Massage Therapy
Massage at CoreBalance Therapy in Flagstaff
Massage therapy a path for healing
Massage therapy has been a path for healing as long as humans have been recording health treatments, and probably even longer! However, it is only in the past couple of decades that controlled clinical trials have been conducted to determine why it is massage helps us “feel better”.
Health benefits of massage
Studies are yielding good evidence that massage can help the following conditions:
- Muscle soreness after sport activity (or after shoveling snow!)
- Alertness
- Depression
- Immune function
- Post-operative pain and anxiety
- Pain and anxiety associated with treatment for cancer
- Perception of stress
- Pain and chemical imbalance in a person with Fibromyalgia Syndrome
Massage for pain
The evidence that massage helps specific types of pain, such as low back pain, is less convincing. However, as with most of the treatments available to us for treatment of pain, massage is actually quite effective in pain treatment when combined with exercise! For this reason, at CoreBalance Therapy, we feel that incorporating massage into the physical therapy treatment plan can be very helpful in achieving your goals for recovery. The extra health benefits (listed above) are “icing on the cake”—although decreasing anxiety and stress, and improving immune function are probably also contributing to your overall progress and ability to cope with pain and limitations (see our page on Chronic Pain).
Massage treatments
The massage therapists at CoreBalance use a wide variety of techniques for a specific therapeutic effect:
- Myofascial release
- Sports-specific massage
- Acupressure, Shiatsu, trigger point release
- Abdominal massage
- Pre-natal massage
See our Staff page for more information on each of the massage therapists at CoreBalance. Talk with your physical therapist about incorporating massage in your treatment plan!