Where’s the best deep tissue massage in Melbourne? At yours of course.  We come to you and help work out that stress and those aches to leave you re-energised, reconnected, and a little less bound up.

What is it and how can it help me?

As the name implies, it is a massage with increased pressure that targets the deeper layers of soft tissue.  The strokes are slow and deliberate.  As the therapist follows the contours of your musculature, they are able to feel for tension or adhesions that may be present.

Sometimes scar tissue or overuse can create adhesions between the various layers of soft tissue as it repairs the site where trauma, surgery, inflammation may have occurred.  When the different layers which normally slide over each other stick together, you may experience a decreased range of motion, pain or other symptoms. Deep tissue therapy, in part, when combined with other techniques such as myofascial release, pin and stretch to name a few, aims to separate these layers to restore soft tissue function.

 

With increased pressure, massage therapy can also aid the purging of metabolic waste and allow fresh oxygenated blood to nourish deeper areas that have had inadequate circulation.  A great benefit for those unable to exercise or move.  For those who play sports or exercise regularly, massage can be used as part of your body maintenance regime to aid recovery and as a injury preventative measure.

Does it hurt?

At times there may be instances where tender spots are found which may cause some discomfort.  Your attentive therapist will communicate and work slowly with you around the common hotspots as well as the ones you have identified ensuring the pressure being applied is within your limits.  Its important to note that tolerating pain is not always the best idea.  If you find yourself tensing other areas of the body (also called ‘guarding’) it may mean you are simply transferring that tension elsewhere.  Always work within your limits or a state where you can process the discomfort without guarding.  The therapist will usually sense your discomfort but feel free to communicate it.  When you do reach a point just below your threshold, a good counter to your sympathetic response is to breath as full and deep as possible and focus on relaxing the rest of your body.  This is also a good idea when the massage therapist hits a trigger point, where they may spend a little bit of time.  A trigger point is an irritable or hypersensitive spot that is felt when pressure is applied.  At times it may be a part of the contractile tissue that has not returned to its resting length and become ischemic (deprived of fresh blood) and thus may accumulate toxins.  It may also refer pain.

Trigger points may also develop as a response to injury, muscle imbalance or compounding tension.  Trigger point therapy is the application of pressure to these sensitive areas using thumbs or elbows to relieve these hotspots and allow fresh oxygenated blood to enter the area.

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