How Massage works: Top 3 Massage Myths and Truths

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Thursday, 14 February 2019

There are hundreds of truths and myths circulating around massage therapy and its effectiveness. With so many massage places and massage therapists in the world, coming from different backgrounds and with different education or experience, it's easy to understand why many people get confused as to what is actually a truth and what is a myth. Here are our top 3 truths and myths that we believe need mentioning:

Top 3 myths:

1. No pain, no gain = if it’s not painful, it’s not doing anything

Well, this is actually a top of our myth list! It’s completely untrue.

Pain is resistance to change. Pain is what we are trying to get rid of and you can’t fight fire with fire. When under stress or in pain, the body switches to “fight or flight” mode where adrenaline (your stress hormone), kicks in.  Painful massage doesn’t relax or calm the nervous system and therefore it won’t create a positive change. Tensing up to endurea painful treatment causes more tension and defeats the purpose of actually having a massage.

Receiving a deep, firm or even very firm pressured treatment is still possible so long as your massage therapist is skilled at applying it slow enough to allow your muscles and soft tissues to melt as they sink into deeper layers.  It cannot be forced or applied too rapidly.

We are aiming to reach a therapeutic edge – the place where change is created in a safe way. It involves a satisfying level of pleasant discomfort (“good” pain) achieved when pressure is applied to a nagging area or a knot – giving a similar sense of relief when scratching an irritating itch.  .  

2. Massage can fix it in one go = no, no

Massage can relieve your symptoms in one go, but unfortunately, it mostly won’t fix it. Relief is great as it gives you a temporary break from the pain or discomfort that you are in, but it’s not likely to last more than few days. 

Months or even years of causes and tension build up such as bad posture, siting at the desk, muscle imbalance from repetitive movements (e.g. playing golf or tennis, favouring a dominant arm in a gym workout, carrying a bag on one shoulder) create muscle memory habits which are deeply rooted in our brain.

When coming for a massage, it’s very important to discuss how far we want to go with our treatments.  Remedial massage can open a can of worms – where you can feel worse before getting better. We can compare it to a process of clearing a messy garage – when you start taking things out, it becomes initially messy, before it’s organised in a better way. If we’re starting to clear the kinks in fascia tissue, release knots or creating new healthy muscle behaviour, it is very important to finish what we started. A remedial course of treatments that is started but abandoned after one session, can cause more harm than good. It needs the full course of treatments to put things back in the right order – building each time on top of what is started in a first session. Based on our experience and scientific research, the most effective treatment plan to fix the problem is called “Fix in 6”:

1 massage treatment per week for 3 consecutive weeks (no more than 7-10 days apart).It is then followed by 2-3 treatments when we can gradually start to increase the gaps to fortnightly sessions or every 3 weeks until the results last for a month. When this achieved, the client can then simply maintain the results once a month which will also prevent the problem from coming back.

3. Massage is only a hocus pocus relaxation voodoo

Yes, you can simply go to a spa for someone to rub the oil on your back, but a real therapeutic massage has heaps of science behind it. Clinical massage treatment, like the one at Fulham Massage & Wellness, is based on many scientifically proven theories.

One of the most effective benefits of massage is that it facilitates healthy movement patterns in the body by establishing new muscle memories - enabling musculoskeletal problems to be resolved (fix in six). There is also a lot of research on the physiological effects from massage on all body organs. More recent research in massage science involves the understanding of fascia. Performing massage myofascial release on the connective tissue that binds the whole body together can aid visceral wellbeing add enormously to it’s effectiveness.

All our massage therapists are educated at reputable training establishments where courses are designed around current industry developments - adapting physical techniques to the most recent research. We also recruit therapists from university and college backgrounds who complete extensive science-based programme or degree. Our therapists are required to undergo continual professional training to keep up with latest research and developmental changes. We believe Fulham Massage & Wellness treatments can be effective and feel good – even when we apply our massage in a scientific way!  

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To find out what our top 3 Massage Truths are, click here.