About Massage
If you've ever known the pleasure of having a really wonderful massage, you will understandably want to hold on to the afterglow that follows. I'd like to suggest some physical and emotional reasons of why you might feel this way.
Our physical bodies are wired to be incredibly resilient and adaptive to the hectic wear and stress our lives demand every minute of every day. But we let our lives and careers exact total alertness to every nuance; we remain ready, able and willing to immediately react to twists and turns without pause; we constantly live in The Now. Technically, this state of being is described as the fight-or-flight or acute stress response of the sympathetic nervous system.
The problem comes when we no longer allow recovery time so we can relax, reflect, laugh and be happy, even in relatively small proportions. As efficient and well-wired as our bodies are, when we don't allow deviation from constantly remaining on Red Alert 24/7, our nervous system loses the ability to differentiate between life-threatening stress and everyday stress. Most of us don't even realize how or when we bought into the resultant pain or dull numbness. But sooner or later our bodies and/or emotions have a way of telling us something's wrong.
Do you remember a time in your life, possibly some time ago, when you felt light, with no pain, when you felt completely, totally relaxed and took for granted you would always feel this incredible sense of being alive with happiness, hope and well-being? When you've experienced your first truly great massage, you have not only begun emotional and physical healing, you're also returned to that time in the past you didn't know you would forget. Technically, you have allowed yourself to reconnect to your parasympathetic nervous system, the brake to the sympathetic nervous system's accelerator. When the parasympathetic system takes over, your body saves energy, blood pressure decreases, your heart beats slower, and digestion can start. The body heals itself when it rests.
Touching on emotional health, we are taught from a very early age how (and how not) to show our emotions. Anger, rage and frustration are discouraged if we want acceptance. If we don't suppress improper emotions, we face punishment, criticism and shame. Emotional conformity was engrained as quickly and efficiently as the language we were taught as toddlers.
The problem with suppressing emotions is that we literally absorb them into our bodies. When we repeatedly tense the muscles in our neck instead of frowning or hold our breath instead of crying or clench our jaws instead of yelling or quietly absorb the rage we feel, we develop patterns of stifling our emotions. We eventually become unaware that we're suppressing them. The patterns then go to the subconscious mind and our bodies become a storehouse for unexpressed, unconscious feelings, hence the development of anxiety symptoms.
Anxiety symptoms include anxiety attacks (aka panic attacks), anxiety disorders, stress disorders, sleep disorders and depression. Because each person has a unique chemical makeup, the symptoms and their intensity will vary from person to person. Anxiety symptoms lead to muscle tension, one of the most frequent ways we hold this storehouse of suppressed emotions. Massage relieves tension from chronic stress, and by relaxing muscles and reducing tension, massage frees the pattern where the unconscious feelings are being held. Once the tension is gone, the subconscious mind can lose its grasp on suppressed emotions. The supportive touch offered in massage calms the nervous system, changing the mind-body pattern, creating freedom for feelings in a safe, supportive, nonjudgmental environment. Most releases surface and resolve quickly.
In summary, massage is a wonderful conduit in aiding the body to heal itself, physically and emotionally. Directly and indirectly, touch impacts each and every system in our bodies, including the important "system" known as the soul. Touch was mankind's first healing tool and it's a universal inborn language that we all know.
