Last stretch towards Wellness - Phase 3 of a Journey To Wellness

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Tuesday, 06 August 2024

Written by Agata Dudo

4 Phases of Care is a plan showcasing the wellness path that we utilise at Fulham Massage & Wellness to help our clients reach their optimal health goals. Most clients enter our care with a specific outcome in mind. For many, it's pain, tension or stress relief. 

Phase 1 focuses on relieving these symptoms and creating fantastic temporary results in the body. Phase 2 aims to dig a little deeper to find the root causes of the symptoms, correct posture, improve the body's biomechanics and even up imbalances that lead to most injuries or muscular conditions. This phase ensures we minimise the risk of the problem from coming back. Phase 3 is where we learn how to apply it in a real world, outside of the treatment room by increasing muscle strength.

Phase 3 is called the Supportive Phase and is all about creating muscle and body resilience. All these optimal changes created in Phase 1 and 2 (corrective changes as well as renewed neuromuscular response and constructive muscle memory) are great, but the real test is whether these changes can be sustained in your lifestyle. By completing this Phase, we can review if the body can confidently function with this new optimal muscle condition in the big bad world! Sitting at the desk, playing with kids, commuting to work, and participating in physical activities are all a part of your daily life. Can your body serves you in these activities but also maintain its optimal condition that we worked so hard on achieving in previous treatments?

In most cases, these positive changes need a little reset every now and then to adapt to a real-life activity and build resilience. You can compare it to a scenario when trying to break a bad habit or addiction - removing the undesirable behaviour is one step but replacing it with more positive behaviours will increase the chances of long-term success in real life, especially when unexpected challenges arrive. Phase 3 is exactly that - it supports you through challenges that are waiting for your new movement and body patterns and ensures that you can apply all the new positive habits in your old life in order to minimise the risk of injuries, pains, energy loss and decline in wellness. 

Your Phase 3 treatments are designed to cement the changes, and re-check how your new movement patterns or posture are behaving outside of the treatment room, with a longer gap between the sessions. Most clients need 1 treatment per month for a couple of months in order to achieve these results.

Some remedial therapists also call the treatments in this phase as "body rebooting treatments". We want to reinforce how the body should move and feel in order to utilise the best energy, prevent the symptoms from coming back and support it whilst it builds the strength necessary to complete all your daily activities in the correct way without jeopardising the results achieved already. This is a very important phase and clients who choose to complete this phase can also start experiencing other benefits of massage therapy. Now that you move more efficiently and optimally, you should be feeling more energetic as your energy isn't spent on unnecessary processes or compensation movements. You should feel like it's easier to move, have more spring in your step, feel stronger and more confident, have a better awareness of what feels tight, and notice a significant improvement in your overall body image. Just wait for those compliments coming your way😊!

So what exactly does it mean in real-life scenario?

Here is an example of the progress made throughout phases of care for someone with a sedentary lifestyle with long hours at the desk.

Possible symptoms: Shoulder/back/neck pain, muscle tightness, chronic headaches

Phase 1: resolve the symptom by helping shortened muscles to relax and reteach neuromuscular response (teach muscle when to contract and when to relax), flash out any acidity that causes the pain and increase the oxygen flow into the tissues which helps to keep the area healthy. We are competing against negative muscle memory of being tense and contracted but gradually changing tissue’s job description back into what it’s supposed to be – relaxed at rest.

Phase 2: Now that the pain is no longer there or greatly decreased, we can look at what caused the symptoms. It’s often related to muscle imbalance (one side working harder than another – perhaps your screen is slightly to one side and causes shortening of muscles?), postural problems (being hunched, head too close to the screen, squirted eyes when focusing on work, etc), biomechanical issues (using wrong muscles, having compensations, repetitive strains, holding patterns, etc). Identifying and rectifying these problems is the key to breaking a pain cycle and stopping the symptoms from coming back every few months. It’s your best chance to put the issue to sleep once and for all. 

Phase 3: Now that we manage to correct the posture, even up imbalance, resolve biomechanical issues and all the symptoms are gone, we want to see how your body is sustaining these changes without our intervention. You still have the same job, a similar lifestyle, perhaps you even learned how to make some good ergonomic improvements in your sitting position and maintain good posture. We want to review it once a month to see if the new muscle pattern, new muscle memory, or better postural patterns – will they stay? Are your muscles strong enough to sustain these changes and carry on towards optimal health rather than revert back? Your once a month, supportive treatment, aims to re-enforce the changes and check on the progress.

Supportive Phase 3 is also a great transition from a reactive to a proactive way of looking at your health. Upon completion, you may not need the treatments as much, but many of our clients choose to carry on into Phase 4 in order to build strength, stamina, balance and enter the world of physical and mental enhancement.

If you require any further information or would like to see how we can help you, please don't hesitate to contact us on 02037949760 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.