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Four Things You Need to Know
If you never had a massage, this next statement is for your encouragement: consider the need for one. Yes, I am talking to you. You need one. Treat yourself! But before you get your first massage, there are some misconceptions and misunderstandings you may have or have heard that I am going to clear up for you.
Deep Tissue vs. Deep Pressure
Most first-time massage clients, and even some seasoned ones, have a common misconception about what deep tissue is. But before I tell you what it is, I’ll lay the foundation by stating what it isn’t. Deep pressure. Deep tissue has little or nothing to do with deep pressure.
This massage-type specifically addresses the deepest layers of muscle tissue in a particular area of the body. To do that, it’s necessary to “warm up” and loosen the superficial, then middle layers of muscle. This could include working out knots, releasing tension, or “kneading” the muscles to increase blood flow. The therapist does this until the skin flushes pink with the extra blood flow, and the muscle tissue is soft and pliable.
Every massage starts out with light pressure, then increases as the muscle tissue warms up. The pressure necessary to do this generally doesn’t go beyond a medium or medium-firm, depending on how dense the muscles are.
Once the muscle tissue is well-worked, you can cut through it like butter to reach the deeper muscles. Depending on the Massage Therapist and area of the body, hands, forearms, or elbows can be used for this. True deep tissue sessions last from 90 minutes to two or more hours, for one area of the body! Depending upon the muscle tissue and how tense or relaxed it is, warm-up can be anywhere from 25-45 minutes.
Most spas cater to the idea that deep tissue equals deep pressure. Most to all offer that massage technique, even though there’s no way for any client to actually receive a true deep tissue in the usual 50-80 minute massage appointment times. If you are the person that prefers a lot of pressure, then it would work to ask for that. If you have tension or pain deep in your muscle tissue, and you are actually looking for a deep tissue massage, then you will need to clarify and spell it out to the Massage Therapist what you mean by deep tissue. Otherwise they will give you lots of pressure.
Pain vs. Effectiveness
For some, it may come as a shock that pain does not equal effectiveness. I have heard the mantra from a multitude of clients that “the more it hurts, the more good it’s doing”. Nothing could be further from the truth. In general, massage should not hurt at all. A couple of massage techniques (called modalities) have some exceptions.
Trigger Point Therapy is one of them. This modality uses focused, static pressure directly on individual knots in the muscle. According to the preferences of the client, the highest level on the pain/discomfort scale beneficial to go is up to the “good hurt”. Any further than that passes the threshold of being therapeutic and can cause harm to the muscle or surrounding tissue.
Pain is the body’s way of letting you know it has been or is being damaged in some way. To push through the pain and ensuing reflexive response of muscle tensing in hopes of gaining better results quicker, is counterproductive. The body’s healing process cannot be rushed. Relax and let your body relax too.
Poor fit vs. Poor experience
One thing to keep in mind before and during any appointment with a massage therapist is that their personality, technique, and style may or may not be a good fit for everyone. Realizing the difference between there being a poor fit between client and therapist and a poor experience is important.
A poor fit means that there was nothing wrong with the therapist’s professionalism, skills, or effort to meet your expectations and adapt to your needs. Yet their style, personality or technique wasn’t what you were looking for. Think of it as shopping for “your” therapist. Sometimes you strike gold on the first try, other times you keep bouncing from one therapist to another to find the right one.
A poor experience is truly a lack of professionalism, deficiency of skills, and/or the inability or unwillingness to follow your requests or make adaptions. There have been times I have seen clients give therapists bad reviews for what they viewed as a terrible experience, due to the therapist not giving them the kind of massage they wanted.
I am saddened to see these, as it makes the therapist sound bad or incompetent, when all it had been was that therapist wasn’t the right one for that particular person, but they are perfect for someone else. It benefits both the client and the therapist to know the difference between the wrong therapist and a bad therapist.
Communicating vs. Demanding
One trend I have noticed with new or “rookie” clients is their tendency to think that any form of negative feedback during the session is imposing or being pushy and demanding. This is not the case! Don’t feel like the therapist is in complete control of the session and you have no say. Please, speak up. Let the massage therapist know about pain, pressure, preference, or anything you don’t like during the appointment. Trust me, the therapist will be eternally grateful that you are a communicator!
It gets tiresome to have to ask endless questions to make sure the session is going well, especially for modalities where it calls for potentially going up to that “good hurt” level.
You have all rights, privileges, and control over your own body. Granting us the privilege to massage you only extends as far as it’s therapeutic FOR YOU. If you don’t like something, or the pressure is too much or too little, if anything makes you uncomfortable, or you want a different technique; please, say so! It’s not imposing or pushy.
The only time that any massage therapist would feel like the client was demanding was if they were insisting on a pressure or modality that the therapist informed the client before the session that they did not do; or within a modality that the therapist practices, were trying to tell them how to do it and micromanage the entire session. Those clients are sparsely sprinkled here and there. For the majority of people, even if you feel like you are being demanding during a massage, you probably aren’t communicating enough!
Summary of Your First Massage
In the event of your first massage, consider going for a general relaxation Swedish massage first to get acquainted with the experience. If the massage feels good, it is good. If you don’t think the therapist is the one for you, keep shopping or give him or her another chance. Both are the correct answer and it’s up to you. If you don’t like something, say something. And above all, remember to relax and let your stress go. That’s what it’s all about.
For an official overview and links to more information about massage visit https://nccih.nih.gov/health/massage/massageintroduction.htm.
To read more of my articles on the topic of Physical Health, go to my page at https://www.thoughtspirations.com/physical-health/.
