it’s beyond the scope of this article, there’s actually an entire area of psychology devoted to studying how specific personality types tend to store tension in specific areas of their body – it’s called “emotional armor”. Over time, carrying this tension within your muscles can hamper your body’s ability to function properly - that's why massage for stress management is so important. Not only your muscles are affected … the range of motion of different joints is limited by the shortened muscles, and your skeletal alignment degrades. As this process of deterioration continues your immune system may be compromised, and you become more susceptible to illness. Your mobility can be impaired, and you may begin to experience acute muscle, joint, or spine-related pain. This is the point where many people go to a doctor or a chiropractor for relief. A doctor is very likely to prescribe you a muscle-relaxer or a pain-killer or both, and tell you rest for a few days. You may feel better in the short-term, but this kind of symptomatic treatment does very little to treat the underlying issue – the stress. A chiropractor (a good one, not a quack) can treat the muscular and skeletal problems caused by chronic stress-related tension in a much more effective way than a doctor. In fact, many of them will prescribe therapeutic massage from trained physical therapist. But even a chiropractor is not treating the root cause – the stress. What does all this have to do with massage for stress management? Look, almost everyone enjoys a good massage. Whether it be from a loved one or from a skilled professional, the human body responds favorably to touch – particularly in our society where physical contact is more socially restricted than in others. And for those of you so afflicted with anxiety that physical contact is extremely uncomfortable, massage in a controlled setting can be extremely therapeutic. The reason that massage from a competent and knowledgeable masseuse is so pleasurable is that your muscles are required to relax. Your muscles are required to lengthen. Most of us are woefully ignorant of our own bodies. We can carry incredible amounts of chronic and habitual tension within our bodies without even being aware of it. The true value of massage for stress management, the secret, is that it forces you to be directly aware of where and how you are holding tension in your body. This is the first step in learning how to consciously release that tension. Releasing stress-related muscular tension, in other words “relaxing”, is a skill. You have to train your muscles to consciously respond to your demands to relax, much in the same way you have to train them in the gym to lift a heavy weight. That’s what I say when I mean when I say that relaxation is a skill - a skill that massage for stress management can help to refine. So the next time you’re laying on a table being kneaded by the strong hands of a skilled masseuse, or next time you’re laying on the couch while your significant other rubs your shoulders or feet, use it as an opportunity to practice some HARDCORE Stress Management™! Concentrate on your sore spots, on the knots of muscle where you’re holding your tension. Consciously and willfully tell your muscles to “let go” with your mind – repeat the words silently to your muscles over and over if you have to. Over time you will gain more and more conscious control over those muscles, and when you tell them to “let go”, they will. This is the beginning of developing relaxation as a genuine skill.
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