“Take good care of your body,
An Active Approach to Bodywork
When I became a certified massage therapist in 2013, I felt like I was adding a valuable skill to my professional repertoire. My background in medicine and athletics, and gravitation towards being in a ‘care’ profession, made it a perfect fit.
Through my years of study and work I have come to see value in “active” bodywork techniques that promote restoring mobility and aiding in neuromuscular re-education. I offer a more dynamic type of bodywork treatment that encourages the client’s participation. I recognize the therapeutic value of the Swedish modality, or “relaxation” massage, but my main practice revolves around physical therapy, or clinical application of massage therapy.
My approach combines multiple modalities and is complimentary to other wellness and physical therapy treatments. I customize each bodywork session, for each client, based on their specific condition, preference, my evaluation, knowledge and experience. The techniques blend and flow into one another, yet these are the names I can single out:
Dynamic Contraction Technique (DCT), Sports and Deep Tissue, Myofascial Release, Neurostructural Bodywork (NSB), Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF), Trigger Point Therapy (TPT), Active Release Technique (ART, also known as Pin and Stretch), Shiatsu and Ashiatsu, Thai bodywork, Facilitated Stretching.
To supplement use of hands/elbows/forearms and feet, I utilize vacuum cupping, precision tools, high vibration percussion therapy (Hypervolt), and TENS therapy.
After your treatment, I will instruct you on self-myofascial release techniques, and recommended stretches and exercises to help you stay in alignment between sessions. This multidisciplinary approach is much more than just a massage!
How Functional Training Relates to Bodywork
Functional Training is a concept that has been becoming more mainstream in our age. It involves exercises that train your muscles to work in a way that prepares them for daily tasks by simulating common everyday movements, or movements from your specific sport. The focus is on core stability, and balanced joint work of all muscles, or rather, myofascia. It is about training movement patterns, not isolated muscles or even muscle groups. Compare performing a squat to using the leg extension machine!
Consider the idea of applying the concepts used in functional training to massage, creating functional massage therapy. This is not an official term used by professionals, but it’s a helpful way to understand how bodywork can utilize techniques based on our knowledge of myofascial anatomy and physiology, and do so in a more dynamic fashion. Remember, the main job of our muscles is to move!
How Functional Training Relates to Bodywork
To restore the optimal sliding of the structural units of a muscle, the sarcomeres, it is imperative to create active or passive contraction-relaxation in a muscle in the course of a treatment session. For example, the muscle or a group of muscles are dynamically lengthened through the Active Release Technique, and the stretch is maximized by isolating specific muscle regions. Or think of the principle used in the PNF technique – isometrically contracting the opposing muscle group to that being stretched – while making the automatic physiological response, known as reciprocal inhibition, work for you.
When an injury has occurred, certain muscles shut down or become inhibited, forcing other muscles to become overworked. This compensation pattern can create pain or tightness. The same is true for habitual postural compensations, both static and dynamic. Side dominance, imbalance of joint stability/mobility are among other common culprits.
Identifying those less than favorable adaptations, that create misalignment in the body, is the first step to addressing them. This is when neuromuscular reeducation active techniques come into play. From physical therapy, it transitioned into athletic training world, and now bodywork.
“The greatest miracle on Earth is the human body. It is stronger and wiser than you may realize, and improving its ability to self heal is within your control.”
~ Dr Fabrizio Mancini
Dynamic Contraction Technique™ (DCT™)
It is the newest edition to my professional skill set, and I am excited to introduce more people to the profound benefits of this therapeutic method.
Dynamic Contraction Technique™ (DCT™) is a form of physical therapy that implements resistance stretching and strength training at the same time. Resistance stretching has been around since the early 1900s. The first standardized method was called Proprioceptive Nueromuscular Facilitation (PNF) and was originally used in medical rehabilitation. Dynamic Contraction Technique represents the first major shift in the genre of resistance stretching since its implementation into the wellness and fitness fields.
While excess muscle tension can reduce flexibility, create “knots” (adhesions), and decrease range of motion, thus reducing functionality, reduced tension and weakness from lack of use or traumatic injury can also cause joint alignment issues that lead to chronic pain and reduced function.
The fundamental principle of DCT is to strengthen the weak, sub-activated tissue, and open and expand the strong, dense tissue. By following this principle, it is possible to restore balance to the musculoskeletal system, changing the way we move and reducing wear and tear on the body. This is achieved primarily by using the eccentric muscle contraction – contracting a muscle while it lengthens. At the core of DCT method are the principles of biotensegrity, reciprocal inhibition, and neuromuscular re-education.
This is the most profound stretching session you will ever experience, that feels like the muscle is being stretched ”from the inside”. DCT is successfully used with physical therapy patients, professional athletes, and active people working on their maintenance alike.
Learn more about the science and application of DCT by reading, hearing the podcast, and watching the videos here
Thai Massage
Thai Massage
is one of my favorite modalities to implement. Otherwise known as Thai yoga therapy, it is the most well known Oriental Bodywork practice alongside Japanese Shiatsu.
In Thailand, it is a medical discipline, and part of a traditional medical degree program. At the same time, it is an informal art practiced throughout all levels of society. In that sense, it is a regular aspect of care and maintenance, much like exercise and personal hygiene. It is also considered to be energy work, as much as it is structural bodywork.
A Thai Massage session incorporates acupressure and yoga-like assisted stretching, body walking, and deep tissue manipulation techniques. In its traditional form, it is performed using no lotion, and is done on a mat. Or it can be offered in a more Western adapted fashion, on the massage table, and even combined with other modalities and techniques. However it is delivered, it is among the more active bodywork modalities.
Ashiatsu
Ashiatsu
is a unique approach to deep tissue massage, and translates from Japanese as ‘foot pressure’. Supported by bars to control pressure, the therapist uses the feet to walk and glide.
It is an ancient bodywork technique traditionally practiced in Asia. In China, for example, instead of being seen as a relaxation massage, Ashiatsu is considered to be an application of Chinese Traditional Clinical Medicine. It has been modified for today’s clients, and become more popular in the ‘West’, in the last two decades. You may nowadays encounter such names as body walking and back walking, deep feet bar therapy, oriental bar therapy, barefoot massage, Ashiatsu floor therapy.
With Ashiatsu, the practitioner is able to use different parts of the foot such as the ball, heel, edge and even the entire foot. The broad surface area of the feet combined with the deep sustained pressure, assisted by gravity, allows for entire muscle groups to be worked all at once. The difference between the elbow in regular deep tissue massage and Ashiatsu is that the foot is flexible and can adjust to the contours of the muscle as it moves along, whereas the elbow can’t. This modality works deep muscle layers without being painful. It feels like your body has been ironed out!
Compressions during deep tissue work – and Ashiatsu being the deepest possible massage – enhance circulation in the tissues, by creating the pumping effect in the area, initiated by the mechanical acceleration of venous blood and lymph drainage. Yet the main power of deep tissue bodywork is in reflexive therapy. By mobilizing the tissues and stimulating the mechano-receptors, via neurological pathways we activate motor and vasomotor centers. As a reflex, the body responds by muscular relaxation, decreased blood vessel tone, reduction of blood pressure, and reduction of stress hormones production.
Active Release Technique
Active Release Technique
is a soft tissue method that has been around for more than 30 years, and combines manipulations with movement, and focuses on removing the myofascial adhesions and scar tissue, that form as a result of repetitive use, or an injury. ART utilizes principles of friction and tension to ‘shear’ adhesions away from muscles, fascia, nerves, tendons and ligaments, and thus help relieve pain and restore function.
Myofascial Trigger Point Therapy
Myofascial Trigger Point Therapy
is designed to alleviate the source of pain, local and referred, through cycles of isolated pressure and release on the “muscle knots”, or hyperirritable local areas of tightness in soft tissue, known as trigger points. They form due to repetitive mechanical stress and imbalance, overuse, direct injury, and even de-conditioning and tensing from emotional stress, i.e. just living in the 21st century!
There is increasing awareness that in their active state, they often play a role in the pain symptoms of patients with conditions ranging from frozen shoulder syndrome, plantar fasciitis, low back pain, to fibromyalgia and tension headaches, to name a few. Apart from more acute pain and neurological symptoms incurred by their active state, whether active or latent, they are also the cause of stiffness and decreased range of motion, muscle weakness, and distorted muscle movement patterns.
Hypervolt
Hypervolt
is a portable high frequency percussion massage therapy device that, at different settings, delivers between 2000 and 3200 percussions per minute. Consider it a whole-body approach tool: at lower frequencies, it soothes the nervous system, and stimulates it at higher rates of vibration! Not only is it a device that professional athletic teams use for warming up the muscles, for better performance – it accelerates post-exercise and injury recovery, relieves soreness and stiffness, and is equally welcomed by physical therapists and bodyworkers, in their practice. Vibration therapy does all this by increasing circulation, relaxing muscles, enhancing neuromuscular connection, and possibly by mimicking the effects of mild exercise, as studies show, to positively influence the muscle function and coordination.
TENS and EMS
TENS and EMS
work by delivering low-voltage electrical impulses through adhesive electrode pads attached to skin. In TENS, or Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation therapy, these impulses flood the nervous system, reducing its ability to transmit pain signals to the spinal cord and brain, and also stimulate the body to produce endorphins – the natural pain relievers. TENS therapy can be used to treat both chronic and acute pain, and when used over time, aided by other therapeutic methods, has been shown to gradually retrain damaged nerves and decrease inflammation, resulting in rehabilitative effects. EMS, or Electrical Muscle Stimulation, stimulates the muscles and assists in their strengthening, recovering, and conditioning, and is used in treating athletic injuries and muscle spasms.
Sports & Deep Tissue
Sports & Deep Tissue
are modalities that stand in opposition to relaxation, lighter, Swedish massage. I do not see Sports Massage as a bodywork modality in its own right, but rather a form of treatment combining all the techniques and methods discussed on this page. It is an active approach to sports injury prevention, recovery and rehabilitation, enhanced performance, that takes into consideration the nature of a particular physical activity. And it is not for athletes only! Sports and Deep Tissue effectively address the imbalances in the body that develop post-injury, or overuse due to repetitive nature of daily activities.
Medical Cupping
is an ancient form of alternative medicine, where vacuum inside the cups creates suction (negative pressure), to stretch underlying tissue and increase the local blood flow, facilitating flushing metabolic waste products, and ease myofascial tension. Besides this mechanical effect, cupping is a form of autohemotherapy: rupturing of capillaries under suction, it activates the physiological cascade, that brings about the anti-inflamatory, antioxidant, and neuromodulatory (restoring nervous system function) effects, that can account for many of this therapy’s local and systemic health benefits. Vacuum cupping therapy may not be a cure-all, but it has sure proven to work on many levels and systems of the organism, for thousands of years!
Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM)
is a technique that uses a precision tool, to locate and treat myofascial restrictions that manifest in dysfunction and pain. The technique itself is a modern evolution from Traditional Chinese Medicine called Gua Sha, which, however, was not used to treat musculoskeletal conditions directly but was traditionally applied along meridians to move the bad chi (energy) out through the skin. Like with vacuum cupping, the introduction of controlled microtrauma causes the stimulation of a local inflammatory response, which initiates re-absorption of excessive scar tissue and facilitates a cascade of healing activities resulting in remodeling of affected soft tissue structures.
Eastern Philosophy and Western Techniques
You may have more affinity for the Eastern philosophy of freed energy flow through the meridians, enhanced by healing bodywork practice, allowing the body to heal itself naturally. Or you may gravitate towards a more conventional Western view of bodywork as manual techniques for relaxing muscles and loosening the connective tissue, to increase flexibility and range of motion. No matter how you look at it, simply put, massage therapy is an effective treatment for reducing stress, pain and muscle tension, and helps balance your organism – on all levels – physical, emotional, energetic.
Is this approach right for you?
If you are looking for
If you are open to experiencing the benefit of new techniques and modalities…
If you are willing to work as a team, and learn self-help techniques, to fast-forward our progress…
Then I will do my part and diligently work towards maintaining and restoring your body to its highest functioning state.
Is this approach right for you?
If you are looking for
If you are open to experiencing the benefit of new techniques and modalities…
If you are willing to work as a team, and learn self-help techniques, to fast-forward our progress…
Then I will do my part and diligently work towards maintaining and restoring your body to its highest functioning state.