I think we all know that stress has a negative impact on our physical and mental wellbeing. Stress has such a powerful affect on us physically and mentally; it can feel overwhelming to even attempt to switch off from it. We all know that massage and reflexology can help with stress, as most of you book with me for this very reason. Our adrenal glands produces hormones that are vital to life, such as the hormone cortisol, which controls how our bodies respond to stress. I often find a lot of tension on the adrenal gland reflex with my reflexology clients who are dealing with stressful situations.
When I find an area of tension in reflexology I spend more time there, slowly building up more pressure to encourage your body to release and restore. We will always need levels of cortisol in our bodies, but the key is to keep these levels balanced. Our muscles can cling on to this tension, start working differently, struggle to relax and over time adhesions start to form and therefore pain and discomfort emerge.
Most of my clients find that stress settles in their upper back and neck, sometimes going further into their heads to cause tension headaches. Deep Tissue Massages are a great way of unlocking this tension, as we work into the deeper layers of the fascia to release as much tension as possible from the muscles. If they are still strained during massage, those muscles will hurt, become bruised and will perhaps get damaged even more during the treatment.
Just to be clear, a massage should never cause bruising! I believe that very firmly! I use my knuckles and elbows a lot during deep tissue massage treatments to release as much tension as possible Photo by Ale Romo Photography.
As a practitioner, I always want my clients to leave my treatment room with a feeling of homeostasis - that is a sense of balance, equilibrium both physically and mentally. However, feeling better than we did when we arrived, feeling more grounded, feeling like our bodies have had a tension-release; these are all positive feelings that help us feel more control of the stress in our bodies. Remembering that we are worthy of spending time and money on ourselves is really difficult for a lot of my clients to accept, and a concept I also struggle with sometimes.
