Massage and Relaxation Techniques for Better Health

Overall well-being is always our goal at Skyline Chiropractic. Along with your alignment treatments, we promote massage and other relaxation techniques. They help your body heal and maintain good alignment, plus these techniques are good for your mental well-being. 

Chiropractic care provides a natural relief for stress and anxiety. As we’ve discussed, being mindful of your relaxation is essential. 

There are many ways to relax. Let’s review some common techniques. 

Massage

A massage is one of the best ways to relax. A therapist is rubbing, pressing, and manipulating your skin, muscles, and tendons. 

The Mayo Clinic calls out these benefits of massage:

• Reducing stress and increasing relaxation
• Reducing pain, muscle soreness and tension
• Improving circulation, energy and alertness
• Lowering heart rate and blood pressure
• Improving immune function

A massage is not just for the spa. It’s a verified technique for improving your overall health. Studies show that kneading eases sore muscles by turning off genes associated with inflammation and turning on genes that help muscles heal.

Meditation/Mindfulness

Wikipedia defines mediation as a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear emotionally calm, and stable state.

There are many forms of meditation. The key is to breathe and focus on one thing in order to remove the “clutter” in your mind. The benefits of the focus and breathing are numerous for your body and mind. 

The effects of meditation include: lowering heart rate, oxygen consumption, breathing frequency, stress hormones, lactate levels, and sympathetic nervous system activity, along with a modest decline in blood pressure.

Aromatherapy

Along with meditation, aromatherapy is another way to improve overall well-being. It is a treatment where the extracts of plant oils, called essential oils, are breathed in through the skin or other methods. 

Aromatherapy works through the smell receptors in your nose which are activated, sending messages through your nervous system to your brain. The response from your brain can create feel-good chemicals like serotonin.

Common essential oils used include:

• Peppermint

• Lavender

• Bergamont (the citrus smell in Earl Grey tea)

• Lemongrass

• Lemon

Other essential oils can produce a relaxing effect for you. 

Essential oils are used as a part of a massage, to help to help your relaxation further. They are also often used as part of the meditation process. 

Making Time for Relaxation

The key here is to make time for relaxation. It needs to be a part of your routine. 

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Photo by alan caishan on Unsplash