A massage feels great, but it’s also good for you.
In Death by Stress, we discussed how chronic stress harms the body and mind. Now we’re talking about what you can do to lower your stress levels, so maybe you’ll live longer and better.
We’ll first focus on massage, because who doesn’t love one of those? We tend to think of massage as self-indulgent, but it can actually contribute to your well-being. So, you can think of it as therapy, not just a gift to yourself, and that’s about all the justification you would ever need.
If you’ve never had one, here’s the basics. Massage is a treatment in which a therapist manipulates muscle and soft tissues, and that can be with light stroking, with deep pressure, or somewhere in between. There are lots of different types of massage, but for our purposes we’re focused on Swedish Massage. This is a gentle form where the therapist uses long strokes and deep circular movements to promote relaxation and stress reduction.
