Relax & Heal With Gary

Massage and Bodywork as therapy

Let me tell you straight up that not all LMT’s do therapeutic or medical bodywork. While all massage has a therapeutic value, not all massage is medical therapy.

First of all Bodywork is a term for massage Therapy more commonly used by those in my profession. It tends to approach illness or injury to the body more like a mechanic. I can already hear my peers cringing at this definition. But bodywork is more along the lines of restorative work, helping the body to rebalance itself and heal as opposed to the soothing and more relaxing oriented work commonly referred to as spa massage.

Now,. Therapeutic massage or body work on the whole body but is more often site work. In other words it works specific areas towards a given result. But the body being what it is does not mean that you work where the pain or problem is. Often times bodywork means you are taking down patterns of knots and sticky places that lead up to the pain or problem. Problems come from the body trying to adapt to injury, stress, and toxins.

Part of doing bodywork is understanding what is going on. For example, I have found in my practice that as a rule back pain starts in the legs. Tired legs tighten in abnormal patterns and blocks fluid flow which in turn makes the legs more tired. They over engage the hips in the process of moving and standing. When it gets tired it asks the back for help, and so on. By Improving the circulation and relaxing the muscles in the legs allows the back pain to ease. Doing specific deep tissue work on already sore overworked back muscles is akin to kicking your car for running out of gas.

The whole idea of effective medical massage is to assist the body in its normal process to treat the problem not just the symptoms.

So stand up straight, take a deep breath, a tall glass of water and get a massage for what ails ya.

About the Author

Gary Gammon is a 1999 graduate of Florida College of Natural Health, in Altamonte Springs, Fl. For Several years he worked with a variety of physicians, from Medical Doctors, to Chiropractic physicians, to Osteopathic Physicians, Neurologist's and those specializing in pain management. His practice is based in St. Cloud Florida, but serves the Greater Orlando area.  Website: http://www.bbcfl.com

This entry was posted on Monday, August 9th, 2010 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Body Massage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.