In today’s fast-paced world, maintaining balance between physical health and mental wellbeing can be a challenge. Unreasonably long workdays, increasing stress, and chaotic home life have a negative effect on body and mind. Diet and exercise are certainly the pillars of health, but one of the practices that certainly gets lost in the shuffle is massage.

A luxury or treat, a normal massage treatment is an investment in future health that is well worth making. Many health professionals, including your local osteopath in Putney, often recommend incorporating massage into your self-care routine for its wide range of benefits.

Woman laying on a massage table looking relaxed

Massage Reduces Stress and Relaxes

Stress relief is perhaps the most recognised advantage of massage. It can be Swedish, deep tissue, or myofascial release, but the healing touch can lower your body’s levels of cortisol and raise endorphins and serotonin—your own internal mood lifts.

Having massage as part of your routine can ease tension, help you sleep, and even build up your immune system in the long term. Coupled with osteopathic care, you feel more centred in body and mind.

Relieves Muscle Tension and Pain

We all get knotted muscles at some time or another—either from excessive computer sitting, hard exercising, or tension stress built up. Massage works on these knotted painful areas and frees muscle fibers from their tightened state, releases the tension in the blood, and liberates tension held.

If you have chronic pain, regular massage therapy, perhaps with osteopathy on top, can be an alternative that is opiate-free. Neck strain, lower backache, and tension headaches all mend well with the combination.

Improves Blood and Lymph Circulation

Good circulation is the basis of all health, facilitating your body’s delivery of oxygen and nutrients to cells and removal of waste products. Massage triggers blood circulation and lymph fluid, aiding detoxification and immunity.

The osteopath may prescribe massage therapy as treatment, especially among rehabilitative patients after surgery or trauma, as increased circulation helps hasten healing and the dissipation of inflammation. 

Aids in Support of Posture and Joint Mobility

These contemporary lifestyles will most probably cause poor posture—slumping over computer keyboards or scrolling through phones. Poor posture contributes to chronic muscle imbalance and joint disease. Regular massage loosens tight muscles, particularly between the shoulders, neck, and back, producing better posture and joint mobility.

Other than osteopathic manipulation, which will reset and diagnose the musculoskeletal system to its normal state, massage of an essential part in realignment and prevention of additional issues.

Enhances Mental Concentration and Focus

Body and mind are interconnected. If your body is tense or injured, it will affect your mental state. Massage breaks this cycle by calming the nervous system and giving a brief space of intense relaxation. Increased focus, reduced anxiety, and improved emotional regulation help many people after multiple sessions.

As a treatment modality in the clinic, your osteopath can incorporate massage therapy into your care to relax your system, especially if body symptoms are stress-related.

A Complementary Therapy to Osteopathy

While osteopaths are concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of mechanical body dysfunctions, massage follows as preconditioning soft tissues to more effective structural treatment. Preconditioning soft tissues by first breaking down the muscles and fascia, then massaging can perhaps make osteopathic manipulations more effective.

If you are being treated by an osteopath regularly for sporting injuries, scoliosis, or arthritis, adding massage will maximise effectiveness and recovery.

A Preventive Approach to Wellness

Rather than waiting until pain or tension becomes unbearable, many health-conscious individuals are turning to massage as a preventative measure towards well-being. The weekly, fortnightly, and monthly visits are keeping their muscles in a floppy, supple state, protecting them against injury, and keeping their physical and emotional balance in a robust state.

Your osteopath may recommend a wellbeing programme involving massage so that you can look after yourself and prevent issues in the first place down the line. It is no-nonsense, honest-to-goodness therapy to look after your body and mind. It varies from the alleviation of bodily tension and relaxation right through to posture and circulation improvement, its benefits instantaneous and additive.

With the assistance of an experienced osteopath, massage in Richmond will keep you in better form, more readily on the go, and closer to living. So if you have been holding back to do something purely for yourself, now is the perfect time to pamper your good health—a massage at a time.