Massage Therapy
Massage therapy offers a natural conservative treatment approach that relieves musculoskeletal pain for many patients. Our clinic provides specific massage and muscular therapy that is tailored to meet each patient's condition and injury. An increasing number of research studies show massage reduces heart rate, lowers blood pressure, increases blood circulation and lymph flow, relaxes muscles, improves range of motion, and increases endorphins (enhancing medical treatment). Although therapeutic massage does not increase muscle strength, it can stimulate weak, inactive muscles and, thus, partially compensate for the lack of exercise and inactivity resulting from illness or injury.
Our massage therapists are experienced in relaxation massage, deep tissue massage, clinical and injury rehabilitation massage, trigger point therapy, prenatal massage, and sports massage.
Physical Benefits of Therapeutic Massage
- Helps relieve stress and aids relaxation
- Helps relieve muscle tension and stiffness
- Helps relieve headaches and migraines if due to muscular tension
- Alleviates discomfort during pregnancy
- Fosters faster healing of strained muscles and sprained ligaments
- Reduces pain and swelling
- Reduces formation of excessive scar tissue
- Reduces muscle spasms
- Provides greater joint flexibility and range of motion
- Enhances athletic performance
- Treats injuries caused during sport or work
- Promotes deeper and easier breathing
- Improves circulation of blood and movement of lymph fluids
- Reduces blood pressure
- Helps relieve tension-related headaches and effects of eye-strain
- Enhances the health and nourishment of skin
- Improves posture
- Strengthens the immune system through parasympathetic activation
- Treats musculoskeletal problems
- Rehabilitation post operative
- Rehabilitation after injury
Types of Therapeutic Massage
Trigger Point Therapy
What is Trigger Point Therapy? Trigger point therapy is a set of manual manipulation, or massage therapy techniques, designed to remove trigger points from soft tissue thereby stopping their referring pain sensations and aiding the tissue in its natural healing process. However, just what exactly is a trigger point? Dr. Janet Travell, who served as the White House Physician during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and who is the founder of trigger point therapy, describes a trigger point as:
Hyperirritable spots in skeletal muscle that are associated with palpable nodules in taut bands of muscle fibers. The trigger point model states that pain frequently radiates from these points of local tenderness to broader areas, sometimes distant from the trigger point itself.
What this means is that often pain experienced in the body, as a result of muscle tissue overuse or injury, may be caused by a “knot” forming in the muscle tissue itself. These “knots” of muscle tissue may then radiate pain sensations to a different area of the body.
For example, above is a diagram showing a common referral pattern for the muscles located at the base of the skull known as the Suboccipitals. The “X” marks represent common locations for the trigger points themselves to form in the muscle tissue and the red dotted areas represent common sites for pain to be experienced by the patient. Thus, trigger points in the Suboccipital muscle tissue can mimic the symptoms of a headache or migraine for many patients.
Relaxation or “Swedish” Massage
Relaxation massage uses five styles of long, flowing strokes to massage. The five basic strokes are effleurage (sliding or gliding), petrissage (kneading), tapotement (rhythmic tapping), friction (cross fiber) and vibration/shaking. The development of Swedish massage is credited to Per Henrik Ling, though the Dutch practitioner Johan Georg Mezger adopted the French names to denote the basic strokes. Relaxation massage may be helpful in reducing pain, joint stiffness, and improving muscular function in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee or other arthritic joints. It may also be helpful in individuals with poor circulation. Appropriately named, relaxation massage is mostly focused on the relaxation of the body and the reduction of stress effects within the body. Relaxation massage may aid patients in lowering blood pressure and anxiety levels, improve digestive function through stimulation of the parasympathetic division of the nervous system, and promote a sense of peace and well being.
Sports Massage
Sports massage refers to a faster paced form of therapeutic massage that focuses on aiding athletes to perform at their best both pre and post event. This form of massage is mainly concerned with the removal of waste products from muscular tissue. Due to the high stress and demands placed upon the body during competition, at times the body may be unable to completely remove all metabolic wastes from the soft tissue in a timely fashion. This incomplete waste product removal may lead to cramps, muscular spasm and contraction “charlie horses”, decreased range of motion, localized congestion, and pain. Sports massage aids in helping the tissue to remain at its optimal health prior to extreme exertion during an athletic competition or to speed recovery and healing after the competition.
Clinical Rehabilitative Massage
This form of massage refers to the combination of trigger point therapy and cross fiber friction used to aid muscular recovery after overuse or injury. During injury or extreme overuse, individual muscle fibers may be torn and scar tissue will be naturally laid down in order to reattach these
torn and damaged fibers. Although this scar tissue allows the muscle fibers to reattach, it grows in no fixed pattern. This “web” of scar tissue inhibits the full range of motion and strength of the original fibers. In addition, the damaged areas may form trigger points, thus causing pain sensations in the body. Using cross fiber friction allows for the gentle breakup of scar tissue over repeated sessions and aids in restoring the strength and range of motion that was present prior to the injury event. Finally, trigger point therapy allows for the removal of trigger points and their referred pain sensations.
Meet Christopher Vaughan
Christopher received his bachelor of science degree from the
University of Georgia in Athens, GA and his professional massage therapist
certification from Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington,
MN.
Christopher is committed to the optimum care and treatment of his
patients by seeking to not only maintain his current knowledge level, but to
increase his services available through attending yearly continuing education
classes. He currently offers services in relaxation, post injury rehabilitation,
trigger point therapy, and pre and post event sports massage.
In his spare time, Christopher enjoys snowboarding, cross country
skiing, rock climbing, running, pursuing the martial arts, reading and
furthering his education in natural healthcare.
Christopher looks forward to meeting you and he seeks to provide an
environment that is not only empowering and conducive to health, but that
is safe, and comforting as well.
