3 Ways Massage Therapy Can Help You Manage Stress
If you regularly feel extremely stressed out, you need to find ways to manage and reduce your stress. Being excessively stressed out is not good for your health in the short or long term. Here are three ways that therapeutic massage therapy can help you manage your stress.
#1 Lower Your Heart Rate
When you are stressed out all the time, you probably do not have the lowest heart rate. Stress can lead your heart and your body to always be on the move, and doesn't give your body a chance to relax.
When you get a massage, muscles that are contracted are able to relax. When these muscles are relaxed instead of contracted, venous blood is pushed to your heart. This helps reduce the strain on your heart to get the blood that it needs and thus helps lower your overall heart rate.
Additionally, when you are stressed out, your body is relying primarily on your fight-or-flight response, which is controlled by your sympathetic nervous system. This causes your heart rate to increase and can cause your blood vessels to become narrower. When you get a massage, your nervous system is able to move from relying on the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. Your parasympathetic system is activated when your body is at rest and is not feeling threatened. It allows your heart rate to decree and helps to dilate your blood vessels.
#2 Increase The Production Of Endorphins
When you are stressed out, your body produces hormones that match your mental state of being, which can keep you in the cycle of feeling, being and acting stressed out. When you get a massage, you can help break the cycle of stress hormones being produced in your body.
One of the primary techniques used by massage therapists is called effleurage. This consists of the massage therapist gliding their hands over your skin. This technique has a calming effect on your body and your nerves and helps your body to start producing endorphins.
Endorphins are the chemical that your bodies produce when you are feeling happy. Getting a massage will release these happy chemicals into your body, which will fight against the stress hormones in your body, and should help you win the battle, at least for the day, over the stress that wants to take over your body.
#3 Relieve Physical Pain From Stress
Finally, stress is not just a mental state of mind. Feeling stressed out can actually cause your body to feel physical pain as well. Think about the last time you felt really stressed out, did any particular area or muscle feel tight? That is stress physically manifesting inside of your body.
When you get a massage (from professionals such as those from Haring Marc DC), your massage therapist will focus on working out knots that are in your muscles. This will help take away some of the physical pain that you experience from being stressed out.
Massage therapy is one tool that you can use to help you manage stress. It can be an effective way to reduce your stress and help you start to get it under control.