Growing up in a crowded street in India, our neighbors were our family. I grew up with the mindset that we are only as strong as we are when united and weak when we are divided. So when someone was feeling stress, depression or anxiety, we would look to each other for massage scalps and perform Reiki to relieve that internal stress. I distinctly remember when I was three years old relieving my father’s stress and exhaustion after a long day of walking 20 miles to and from work (since we did not own a car). I noted his demeanor after work and would use my small legs to relieve the tension from his aching muscles. He would find so much comfort from my tiny massages and that would make me so happy to see him smile and rested.
As I grew up, my path diverged from the innate massage nature embedded in my persona. In 1986, I studied Accounting and immigrated to the United States and my new life focused on the corporate world. I firsthand witnessed the daily, “normal” habits in my peers and myself for ten years: eight hours of sitting a day, limited routine movements and exercise, constant stress and anxiety, and the effective mental and physical health issues that would arise from these behaviors. These habits directly contradicted my childhood in which my family collectively took proactive measures to focus on our physical and mental health through massage, reiki, and yoga. I had an epiphany. I decided I would incorporate massage into my life. Through massage, I tried to change the lives of my community with free massages. It became the essence of my being, happiness, and lifestyle.
Soon enough, my friends, relatives and co-workers became aware my massaging hobby and started to inform me about their mental health and pain. At work, stress and anxiety were peaking and the hours were endless without breaks during an economic recession. My colleagues were complaining about neck aches, back pain, and muscle cramps. I decided to take action and communicated the needs of my colleagues to my boss. He scheduled a team meeting and I presented muscle movements and yoga poses to relax and alleviate pain and stretch out muscles. My intentions soon spilled over to my personal life and my relatives begin calling me for massages, even my own children.
As a new mother, I would utilize massage to connect and bond with my two baby girls’ sense and touch. Everyday I would massage their fine bones, joints, and muscles to build strength and found myself intuitively understanding them. Research shows that massaging babies can benefit via massage and effectively sleep better, improve weight gain, aid in digestion, improve circulation, and ease teething pain. However, despite my natural, nurturing touch, I didn’t always know the science behind massage and that is what drove me to pursue an education in the field and to become a licensed massage therapist.
Prior to studying massage therapy, I could intuitively recognize points of pressure and pain in the body by superficial and deep massage techniques. By observing the way that someone would walk, sit, stand, or just hold their posture, I could sense points of pain in their body and locate the hypertonic areas that needed to be massaged.
For example, my mother-in-law, who is 80 years old, has been suffering from leg pain for many years. She would often struggle getting up after sitting, have difficulty walking upstairs, and suffer problems with balance. To help, I started massaging her legs and realized there was inflammation particularly around the knees. Through regular massage, we were able to reduce the edema around the knees, but inevitably, the inflammation would reoccur. We finally went to the physician who prescribed cortisone every 6 months but after two years, the injections were no longer effective. She then got a bilateral knee replacement. Immediately after the surgery, she was in a lot of pain trying to get used to the new joints in her body and getting comfortable and confident in walking again. I would talk to her nurses and doctors who said that she needs more movement in the joints to recover. I would massage her legs to relieve some pain and then do some passive range of motion and stretches. This was all before I started massage therapy training and I was leveraging knowledge that I had from my experience in massaging others to help her. So even though I could help I still did not know the science behind what was causing the inflammation or how the body was overcompensating for the weak knees.
Now, because of my massage school, I have a much better understanding of what causes pain and inflammation. Things like how the skeletal system changes with age, how hormones and nerves interact to influence a person’s sensitivity to pain, and how edema can result from a failure/overload of the lymphatic system. I also learned different techniques to manage and influence these physiological processes. For example, for edema, it is important to place the non-inflamed swollen area on cushions and raise it above the level of the heart as elevation will help with drainage. Perpendicular and parallel stretching of the skin over the lymphatic vessels’ fibers will stimulate the lymphatic capillaries to open and thereby allowing the interstitial fluid to enter the lymphatic system. These are all bodily functions that I have learned directly from my massage therapy class that has been so interesting and that I wouldn’t have known before.
All that being said, it really is difficult to highlight, or pick a “most interesting” topic we learned in massage school. In India, I learned how the whole body and universe are connected. In massage class, I learned how all the systems are connected, interact, and affect each other. This is what I found so interesting, how everything works together in homeostasis. And even more importantly, how massage works to influence these systems to promote health and wellness. It’s amazing to learn the scientific basis for something I intuitively knew how to do as a 3-year-old.
I am stunned how integrated massage therapy schooling with different body functions, types, and issues span across all different ages: Through massage, children can strengthen muscles, joints and bones, adults can relax and regain movement in stationary muscles due jobs, and older people can identify crucial pain points and body systems that are the main contributors of pain or inflammation in the body. There are many different techniques and tools that a student can learn from massage therapy school and learning the different body systems can help strengthen their understanding of factors that can cause the pain. I strongly advise massage students to have an open mind and eager to learn when beginning to learn the complexities of the human body and massage’s according impact. It is important to learn comprehensively about the body to be an effective massage therapist. Once one is able to understand a person’s reason for getting a massage, for example, for relaxation or to alleviate tension, the massage therapist builds trust with the person. That trust helps develop a long-lasting relationship with the person who will continue being a client. This will help build a business of customers to expand into one’s own massage therapy business and develop flexible hours. Therefore, I encourage students to be mindful of their relationships with clients and according schedules in addition to the influence of massage on each client. These two facets are crucial to one’s long term career and happiness in the massage therapy field.
