1. Your only job is to try to relax and abandon your body. Close your eyes and allow yourself to become heavy and sink into the table.
2. Allow yourself to be limp. Don’t try to help as the therapist moves your limbs. Simply receive.
3. Feel free to give feed back. If you would like something done longer, deeper or with less pressure, or if something feels uncomfortable or invasive for any reason, be sure to mention it to your practitioner while they are doing it.
4. Working through adhesion and muscle spasm can be painful. Deep inhalations and slow exhalations will help you to get through this. Try to envision your breath going into the area being worked.
5. Our muscles store emotions. If they should surface during the massage, don’t be afraid to give them expression. Your therapist is well aware of the emotional release which may occur during bodywork and is not there to judge you.
6. Depending on the level of toxins or emotions you have had bottled up inside of you, you may experience a period of detoxifications wherein you’ll feel worse before you feel better. This is called a “healing crisis” and it simply means that a lot of garbage is moving out of your body. It’s a good thing. Try to embrace it and go with it.
7. Following deep work there may be a period of tenderness for 24-48 hours. It won’t feel like a tight sharp pain which builds as the day progresses. It will be more like a dull reminder that you’ve had the deep work done and it will dissipate rather than build. Along with this, you will also feel looser and have greater range of motion. Try to focus on the latter.
8. If you’ve had deep work done on a specific area, icing the area for 20 minutes after your massage will help to flush out any remaining fluids, take down the inflammation and lessen the likelihood of tenderness the next day.
9. Massage will flush toxins out of your muscles and into your lymph system. Try to drink at least a liter of water after any bodywork to flush these toxins right out of your body.
10. Remember your body heals itself. Massage just reminds your body of how to go in a more healing direction. With this in mind, try to maintain a healthy attitude.
ENJOY!