Massage: The Benefits Of This Timeless Art

The art of massage goes far deeper than someone simply rubbing your shoulders due to tension in the trapezius muscles. If that were the case, a lot of spas and clinics would be out of work. But they aren’t, and it’s because the careful manipulation of your muscles can release benefits that you may not even know about. Ask someone what they like about going in to a spa for a session and they may not even be able to put it in to words. “It feels nice,” they might say. In reality, it goes quite a lot deeper than that. Here are some of the benefits.

Lowering Anxiety

We live in a world filled with stress. As any doctor will tell you, stress can be a killer. The buildup of cortisol in the body can lead to increased obesity and heart disease. Stress has been directly linked to ulcers and heart attack. When you’re working more than eight hours a day, trying to pay the bills, taking care of your kids, and trying to keep a marriage together, it’s inevitable that some stress is going to build up in your system. How you relieve all of that anxiety is up to you, but a good massage session is certainly one of the best ways.

Better Sleep

Study after study has shown that people these days do not get enough sleep. And the sleep they do get is of an insufficient quality. This can lead to a kind of waking death, where you are going through your days like a zombie. You may have become so used to the feeling you don’t even notice it anymore. You medicate with coffee, energy drinks, and soda and don’t realize that what you really need is more sleep. Massage can take the tension out of your system and put you in a state of relaxation that lasts long after the session is over. This can easily translate to more quality bedroom time.

Muscular Benefits

Many advanced bodybuilders take advantage of massage. This isn’t just to ease their injuries and torn muscle tissue, but because manipulating the muscles gets blood flowing through them. This, in turn, carries protein and much needed amino acids to the muscles and stimulates their growth. It is also beneficial for those who suffer from conditions such as arthritis and back pain. Some studies have even shown that children suffering from asthma have shown improvement by going to regular sessions.

Downtime

Of course, do you really need a list of medical facts to tell you why you deserve to get a massage. The person above who couldn’t articulate their thoughts simply said, “It just feels good.” And really, that’s all you need, isn’t it? Our lives are structured in such a way that we get precious few moments to ourselves. Precious few moments where we can escape our “have to” lives and inject a little bit of “want to”. This is one of the ways you can do something for yourself.