The healing journey of massage therapy  

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Wednesday, 20 December 2023

Witten by Agata Dudo

Massage therapy is an important part of our self-care routine and often is the first port of call when pain, tension, or injuries occur. Whether you are a regular client of Fulham Massage & Wellness or perhaps you received a treatment as a gift once upon a time, you have surely experienced how beneficial massage therapy is on both your body and mind.

Are you curious to know the full potential of massage therapy and where your healing journey can take you? If so, keep reading as our therapists have put together some useful insights on the “four phases of treatment care”, so that you can define your goals, track your progress, and, most of all, keep enjoying your sessions more and more! 

1. Reactive Care

This phase typically lasts for a couple of weeks, with usually, 1 massage session per week. The focus here is pain relief and reducing symptoms of inflammation. The therapist will assess your current condition and will explain the results that can be accomplished during this phase: relief from pain, reduced inflammation, decreased spasm and muscle guarding, relaxed muscles, and improved blood circulation, which will make you feel lighter, less sensitive, and invigorated. The key to the Reactive Phase is to bring you much-needed relief and lay the foundation to reconnect the paths between your muscle and brain so that the body can restore its function. At this stage, we compete against your destructive muscle memory, and therefore your massage appointments are needed at a frequency no longer than 7 days apart. 

Your massage therapist will also monitor how you are responding to the treatment and will give you advice on what caused the issues and how to fix them, for example by sharing postural or stretching tips.

2. Corrective Care

Depending on the reaction to the previous phase, the Corrective Care lasts about 1-2 sessions. Now that pain has subsided significantly, your therapist can concentrate on making more lasting changes in your body such as improving mobility, opening up the chest, improving muscles and posture imbalances, and promoting tissue recovery. This phase feels like having more space and freedom of movement in the body, which encourages it to function at its best. We often hear from our clients that they are feeling lighter, taller, more balanced, and agile. The corrective Phase aims to solve and fix the problem (and its cause) as opposed to only patching it or temporarily relieving the symptoms. Your treatments in this phase should include a lot more advanced techniques and articulations which will make the benefits of the treatments last longer. At this time, we are changing behaviour of your tissues and program them to serve you in a constructive way.

3. Supportive Care

The frequency of this phase is 1-2 sessions, usually 2-4 weeks apart, aiming towards monthly appointments. The goal is strengthening the body, building muscle resilience to your unique lifestyle, and protecting the benefits gained in the previous two stages. The key is to deliver a treatment that achieves lasting results: your muscles have now been activated and tissues start to function at their best, however without building tissue resilience and cementing the positive changes, it’ll be easy to fall back into bad habits, especially under the pressure of stress and old movement patterns. Each session will still focus on the original symptom areas but will also operate on involving the whole body so that it can function holistically and in a better biomechanical fashion. Many of our clients notice an increase in their energy levels during this phase.

4. Proactive Care

Congratulations, you have now reached the Proactive Care phase! We call is the “Smart People Phase”! Your treatment frequency should be agreed upon between you and your therapist but usually varies between 2-4 weeks.  This phase aims to preserve the great results achieved so far. Moreover, the core goal of this phase is to facilitate the body’s natural progress in functioning optimally and developing enough resilience to cope with everyday life. Staying healthy is easier, and way more pleasant, than fixing issues from scratch and it allows the pain cycle to be broken for good. Regular wellness massage will help remove any tension build-ups, minimising the risk of suffering injuries or pain again. These treatments involve the full body and deliver effective remedial results whilst feeling amazing to receive by leaving you in a deeply relaxed state. Here are our main goals for Proactive Care:

• Prevent Pain Re-Occurrence
• Restore Optimal Muscle Function
• Enhance Physical Performance
• Elevate Work, Creativity, and Family Wellbeing
• Manage Stress
• Manage Chronic Conditions that are no longer able to go away (e.g. arthritis, chronic back pain, Parkinson's Disease, MS, fibromyalgia, old whiplash, or other old injuries, etc)
• Improve posture, body alignment, and body image
• Counterbalance Inactivity (combat 300 sitting hours a month with 1h massage!)

Now that you have a full picture, you can choose your goals and decide how far you would like to take your massage therapy! We are excited to help you no matter what you decide! Most of our clients come to us for help with pain but we believe that our job really starts when you are out of pain!

Pain is the language that your body uses to communicate that its limit has been reached and that the change is needed. To book your appointment at Fulham Massage & Wellness, please head to our website: https://www.fulham-massage.com/booking-online or call us at 02037949760. We can’t wait to see you!