Massage and Postural Analysis
Many people attend for massage because they are in pain and want relief from that pain. The pain that they experience may be from some recent injury or may be a chronic condition which they have learned to live with but not to accept. Massage can help to relieve soft tissue or muscular pain. Massage therapists will look at how a person stands and observe how the persons’ muscles hold their body and this will give the therapist clues as to what is causing the persons pain. This process is called “Postural analysis”.
This analysis helps the therapist design a strategy for working with the client on an individual basis. The therapist will be able to see dominant posture patterns, by this I mean, for example, whether the front muscles of the body are tight and pulling the shoulders and head forward (flexor dominant posture pattern), or whether the back muscles are short and tight and pulling the chest up and arms back (extensor dominant posture pattern).
Using these skills the therapist will be able to see the muscles that are tight and thus not functioning properly and will be able to put together a plan for the massage sessions to work towards correcting the muscle imbalances. Some imbalances are functional, that is caused by the way we sit, the way we use a computer or the way we run. Some imbalances are structural and these are much more complex, for example, the client may have a bent spine (scoliosis) which would need input from a physiotherapist, and would not be corrected by massage alone.
The techniques of postural analysis give the therapist a starting point with the client. Together they can then work on a strategy to relieve the pain. The client must have goals which must be realistic and achievable, and the therapist must set a programme of massage to work towards those goals. After each session this plan should be reviewed and evaluated. The therapist may find techniques that do not work well with the client and the client may feel uncomfortable with some techniques, each must communicate this to the other so the process can move forward to reach the clients goals.
We all have postural problems because our lives affect the way that we interact with the environment. Computers have revolutionised most industries but not enough attention is paid to the way we sit to use them. We slouch at the computer and our shoulders round forward and up, our heads fall forward, our mouse is too far away from our body, our backs strain and we do this five days a week and wonder why we have chronic shoulder, neck and back problems at the weekend!
A skilled massage therapist will be able to identify the muscle imbalances in each individual and devise a programme of massage to correct the imbalances. The client will be given exercises to undertake in between sessions to help themselves become more aware of the muscles and help correct the imbalances.
A massage therapist using postural analysis and various deep tissue massage techniques and other techniques can help a client have relief from chronic pain. Everybody deserves to be free from pain in their lives and to live life to the full. Every Body Deserves A Massage.
