Provider Feature // Amber Jacobson of Mountain Meadow Therapeutics
By Amber Jacobson | LMT,RYT | Mountain Meadow Therapeutics
If you have ever received a professional massage before, then chances are you’ve probably, at some point, been slightly disappointed with a session and left saying “meh”. How do we prevent that from happening? How do we get the most out of each and every massage session? It’s not just luck finding a wonderful Massage Therapist. Just like a relationship, it’s communication, trust, and internal reflection both in and out of the treatment room.
One of the most important pieces to getting the most out of your session is the pre-massage intake. Prior to your message, I like to know about your life. This goes for each and every massage. It helps me learn about your current and past lifestyles, your job(s), your emotions, the struggles, activities, and how you function day to day. You don’t have to spill your entire life story on the floor (which I also appreciate,) but rather a little “Hey I’m going through this thing” allows me to know a lot more about your body, the holding patterns, and why the tension is presenting the way it is. Our bodies remember because our nervous system remembers. They remember traumas, they remember emotions, they remember the way you felt 10+ years ago when a major life event happened. The more you feel comfortable communicating the more we can assist in helping.
Through my last 6+ years in massage, I have noticed that the biggest complaint massage companies receive is about the pressure of the client’s massage after they've left. This is huge! If you want to get the most out of your session make sure to communicate in-depth where you want the pressure of the massage to be. The human mind is funny in the fact that no matter how close we are with a Massage Therapist, most of us feel bad speaking up about pressure during our sessions. I have been guilty of this myself too (oops.) Please, please, please do not be afraid to speak up if the pressure is too much or not enough during any massage session. The range is so different and dependent on the client as well as the therapist. What one Massage Therapist might view as medium, could be another Massage Therapists deep pressure. I promise it won’t offend us. I stress this to my clients because I am not one to constantly ask the whole massage “how is the pressure?” It gets annoying and redundant for both of us and takes the relaxation aspect out of it for you. The massage is yours, not mine, and we genuinely want you to be happy. I would rather refer someone to a deeper therapist than have them hate their session and be disappointed if I couldn’t provide the pressure they preferred. It’s about transparency on both ends.
Another major factor in optimizing your massage session is breath. How is your breathing day to day? Are you using your full lung capacity? Breath allows the body to relax and unwind. We can access our parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system through the breath and breath practices included in such modalities like yoga and massage. The more we practice breathing, the more we can calm our nervous system down from a fight or flight state. The sympathetic nervous system is what controls our fight or flight instinct. That instinct that cavemen used to survive, where adrenaline surges, pupils dilate, and all of the blood gets focused to our body rather than our limbs for protection mode. Our breathing speeds up and our body starts to respond as if it’s in danger. How does this relate to massage? Well, in a society of fast-paced to-do’s and a grind culture, we have conditioned ourselves to normally live in a stressed-out state producing high amounts of cortisol (a stress hormone.) We rarely allow ourselves time to sit and be still. By participating in regular breath work through massage or other means, we are balancing that fight or flight state with the rest and digest state. We start to build awareness to how we actually feel, both in physical tension, and our emotions. By focusing on your breathing in a massage session, we assist you to become more in-tune with your body awareness so you can take what we've helped you access and integrate that outside of the treatment room. You’ll not only feel more relaxed after the session, but it may open your eyes to some lifestyle changes that might be beneficial as well.
In your next massage session, I encourage you to open up in your pre-massage intake a little more, share your thoughts on the pressure if it isn’t perfect, and focus your mind on breathing instead of what is next on the list and see how your sessions change. See how you then respond to the little nuances life throws at you. I have a feeling you'll feel more connected with yourself and a sense of weight being lifted off of your shoulders. Especially with the long list of events that has and continues to transpire, we all could use a little more love and care especially to ourselves. Grant yourself that time to connect with yourself and focus on the internal rather than all the external stimuli causing us more stress, anxiety, and depression.
I hope this sheds light on how to truly optimize your massage sessions moving forward. If you’d like to get to know more about me or learn more about what I offer I’ve added my Nurture link below or you can send me an email at mountainmeadowtherapeutics@gmail.com.
Get in touch with Amber Jacobson //
Website: https://www.visitnurture.com/providers/mmt
Email: mountainmeadowtherapeutics@gmail.com
IG: @mountainmeadowtherapeutics