Benefits of Learning Self-Massage

If you run or are active in other ways you know you need a massage, maybe not at this exact moment but soon. And you’ll keep needing one as long as you live. So you can learn how now or you can keep putting it off and suffering.

Learning self-massage may not be as bad as you think. We’re not talking self-surgery or even something as painful as golf, just some simple gliding, squeezing, pressing, drumming, and dancing. You probably know how to do all these strokes anyway, you just haven’t thought of them as massage before or used them with intent. Here’s a link check it out, it’s free.

Massage is a skill worth having even if you never turn it on yourself. You can use it on others to enrich their lives and end their suffering.

Everyone has their own reason for learning massage. What’s yours?

*Reduced muscle pain and soreness because massage eliminates trigger points, cleans out toxins, and feeds muscles with fresh nutrients and oxygen
*Improved health because massage strengthens the immune system
*Improved mood because massage reduces stress
*Improved athletic performance because massage speeds recovery between workouts
*Fewer injuries because massage removes trigger points which often cause injuries
*Fewer injuries because massage puts you in touch with your body and lets you know what’s weak before it breaks
*Fewer injuries because massage is a more precise and effective way to stretch muscles
*Youth because massage not only makes you feel younger it lets you look younger by releasing tired old muscles
*Better circulation because massage presses blood and lymph through you
*Pain reduction of all kinds because massage releases endorphin cocktails
*Better understanding of your body because knowledge begins with touch
*Learning to massage others because self-massage is a great teaching tool
*Increased energy because with the right strokes massage channels energy
*Relaxation because with the right strokes massage relaxes

You may just want one or two of these benefits. Regardless, you get them all, just by learning seven simple strokes and using them. What are you waiting for? Click here and learn them now.

Good for You

photo credit: Almoko

How could anything as simple as breathing, bathing, drinking fresh water, eating whole foods be good for you? Self-massage is that simple and that good for you!

For a touch of Ayurvedic self-massage check out this post by Carole Fogarty. She begins “You Absolutely Deserve A Daily Self-Massage” this way:

“I promise, once you allow as little as 5 minutes a day to massage your own body you will notice the benefits from day one. I personally always feel a bit more loved, much more alive, lighter, grounded and rather pleased with myself knowing that I have taken the time to appreciate and then rejuvenate the energy flow in my body.”

Better yet read the post in its entirety by clicking here!

Introduction to the New Massage

A massage a day will do more for you than keep the doctor away.

The best time to get a massage is when you need one.

Benefits
You win if you can improve your health, mood, and fitness level while reducing injuries, stress, and muscle pain.

By taking simple ideas from massage therapy and tweaking them, self-massage transfers the benefits of massage directly to the end user.

Music for The Body
Massage therapy created a simple system that could be transferred from teacher to student by applying basic ideas from science, medicine, and anatomy. Self-massage delivers that simple system directly to the consumer.

Self-massage is massage for the digital age: it’s immediate, portable, and powerful. It’s when you need it, where you need it. Like the web itself, self-massage eliminates the frictions of time and money by delivering information instantly and freely.

Making access to information infinitely easier changes the nature of the information.

Self-massage takes a good thing and makes it better by changing the delivery system. A small change makes a big difference. It’s like moving music from the 19th century concert hall of the privileged few to the headphones of the 21st century for everyone to enjoy.

Now
Massage is an idea whose roots go back to prehistory, and contain hundreds of variations. Massage therapies like Swedish massage, shiatsu, reflexology, and trigger point therapy, are constructs invented during the 19th and 20th centuries. Their common elements are a for-profit-two-party-delivery-system where giver and receiver are separate people. Inherent in this model are the enormous frictions of time and money. These frictions are eliminated when giver and receiver are one.

By eliminating transaction costs and reducing the frictions of the market place, self-massage opens up massage to everyone. Self-massage is to massage therapy what the web is to the printed page, it’s the next step, a transfer of power from the few to the many. Self-massage takes massage to the 21st century in the same way massage therapy took it to the 20th.

Doing it yourself is new. Combining the benefits of massage therapy with the immediacy of self-massage is now. When you have an itch you scratch it, no waiting, no fee. Self-massage is massage for the digital age.

The best way to convey the power of massage is to experience it.

Check out this YouTube video: Self-Massage for Athletes.

Health Quiz

photo credit: Curious Expeditions

The value of prevention is not only that you can avoid injury and illness, you’re not subject to medical mistake, which is a larger problem than you may think.

Here’s a website that rates your risk of getting cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and stroke.  While the site is owned by a respected hospital that may profit from these diseases there is no reason to believe that influences the quality of the information.

If you think you might be vulnerable to any of these problems, take the quizzes. They're a good way to learn what modern medicine currently deems important in lowering your chances of suffering from any one of these illnesses. 

Reducing your likelihood of getting sick has a huge hidden benefit. You eliminate the possibility of suffering the many problems caused by treating your illness or injury. 

Steering clear of modern  medicine may save your life. Doctors, like everyone else, make plenty of mistakes. While no one knows for sure how many people clip out each year due to medical errors, it has been estimated that around 250,000 die in the U.S . The estimate may be higher if you don’t like medical doctors and lower if you are one. In any case, if you’re in a hospital it’s discomforting to read headlines that state: “Doctors Are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.” 

 or "Medical Error Is The Fifth-Leading Cause of Death In The U.S."

Take the quizzes if you want to know how you might reduce your likelihood of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, stroke and iatrogenic  illness and death.

Self-Massage is Obvious--But?

photo by doctormike

One of the big challenges I faced writing Self-Massage for Athletes is that a lot of stuff in the book seems fairly obvious. It’s obvious that massage is good for you. That by massaging sore muscles, improving circulation, and releasing trigger points, massage relieves muscle pain, speeds recovery, and prevents injuries. 

It’s obvious that self-massage is easy to learn and that you can apply many of the ideas from modern massage therapy to self-massage and produce an effective therapy at little cost. And because you can enjoy the benefits of massage every day you can probably produce a more powerful affect than seeing a professional massage therapist once a month or even once a week.  It’s clear that with every massage stroke you apply you get instant feedback: which muscles need work and which don’t, how deep to go, and how long to stay.  

It’s also obvious that athletes can learn a lot about their bodies from using self-massage. It’s obvious that by learning and practicing self-massage an athlete will be healthier, fitter, and faster than if he did not. Sure it’s obvious.

But precisely because it’s so obvious, it needs to be written about. Thought about.  Talked about. Because it’s so obvious, it’s easy to dismiss the benefits of self-massage and fall into the habit Americans have of ignoring their bodies until a problem explodes into injury or illness and needs professional care: MRI’s, drugs, surgeries. 

After all, if self-massage were so obvious, why don’t millions of athletes use it to complete a workout? Why don’t they use it to detect muscle weaknesses before they become injuries? Why don’t they use it instead of vitamin I to relieve muscle pain and soreness? Why do really smart people suddenly turn stupid when faced with applying simple massage strokes to their own bodies?  

Because to embrace self-massage you have to be willing to change the status quo. And many successful athletes, coaches, and doctors who are in positions of authority have climbed to the top by embracing the status quo, not by challenging it. 

It’s much easier to do nothing and hope you don’t get injured than to be proactive and try something new and elegant. To glide, press, squeeze, and drum your sore tired muscles back from pain requires effort. To get more in touch with your body and in so doing prevent injuries by catching small problems before they grow into large ones, requires effort. It’s much easier to rely on someone else to fix you when you break, to pop a pill, or employ the latest medical technology than to take matters into your own hands and minimize your chances of injury. 

Pros Do It

Yes, it would be nice to have a personal massage therapist the way high paid athletes do. We envy the superstars of professional sports who can make a call and someone comes over to work all the toxins out. But unless you’re Lance Armstrong, Kobe Bryan, Deena Kastor, Tiger Woods, Maria Sharapova, or Derek Jeter that’s not happening for you.

Your Future

Today, your physical world is probably different than it was ten years ago. And it may be very different ten years hence. As we age our bodies tend to deteriorate. In America, they tend to deteriorate quickly. The people who get physically stronger with age are those who pay attention to their health, who are proactive, and willing to take a hands on approach.

So, yes, the basic ideas upon which self-massage are based are obvious. But using them, challenging the status quo, putting them to work—that’s not obvious in any way.