Exercise and massage have one important element in common: they both get your body in motion. And as a general rule, more motion means improved health.
Much of the media coverage on exercise seems to focus on looking better and losing weight. These are great goals, but apparently not good enough to inspire most people to exercise regularly. More important results of being active are those that occur unseen, deep within your body.
Why is movement critical to proper health? Just consider the inner workings of your body. Like a sprawling city, you’re composed of trillions of cells that all require and generate energy. When your lifestyle includes lots of physical movement, it’s similar to a well-designed city’s traffic flow—the energy of the city is kept in motion, with everybody able to get to work on time. Deliveries of life-enhancing products get to where they need to be, renovations on older structures get completed on schedule, and the industrial waste is efficiently removed. And like a well-tuned machine, we only notice how the system is working when we get stuck in traffic.
All of these internal activities require a constant state of motion. Even while you sleep your body is hard at work, making repairs and preparing for the coming day.
So what does massage have to do with all this? The truth is that most of us don’t make the commitment to use our bodies the way they were designed to be used. Massage is a great way to put a little motion in your life without even breaking a sweat! While you relax and unwind, your body enjoys the benefits of the countless internal motions brought about by the bodywork strokes.
In Dean Juhan’s book, Job’s Body, he says, “Every part of us is continually undergoing dynamic changes, from liquid ... states to solid gel states and back again as we grow, move, learn, and age, and no single part ever changes its state without sending reverberations out to all the other parts.”
Since massage sessions are full-body treatments, you get the benefit of contributing life-enhancing motion from head to toe—without lifting a finger!
