Image Credit: MB Consulting
By time I greet a client to lead her to the treatment room, she’s already excited to get the massage started. She’s exhausted, fatigued, stressed to the max, achy, sore – you name it. She looks to the massage for recovery.
I think there may even be more to it. Clients want to be acknowledged, seen, and heard. They put so much effort into satisfying the demands of others that they almost forget their own needs. If you’re like my clients, you’ve spent much too much time and energy engaged in must-do activities and nowhere near enough engaged in “undo” activities. Undo the stress, undo the tension, and just melt into “being-ness.”
Stress is a fact of life. Some stress is beneficial while too much is destructive, as I’ve discussed in What Is Stress and What Can You Do About It? In this series on creating a stress relief toolkit, I’ll discuss a variety of angles to attack the stressors that don’t serve you. Let’s dive in!
So let’s talk about time and health. These two things have no price. Ironically, things with a price of zero are either seen as worthless or priceless. There can be no in between.
You can’t have 25 hours in a day. We all have to do what we have to do within the hours we’re given. Carving time out of your schedule on a regular basis for stress relief is important, because unmanaged stress impairs health in a number of ways.
According to the American Institute of Stress, there are 50 common signs and symptoms of stress (https://www.stress.org/stress-effects). Among these signs and symptoms are frequent headaches, neck pain, back pain, muscle spasms, frequent colds and infections, constipation, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
Here’s a breathtaking secret:
Massage therapy can improve those symptoms Four Ways Massage Relieves Stress.
The American Massage Therapy Association recommends massage on a monthly basis for optimal health. There are 720 hours in a month.
How many hours do we spend stressed out? Muddling through traffic, confronting problems, putting out fires at work, getting gum out of our kid’s hair? The list is endless.
So, I encourage you to take full ownership and control over at least one hour every month and make it sacred. One hour is 0.139% of a month.
Make it non-negotiable. Make it about you and no one else. Make it about evicting all that freeloading tension from your muscles.
Get that well-deserved massage. Massage is a very “healthy addiction” that should have a place in your routine self-care.
TIP The best way to find a skilled therapist is by referral from someone whose reasons for getting a massage are similar to yours. Try out a massage therapist for 50 minutes. Then, once you find a therapist whose technique, pressure, and attentiveness match what you’re looking for, book 75 minutes for your subsequent appointments. Fifty minutes is not long enough to give adequate attention to multiple problem areas, so 75 is often the sweet spot.
I’ll cover more in a future post – Client Education Series: 9 Things to Check When Choosing a Massage Therapist. To stay posted, leave a comment below.
Coming soon – 3 tiers of Massage Memberships. Whether you want a monthly massage for 6 months or 12 months, or a massage every other month, I’m cooking up something special just for you. Send me an email to get added to my email list, so you’ll be the first to know!
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