Techniques of Massage - General to Specific

When you talk about techniques of massage, you need to understand one important principle, that is crucial for any massage technique or massage style. This is as important as the principle that every massage should always be seen as a full body massage

Always work from general to specific techniques.

Why is that?

You might think somebody comes with you with a shoulder problem and start working on it.

But you forget two important things:

1. You have to see and treat this problem as a whole body problem.

You need to check any underlying problems of the shoulder thing in any other body part and possible find areas that need to be treated first before you can successfully treat the shoulder.

Here I'm not just talking about the neck or chest area. It could be the hip, the knees, the ankles and feet - pretty much everything. So keep that in mind.

2. But what is more important is that any techniques of massage should "HELP THE BODY TO HELP ITSELF" (Sorry for saying this loud but I just wanted to make sure that everybody can hear me on that one).

Our body is the best therapist and it sometimes only takes a little support to achieve significant changes.

You can find these principles in Western massages like Rolfing or in Eastern massage styles like Acupointmassage (which is very well taught in Europe)

Ok so what does this mean for your work?

Well be patient and start with a general treatment, not even so much thinking about the specific problem, but rather trying to encourage the body to help itself.

The Rolfer will start his first of ten sessions always with the soles of the feet and the Chinese massage therapist (at least in school of thought I have learned) will always start with a general transfer of Chi either from Yin to Yang or Yang to Yin (which means either a treatment of the front of the body or the back of the body)

Even in Swedish massage it is advisable to just do a normal full body massage, without putting to much attention to the problem area first and see what is happening.

The problem might be solved just with a general treatment, without even having to deal with the problem area specifically.

Why is that better?

First of all because it utilizes the incredible intelligence of the body (which is far more than you can have as a therapist), plus it deals with the whole body, plus many problems actually don't like to be touched, especially when they are acute.

There will be too much yang energy or inflammation there, so you would just turn it into a chronic thing, just jamming on it.

If your client is okay with it I would always just do a general treatment, with techniques of massage that are not very specific and then see after 2 days how it goes.

You can have the best techniques of massage, but unless you understand the basic principles of how the body works, you will not be very successful applying them.

Check out my massage video blog to watch some good techniques of massage