What to do After a Massage?

Drink Water After A Massage

You have just finished a therapeutic massage session or treated yourself to a relaxing massage with your favorite Massage Therapist. You are feeling relaxed, rejuvenated, and healed!

After booking your next appointment, your therapist gives you a water and gives you a few reminders.

After leaving and your post massage haze clears you think  “What did my therapist tell me to do again?”

 

Important Things To Do After A Massage

Drink Water

Why?

Over half our body is made up of water (depends on age, gender and overall health). So it only makes sense to drink water right?
Drinking water helps to flush out toxins released from the muscles and  properly re-hydrates your muscles therefore reducing muscle aches and pains after a massage.
A glass or two of H2O can also help to center your body/mind since a massage treatment can sometimes leave us feeling a bit spacey.

Stretch

Why?

Especially with a Deep Tissue Massage, your muscle fibers need to realign and be flushed of the toxins released from the muscle. Stretching can help to do this realignment and improve proper muscle recovery therefore reducing post massage muscle pain when the muscles want to tighten up again.

Hydrotherapy

(Epsom Salt Bath/Whirlpool/Infrared Sauna)

Why?

Similar to the effects of drinking water and stretching, hydrotherapy can also prolong the sense of relaxation to your body/mind and induce a deeper sleep that night  while promoting healthy muscle recovery.

Eat

Why?

Massage Therapy has a big effect on circulation and stimulates digestion among other systems of the body. Keeping a small snack with you to eat after a massage will provide your body with an instant electrolyte boost (especially if you tend to feel light headed after massages)

Also, it is important to avoid any strenuous activities after a massage and avoid negative people who create stress for you!

Why Face Up?

Ever wonder why I usually start you start face up?   Besides being relaxing there a few technical reasons.  Most of us sit at desks and have our bodies in a head and shoulder forward position.  For this article the overworked and overstretched  muscles are the muscles of the shoulder and back and the opposite or agonist muscles are the pectoralis muscles.  Both become tight, one is over-worked and over stretched-back, the other-pecs, become tight from lack of use and they become 'short.'

When you start a client face up and lengthen the short, tight anterior muscle groups (pecs) , you aid in relaxing the weak inhibited posterior shoulder stabilizers. Once the therapist manages to restore normal muscle resting lengths to the tight agonist muscle groups, it reciprocally turns down the noxious afferent stimuli and relieves many of the myofascial and neuromuscular pain patterns.
(Figs 6-8)
Fig. 6 Pectoralis Major Work.Since much of our pain comes from living in forward head flexed postures with medially rotated shoulders, starting a client face up often makes more sense. This assures that the majority of short flexor muscles groups are lengthened prior to working on weak, inhibited extensor muscle groups.

So...the reason you are generally started face up is to relax and stretch the shorter muscles to have better access to the overstretched muscles of the back and shoulder. 

Ever wonder what scar tissue and normal tissue look like?  No?  Well just in case you ever wonder.  This is what we strive for!

 Scar tissue above.  Aligned tissue here.


Article and pictures taken from Massage Today Article
By James Waslaski


I have also added a 75 Minute Massage to the list of services and as a gift to you if you schedule a 60 Minute Massage 4/23-5/6 you will automatically be upgraded to 75 Minutes! All appointments will be at Walnut St during this time.  Sorry, this cannot be used with other promotions such as gift certificates or coupons but did you know you can always upgrade your massage time $10 for 15 Minutes or $20 for 30 Minutes? 

This would be the perfect time for you to use that Gift Certificate you have been saving.

Don't forget Mothers Day! MOMS do so much for us every day so give her something special this Mother’s Day. An Instant Gift Certificate ensures mom will spend a few precious hours focused on relaxation and rejuvenation.

Just go to my website and click on gift certificate, choose a design, personalize a message then print or email the gift instantly. It really is that simple, the ultimate gift solution.