Working with the Nervous System: Pain, Pressure, and Therapeutic Touch
Moment to moment as technique and pressure are adjusted, massage can be both soothing and painful. Our strokes oscillate between deep and direct pressure to expansive and light gliding moves, and often we work somewhere in between the two. There’s a balance we seek to hold as we navigate your tissues pathways with a listening touch. Our intention? To cultivate a restful and aware sense of wellbeing. We mix our glide, depth and direction to intentionally affect tissues while we work with our clients to reach a parasympathetic state (that physiological state that signals to the body that it is okay to rest). We recognize everybody has a different preference for pressure and desired outcome of their treatment, and so we turn the “volume” up or down on pressure as we learn with you and your body. Ultimately, our massage is grounded in working with your nervous system, not against it.
This intention sets the table for every massage we do (pun intended!). Our Therapeutic Massage is a blend of modalities learned in our 750 hour Massage Therapy Training at the Wellness Massage Center + Institute. These techniques range greatly; sometimes we utilize superficial Swedish strokes to warm up the tissues in preparation for deeper work. The deeper work consists of various Deep Tissue techniques, working directly with muscles both superficial and deep within the body. And we may sprinkle in Shiatsu/acupressure points as well as Thai moves as we see fit. But these Deep Tissue techniques, often considered the “painful” ones, don't have to be that way, in fact, it is a bit of a misnomer. Deep Tissue Massage really refers to the technique that targets deep muscles rather than superficial ones. You can certainly have a Swedish Massage with a lot of pressure and a Deep Tissue Massage with light pressure. There’s a comfortable or therapeutic pain, a “helpful hurt” if you will, which is both effective in terms of working the soft tissues and yet comfortable enough that your nervous system doesn’t end up in a stress response, unleashing stress hormones into your system as your muscles tense and protect against the pain. Our table is a place of rest and rejuvenation, so comfort is indeed a priority.
This balance of pressure is different for everyone and we discover this balance primarily through our communication with you, the client. We highly encourage you to share if the pressure feels excessive, and a couple key indicators would be holding your breath or clenching muscles. Of course, we also learn through our touch. At times we can feel when the body tenses due to excessive pressure and so we ease up and employ relaxing techniques to soothe both the tissue and your nervous system before returning to that deeper work with adjusted pressure. On the flip side, when client’s share that they could use more pressure or that the current depth feels light, we’ll deepen our pressure so that it indeed feels more effective. And yet, there is a softness that can be just as effective as deep, vigorous pressure, so we communicate and experiment together. Our massage is a blending, a dance of various rhythms and intensities, as we seek the right mixture to suggest rest, healing, and digestion to the body.
It is Homebody’s overarching intention and philosophy is to work with your nervous system. Understanding how the mind and body are connected, and even more so how the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems function, directly informs our massage. We want your parasympathetic active because it supports your rest, healing, and digestion (refer to this blog post to learn more about the parasympathetic nervous system). Utilizing the knowledge we hold, our massage is customized for you so that you walk away feeling better than when you came in, mentally, physically, and emotionally.
