Six benefits of body massage

Do you feel like you're carrying the world's burdens on your shoulders? Enjoy a relaxing, touching experience. Place your trust and your body in the loving hands of a trained professional massage therapist.

Professional, therapeutic massage is a healing art, not a sexual technique.

Massage alleviates the effects of stress you often aren't even aware of. Large muscle knots create pockets of tension throughout your body, blocking vital energy, reducing circulation and glandular function. Through massage, your body gets the healthy attention it deserves without pills or drugs.

1. Circulation: Massage accelerates blood flow throughout your body, without straining your heat, bringing more nutrients and oxygen to organs and muscles. It helps your body restore itself, rebuild tissue, and you enjoy a more relaxed, comfortable feeling.
   
   
2. Organs: Massage soothes nerves to your organs, which causes related blood vessels to dilate increasing blood flow for healing or more efficient function. Most internal organs are supplied by nerves, which branch at the spinal cord.
   
   Also meridian lines have been mapped containing a non-cellular liquid not fully understood but Chinese have long recognised their importance as "energy" flow.
   
   Acupressure techniques were developed to open blockage to this energy flow. Your feet provide easy access to these meridians -- thus Reflexolgy techniques are often used as part of massage
   
   
3. Pressure or trigger points: Acupuncture points along meridians trigger the nervous system to send messages to the brain, releasing pain feeling or relieving tension-causing pain.
   
   
4. Fluid release: Lactic and carbonic acids are waste products of muscle activity, which results in fatigue, muscle soreness and even cramps. Lactic acid, the prime irritant, is formed when glycogen is burned during exercise.
   
   Massage stimulates the metabolic process to speed flow of lactic acid through the body's complex lymph system to either be released or reconverted to sugar.
   
   
5. Athletic recovery: The very successful East German track team uses massage very effectively. A study shows after exercise, a five-minute rest results in a muscle recovery rate of about 20 per cent. But five minutes of massage using fluid release techniques increases the recovery rate to 75 per cent to 100 per cent or more!
   
   
6. Skin: Oils used in massage can help the skin become more elastic and supple.