Swedish Massage for Your Pain

Swedish massage is a massage style that was first developed in Scandinavia nearly 200 years ago by Pehr Henrik Ling who learned many of the basics that he would later develop into Swedish massage from a Chinese fellow named Ming with whom he sailed for four years.

After returning to Copenhagen, he developed these ideas still further into something similar to what we recognize as Swedish massage which was first brought to the USA in the 1850s.

From just a small handful of Swedish massage clinics in Boston and Washington, they can now be found in almost every city and town throughout the USA (and throughout most other western countries as well). Hence, Swedish massage is the most popular form of massage in the USA and if using this type of massage to bring pain relief sounds like something you might work for you, it should be relatively easy to find a local practitioner.

The basic concept of Swedish massage is that it focuses on long, gliding strokes of the masseuse hands across your skin, with some ‘kneading’ (the exact same action as if you were making bread) allied to the application of friction techniques to some of the most obvious muscle groups.

Most commonly, the majority of strokes go towards the heart, following the blood flow because there is an emphasis on stimulating blood flow through the soft bodily tissues. This form of massage can be practiced in a relatively vigorous and not so gentle manner or it can be very soft and gentle on the other hand, depending upon circumstances and requirements.
Swedish massage is commonly used to prompt a wide range of benefits including all of the following:

• It helps relax muscles. Hence, if you have a muscle pain caused by stress, tension or even a slight muscle damage, massage can loosen the muscle and thereby reduce the pain and sometimes also the swelling too.

• It can help to reduce the pain from other bodily damage such as fractures, sprains, sciatica, stiff joints and strains. This applies equally to people who have suffered injuries and to those who are simply feeling the adverse effects of getting older!

• There are certain substances in the body that naturally slow down the process of recovering from muscle strains, sprains and damage. Because Swedish massage is effective for removing uric and lactic acid (and other waste products) from your muscles, it helps to speed up the recovery process, meaning that any pain you are suffering will disappear more quickly.

• As Swedish massage can be used to help to stretch muscles, tendons and ligaments, it helps to prevent the kind of damage that might cause pain at a later date. In effect, Swedish massage is not only curative but preventative too.

• In general terms, Swedish massage helps to stimulate improved blood circulation, relaxes the nerves and stimulates the nervous system at one and the same time. It also helps to reduce stress and tension which can be a cause of physical pain as tensed up muscles are far more likely to suffer damage or injury the muscles that are loose and flexible.

The bottom line is that 95% people who undergo Swedish massage leave their session feeling markedly better in many, many different ways, both physically and psychologically.

The benefits of Swedish massage for anyone who is suffering any of the particular types of pain highlighted in the previous list are undeniable. If therefore you are suffering muscle, joint or sprain pains, trying Swedish massage before resorting to analgesic painkillers has got to make sense.

In order to find a local Swedish massage center, the most effective tool to use is Google maps to find what you’re looking for (as it is with pretty much anything nowadays).

In this case, a search for ‘Swedish massage Washington’ turns up quite a few results although I have no doubt that searching for something a little less specific and narrowly defined (for example ‘massage’) would probably generate considerably more results, but they would be considerably less well targeted:

On the right you have your map whilst on the left there is a list of all the businesses highlighted on the map. Run a similar search for your own local town or city and you should see broadly similar results.