Massage is normally always associated to the manipulation, relief and healing of your muscles, ligaments and tendons – the soft tissue of the body. But what about the nervous system??
Each time we are touched the skin cell receptors are stimulated into action. The style of touch and depth of pressure is what determines how those cells react and what signals it cells to the brain and nervous system.
One of the ways in which massage can help, is by restoring the balance in your nervous system. This is especially important within the autonomic nervous system, which monitors and regulates situations of high anxiety as well as rest and recovery. Using massage to rebalance the nervous system can affect you in many ways, from encouraging your body to enter its rest and recovery mode to stimulating and invigorating which could be great just before an sports event or race.
By stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system through massage we can help restore the right balance and strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system so that it’s in a healthy state. With the parasympathetic nervous system functioning better, we find it easier to feel relaxed and calm, which in turn helps reduce stress and anxiety levels.
