Massage Therapy as Part of a Wellness Program
Massage Therapy as Part of a Wellness Program
October 2022
Christian Mackin, co-founder & CEO, Massage Robotics
Wellness needs to be a holistic endeavor. Massage is one of several therapeutic modalities that can address the mind and body and open the door to a more holistic wellness regimen.
Key takeaways:
Massage is an often-unappreciated pillar in any core holistic personal wellness program.
Wellness programs span preventive, assistive, prescriptive and performance capacities.
No matter the nature or purpose of a wellness program, massage needs incorporation.
What does a well-rounded wellness program look like? For most, the core pillars include diet, exercise and sleep; however, these focus areas aren’t always enough to promote the best possible quality of life. A truly encompassing, holistic wellness program also needs to include maintenance activities like stretching, conditioning and, perhaps most importantly, massage.
Massage therapy as part of a wellness program serves several important roles in promoting optimal health and performance across all age groups, backgrounds and conditions:
Massage is often preventive: a way to limit future risk.
It can be assistive: a mode of recuperating or recovering.
It’s also prescriptive: part of a larger self-care effort.
It can even be enhancing: part of a performance regimen.
In any case, its benefits lend themselves to the body’s natural inclination toward homeostasis.
Let’s explore massage therapy as part of a wellness program and how it plays a critical role in restoring, maintaining and raising the baseline for wellness in individuals—no matter their mindset.
Preventive wellness: massage to safeguard
For many, wellness is a preventive measure. It revolves around making better choices to ensure positive future outcomes. A person might take up an active lifestyle to combat a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease, for example. There are unquantified future consequences tied to today’s actions, so many people strive to make positive wellness choices in an attempt to limit negative odds.
For those following a preventive wellness mindset, massage is crucial. Its ability to alleviate stress and tension—and their myriad physical manifestations—helps promote a healthier state of being and a higher level of homeostasis. For instance, massage might play a role in preventing stress-related hypertension, which might be a primary concern of those with a family history of heart disease.
The mindset is that of investment, which makes a person more likely to commit to regular massages and to see the cost of those massages as worthwhile, with valuable outcomes.
Assistive wellness: massage to rehabilitate
An assistive wellness mindset typically manifests after a person’s quality of life faces duress or falls below a certain level of acceptability. For instance, a person battling cancer might work to offset the detrimental effects of chemotherapy by adopting a new wellness outlook, just like someone overcoming depression might strive to make lifestyle changes that promote a better standard of wellness.
For those who ascribe to assistive wellness, massage is a tool for restoring a better standard of living. The cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy may look toward gentle massage to combat neuropathy; likewise, the depression survivor may use massage as a way to alleviate anxiety through the release of dopamine.
In these cases, massage is simply the means to an improved quality of life. The need is immediate because the condition is present, and there’s a 1:1 connection of need vs. benefit.
Prescriptive wellness: massage to maintain
Prescriptive wellness can emerge from both preventive and assistive mindsets, and it represents a conscious shift to active participation in health management. Those following a prescriptive wellness approach understand how massage fits into their holistic wellness efforts: how it supports and is supported by sleep, diet, exercise and everyday decision-making.
Another way to frame this is as “conscious participation” in wellness. Massage is a choice that’s made, and its benefits are understood in the context of total wellness. Those seeking massage in this capacity want to maintain their high quality of life and recognize the rippling benefits of massage as a way to amplify the other conscious efforts they’re taking to be well.
Anyone can align their wellness approach with a prescriptive mindset; however, there’s a higher level of education and understanding needed to link massage’s benefits to core wellness efforts.
Performance wellness: massage to improve
There comes a point when wellness jumps the line between sustainability and improvement. At this point, it becomes performance-based wellness: the means to support the mind and body at a higher level of execution. The obvious example is athletes and those who invite stress as a means of improving their resilience, endurance, fortitude and execution.
Performance wellness programs often incorporate massage in both preventive and reactive capacities. An endurance athlete may seek massage to promote better flexibility and Range of Motion (ROM) before an event. Then, post-event, they may seek massage to alleviate the tension and stress accumulated through exertion.
Massage therapy as part of a wellness program in this capacity represents a source of foundational excellence. It creates a continuum of wellness that enables all-around support.
Massage is a foundational part of wellness
No matter the mindset behind a wellness program, massage deserves recognition as a crucial facet. It has the power to help promote, maintain, recapture and improve a person’s baseline standard for wellness, with rippling effects that improve virtually any other health-focused habit or effort. Like sleep, diet and exercise, massage is a cornerstone of holistic wellness and, thus, deserves its spot in any wellness program.
Those seeking a higher standard of foundational wellness are wise to explore the benefits of massage. And, as personal wellness becomes something more and more accessible to those seeking it, it won’t be long until innovations in massage perpetuate this accessibility. Already, we see it in the mainstream availability of percussive personal massagers and at-home guides for self-myofascial release.
The next innovation? Massage robotics, as a means to drive down cost, improve quality and reduce misconceptions about massage. Robotics and other innovations stand to pave the way to a higher standard of foundational health by making massage therapy a core part of any wellness program, at any stage of a person’s journey to living their best life.
Be well.