Massage Your Mind

Many people associate massage with improving one’s physical health. But did you know that having regular massage therapy can have a huge benefit on your mental wellbeing, too? 

 

With lifestyles becoming more and more pressured, work, family commitments, and financial pressures can easily lead to a build-up of stress, and over time if not managed can have a negative impact on our mental wellbeing. 

 

Stress, anxiety, and depression have an adverse effect on our health, and vice versa. 

 

Stress is a trauma to the body, and if left unchecked it can affect your physical health as well as your mental wellbeing. 

 

Physical pain such as headaches, joint pain, muscular soreness and fatigue can be exasperated by stress and can significantly improve and even diminish once stress levels are reduced. 

 

So how can massage help? 

 

Our mind functions on a delicate balance of hormones: dopamine, the ‘happy hormone’, serotonin, the calming hormone, cortisol, the ‘stress hormone,’ and adrenaline, the ‘fight and flight hormone’. 

 

During times of stress our cortisol levels elevate which can lead to physical symptoms of pain, disruption in sleep, anxiety and depression. 

 

Massage therapy not only gives you the time to relax, it increases circulation, releases muscle tension, lowers heart and respiratory rate, encourages relaxation by reducing the stress hormone cortisol and increasing our happy hormone serotonin. 

 

Is sports massage relaxing? 

 

Yes! Sports massage doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. In fact, using a combination of long slow massage strokes working into the myofascial and deeper layers of tissue, sports massage helps relaxation. It’s also highly effective at resolving any muscular issues you may have.