Self-Massage for Massage Therapists

Massage Therapist Jessica Gumkowski
http://www.massageboulder.com/

Why Self-Massage?

You may be wondering why, as a massage therapist, you should practice and promote self-massage. Maybe it’s because self-massage can do things for you that nothing else can. Self-massage can make you a more effective practitioner by improving your body, your practice, and your profession. Of course, all massage therapists use self-massage, if only unconsciously, to relieve minor aches and pains. The intent of this article is to encourage you to go deeper, to receive more.
You already know the benefits of receiving frequent massage: it improves your health and mood, reduces your likelihood of injury, and allows you to become stronger and more active. But if you’re like most practitioners, it’s been a while since you had a massage. Just as the shoemaker goes without a new pair of shoes, the massage therapist too often goes without a massage.
With the possible exception of elite athletes, practitioners have more to gain from receiving massage than any group. Your occupation requires physical exertion and repetitive motion, which often is intense. In many ways your job is similar to that of an athlete’s, you both repeatedly work a specific group of muscles to the point of exhaustion. You both compromise your health with the physical demands you put on your body. As you read this article, you may begin to think of yourself as an athlete of massage.
In many ways, a career in massage therapy is similar to that of an endurance athlete. Both require long hours of daily physical exercise, both are physically and psychically rewarding, both are likely to suffer overuse injuries. Such injuries are inevitable in any physical practice in which the same muscle groups are continually stressed without sufficient recovery.
If practiced regularly, self-massage will allow you to practice massage therapy longer and more effectively while reducing the likelihood of suffering overuse injuries. It will also provide you with a host of unexpected benefits as it becomes one of a handful of powerful massage tools at your fingertips.

GENERAL BENEFITS
Self-massage, like massage therapy, benefits all those who receive it. As a practitioner, self-massage will do even more for your well-being than it will for most people. Your health and mood will enjoy an even bigger boost than most people’s because yours are at greater risk as a result of your profession. Self-massage will reduce the risk of injury for everyone. But it will provide you a greater benefit than most because, as an athlete, you’re more prone to injuries. While self-massage is convenient for non practitioners, it is even more accessible to you because you already have the knowledge to deliver the goods. And while everyone can learn about their body from self-massage, you’ll learn more because you’re already more in touch with the human body.

Health
As a healthcare provider, you must work especially hard to maintain your own health. Not only are you an example to clients and friends, but your health is at greater risk than most people. It’s at greater risk because of the physical stress you put on your body, particularly your upper body, and because you deal with clients who are often ill and sometimes contagious, though they rarely admit it. So your immune system needs to be stronger than most people’s.
According to clinical studies conducted by Tiffany Field at the Touch Research Institute, massage strengthens the immune system when it is received at least twice a week for thirty minutes. With more frequent massage, it is likely that the immune system will be strengthened even more. Self-massage is one way to strengthen your immune system as often as you like.

Mood
As a massage therapist your mood needs to be better than most. You often see people at their worst, under stress from illness or injury. They’re likely to be depressed and that may negatively affect your spirit. According to clinical studies, again, conducted by Tiffany Field at the Touch Research Institute, massage reduces stress, anxiety, and depression when it is received at least twice a week for thirty minutes. Thus, massage is likely to improve your mood. With more frequent massage it is likely that your mood will improve even more. Self-massage is an easy way to boost your mood as often as needed.

Muscle Soreness
Everyone gets sore muscles but, as an athlete, your muscles get sorer than most because of their continual use. In seeking to relieve your client’s muscle pain and soreness you often take on muscle soreness. As you know, massage is an effective way to treat sore stiff muscles. With self-massage, you can relieve sore stiff muscles easily, anytime you need to.

Injuries
As a massage therapist, you’re subject to injuries at a rate similar to that of other endurance athletes. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way to prevent those injuries or to at least catch them when they’re small? Self-massage is an effective way to do just that. Not only will it help you recover more quickly after a hard day of massaging others; working on your own body forces you to focus your attention on small problems before they become large ones. You will use your own hands to improve circulation and stretch your own muscle fiber so that you will be less prone to injury.

Immediacy
Other important features of self-massage are immediacy, accessibility, and convenience. Like anyone else, massage therapists can’t always get to another practitioner when they need a massage. Time, money, location, and practitioner availability may all be limiting factors. Practice self-massage and these problems disappear. Of course, it is a good idea to schedule a weekly session with a colleague, and if you could do it daily that would be better still. But most practitioners are lucky if they exchange massages with a colleague more than once a month.

Self-Knowledge
Everyone needs to know their own body. Athletes who depend more on their bodies have a greater need than most people. With self-massage, you are likely to gain a better understanding of your own body, its strengths and its weaknesses. Self-massage is a form of self exploration. Among other benefits, knowledge of your body will enable you to better control your energy level and your ability to relax.

Special Skills
As a massage therapist, you possess special knowledge and experience that make self-massage even more beneficial for you than it is in the hands of the general public. You have a knowledge of anatomy that most people don’t possess. You have a highly developed sense of touch. You are comfortable with massage, its theories and ideas, and you believe in its efficacy. You know the techniques and have been trained to feel the human body and understand what it is telling you. Because you know the language of medicine, you are better able to consult with other medical professionals when needed. In your hands, self-massage truly is massage therapy.

Performance
With improved health and mood, and with fewer injuries, is there any doubt that your performance as a massage therapist will be better? If these were the only benefits of self-massage, they would be sufficient reason to practice it regularly. But there are more, so many more.

EXCLUSIVE BENEFITS
The aforementioned benefits of self-massage apply to everyone, although they’re arguably more relevant to practitioners. Improved health and mood, reduced muscle pain and soreness, injury prevention, improved energy and physical performance are all benefits that everyone, not just massage therapists, can enjoy.
The following benefits of self-massage apply almost exclusively to practitioners. They involve using your body as a canvas to help perfect your practice, developing a better understanding of the differences between assisted massage and self-massage, preventing burnout, teaching self-massage to your clients, and, minimizing overuse injuries suffered as a result of practicing massage therapy.

Self-Experimentation
While helping you feel better, self-massage gives you an opportunity to hone your skills and develop new routines to help your clients. By using your body as an experimental canvas, you can try new techniques. You’ll get new inspiration and ideas by using yourself as a test model, and if they make you feel good, they will make your clients feel good. Self-experimentation is good practice, and one of the bases of homeopathic medicine. Wouldn’t it be just if more healthcare professionals experienced the effects of receiving the therapies, medicines, and treatments they provide, and often inflict on, others?

Teaching It
You may be surprised by how much you will benefit from teaching self-massage to your clients. While not everyone is a candidate, some clients will want to learn self-massage. Practicing self-massage will help you teach them to effectively use it.
Teaching clients the basics of self-massage will extend your reach beyond your office and into the homes of your clients. By empowering them, you will become a more effective practitioner. Self-massage lets you become a co-creator with your clients and will give them a greater appreciation of all you bring to the table.
Taking five to ten minutes at the end of a session to teach an interested client a few strokes that he or she can use to feel better at home will be appreciated. While the benefits of self-massage are not age dependent, you may find that self-massage is of greater benefit to your older clients. It’s been observed that older people are less likely to be touched by another person.
Just as you may give your clients stretching and strengthening exercises to practice at home, you may give them self-massage exercises. Through practicing self-massage yourself, you will be better able to tailor those exercises to your clients’ needs and abilities, and you will be better able to design your massage sessions to cover what self-massage cannot.
Some massage therapists worry that teaching self-massage will hurt their practice by reducing their clients’ need for massage therapy. While that may be true; it may also improve their practice by allowing them to concentrate on what their clients cannot do for themselves. By so doing they will be putting their good where it will do the most.

The Toothbrush
The relationship between massage therapy and self-massage may be compared to that between dentistry and home brushing. It wasn’t until after World War II that most Americans began regularly brushing their teeth. During the war, soldiers were required to brush, and they continued the practice after they left the service. At the time, some dentists feared that brushing would hurt the practice of dentistry. In fact, home care has helped the practice of dentistry by making Americans more aware of oral hygiene and the importance of good dental care. As a result, dentistry has flourished, and the American mouth has never been healthier.
While self-care is an important part of dental care, dentistry is more than that. And while self-care is an important part of massage, massage therapy is more than that. If it were not, there would be no sense in practicing massage therapy; just as there would be no sense in practicing dentistry if it could all be done with a toothbrush. By forming a collaborative relationship with patients, dentists have prospered as has the health of their patients’ mouths. Dentists have generally encouraged their clientele to become responsible for their own healthcare. Contrast this behavior with that of medical doctors, who have generally encouraged their patients to become dependent on drugs and surgery to cure their health problems. Is it any wonder that we’re facing a healthcare crisis in this country?

Important Differences
There is value in understanding the significant differences between massage therapy and self-massage. Practicing self-massage will show you first hand what they are. It will allow you to identify the unique benefits you can bring to clients. Practicing self-massage will help you understand how you can better treat your client’s issues in collaboration with your clients.
Practicing self-massage will not only show you what self-massage can effectively be used for; it also reveals what self-massage cannot be used for. For example, practicing self-massage may show you that it’s not effective for deep tissue work, nor is it a particularly effective way to relax. Practicing self-massage may demonstrate the disadvantages of working on yourself and highlight the benefits of a collaborative relationship with a skilled professional. You may also learn how ineffective self-massage is for dealing with certain injuries and illnesses.

Burnout
Self-massage may help prevent you from burning out. The burnout rate is believed to be high among massage therapists, although there is no reliable measure of how high. According to massagetherapycareers.com, more than 50,000 massage therapists leave the profession annually.
Burnout is a severe mental, physical, or emotional fatigue usually caused by stress. Self-massage may reduce the likelihood of burnout in a couple of ways. First, massage has been shown to reduce stress when received at least twice per week. Because stress is one of the primary causes of burnout, self-massage is an effective way to prevent it. Second, and perhaps more important, self-massage is a simple way of renewing and reinforcing through physical experience the benefits of massage and the effectiveness of massage therapy. By regularly experiencing self-massage, you’ll feel the benefits of your own hands which will remind you of the good your touch brings to your patients.

Learning It
There aren’t many things, maybe just two, a massage therapist must learn to practice self-massage. You already know the strokes, the techniques, the science, and the art of massage therapy. All you have to learn is to let your hands communicate directly with your own body. Self-massage is a self-contained empirical sensory experience. As such, it doesn’t necessarily matter what you’ve learned from text books and instructors, what matters most is how it feels to you. You know how effective your therapy is with your clients, and you believe in the power of your own hands. Now you just have to apply your touch to your own well-being.

The Sport
Marathon runners stress their lower bodies; massage therapists stress their upper bodies; shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, and hands. Because you’re on your feet all day, your lower body gets a workout as well. Given the physical demands of the practice, it’s a wonder that the average massage therapist lasts more than a year.
Most practitioners, though, want to spend their life in the profession. Thinking of yourself as an athlete will help you do that by allowing you to connect with the ideas and literature that have developed to help athletes train and stay healthy in their sports. Optimum Muscle Performance and Recovery by Edmund Burke and Serious Training for Endurance Athletes by Rob Sleamaker are two good places to start.
Massage therapists like all endurance athletes are subject to overuse injuries, also known as repetitive motion injuries. As the name implies, these injuries are the result of overusing a particular part of the body, a muscle, or a joint. Practicing massage therapy places a unique set of physical stressors on your body. Think of delivering massage as a form of exercise. Like all exercise, massage if properly performed will strengthen the muscles being stressed, but only if they are allowed to sufficiently recover. Exercise itself weakens muscles, it’s only in the period after you exercise, if your muscles are allowed to rest, that they can recover and grow stronger. This process is known as adaptation.
Most athletes know that to get stronger they must allow their muscles to recover after hard workouts. If you work with athletes, you already know that massage speeds recovery. It therefore makes sense to apply massage to your own muscles after a tough day of exercising them at work.
When applying self-massage, a practitioner should use different strokes, techniques, and intensities than those she applies to her clients, so that she does not further overuse the very muscles she is helping to recover.
Most massage therapists find self-massage especially effective on their neck, thumbs, hands, and forearms.
Most practitioners, enjoy their work and wish to continue practicing indefinitely. Most massage therapists know colleagues though, who after practicing only a few years may be physically unable to continue. By paying attention to your body’s needs you will avoid the injuries that most practitioners suffer.

For Every Body
Massage therapy is a far more effective medicine than most Americans realize. Most people are unaware of the very real benefits of massage therapy. In theory, an ill or injured person should first see the least invasive medical practitioner who is likely to resolve their problem. In some cases that person is a massage therapist. Because of consumer ignorance, health insurance bias, and a healthcare system that values cost over efficacy, they don’t. Making the public more aware of self-massage may be an effective way to introduce the medical benefits of massage therapy to the average person. Self-massage serves as a good introduction to massage therapy because it is accessible to everyone. Wider use of self-massage is likely to increase the use of professional massage therapy for medical purposes. As John F. Kennedy observed, “A high tide raises all boats in the harbor.”

In Summary
Self-massage is good for you, your practice, and your profession. Here are some of the ways you can benefit from self-massage. First, practicing self-massage will improve your health and mood. Second, it will help you prevent and treat overuse injuries. Third, practicing self-massage will decrease your likelihood of suffering burnout. Fourth, by using your body as an experimental canvas, self-massage will enable you to discover new techniques and routines to further help your clients. Fifth, teaching your clients self-massage will empower you to improve their well being beyond your physical reach. And finally, self-massage will make massage more popular and point more people toward your practice for professional medical care.