Massage therapy is designed to focus on trigger points to release endorphins and reduce stress-inducing hormones. It manipulates the body’s tendons, muscles, and soft tissues so that you will feel invigorated and relaxed after a session. By applying pressure, a trained therapist can remedy muscle or joint problems that you’re experiencing.
There are many benefits that you can get from a massage, but if you’re not sure which one to book, below are the different types that you can choose from.
- Swedish Massage
This is the most commonly known massage, and many centres almost always have this in their service list. Swedish massage is designed to be relaxing through gentle and smooth strokes, circular movements, kneading, and friction techniques. Book one if you need something for stress relief, tension release and muscle cramps, or just for general relaxation.
- Aromatherapy Massage
Aromatherapy massage uses one or a mix of essential oils based on their qualities and the problems that they can target. One good example is lavender oil, which can be used for stress reduction and relaxation. Essential oils can target different conditions, and if diffused in the air, can even be effective in dealing with hormone imbalance. When massaged into the skin, it can also help with healing and other skin conditions.
- Hot stone massage
A hot stone massage is done by placing heated stones on problematic points of the body. Instead of using the hands, therapists use the smooth stones to massage the body, so you will feel the muscles getting relaxed from the stones themselves and the heat emitted from them. It’s relaxing and at the same time invigorating compared to a Swedish massage.
- Deep tissue massage
Deep tissue massage is most commonly requested by athletes to deal with sports injuries and soreness. The therapist applies deep pressure to problematic areas and will target the deeper layers through slow and forceful strokes. Gentle massage techniques, on the other hand, are used on other parts to balance out the therapy and deal with shoulder and neck pain, muscle tension, and other muscular-skeletal issues.
- Trigger point massage
A muscle knot or trigger point is an isolated sore or tender area in a specific muscle group. Often, these points can also cause pain and discomfort in other body parts if not dealt with. Therapists can take care of the trigger points by applying friction techniques and slow strokes across the problem point, muscle grains, and connective tissues. Doing so relieves the painful knots and at the same time deals with the discomfort caused by them.
If you have problematic areas in your body or you just want to relax and de-stress, book a Waterloo massage as soon as you can. You don’t need to punish yourself if you can relieve yourself from the pain and discomfort. And besides, it’s also a good excuse to relax and forget about your worries even if it’s just for an hour or so.
