Massage Therapy
Massage Therapy and Bodywork
Massage therapy and bodywork has been practiced throughout the world for thousands of years as a way to support physical, mental, and emotional health. There are many different approaches to massage and bodywork, which can each have different benefits on your health.
- For the physical body, bodywork and massage can help to increase circulation, decrease inflammation, relax tight muscles, support digestion, and balance the body.
- For the mental and emotional body, massage can help reduce depression or stress by calming and regulating the nervous system.
- Massage is often a key part of rehabilitation protocols for physical injuries, before and after surgery, and scar tissue healing.
- It is also supportive for many chronic conditions, including diabetes, cancer, arthritis, infertility, depression, high blood pressure, lymphatic congestion, digestive disorders, and low back pain.
Bodywork as Part of Your Acupuncture Session:
If you are coming to Flourish as an acupuncture patient, your practitioner may choose to utilize one or more of a few traditional Chinese medicine bodywork modalities as part of your standard care. The bodywork that we provide is at no additional cost and should leave you feeling more relaxed and balanced than when you walked in.
Here are some of the types of bodywork that you might receive in your acupuncture treatment:
Cupping: Plastic cups are applied to your body using a vacuum pump, creating a seal and drawing your skin up into the cup – kind of like a massage in reverse. The cups can be left stationary or be moved around the area. We use cupping to help break up scar tissue, reduce inflammation, create balance in the body, and to support any areas that feel stiff or painful from injury.
Gua sha (aka “scraping”): We move the gua sha tool (something like a soup spoon) around with long strokes while applying pressure to the affected area. This helps to move energy that is blocked by injury, stagnation, inflammation, scar tissue, etc.
Acupressure: Occasionally, we choose to use massage on certain acupuncture points rather than needles. These acupressure techniques are easy for you to take home and use on yourself to keep the healing process going.
Massage With Rose DeNicola
For patients who need more in-depth massage, Rose DeNicola is Flourish’s wonderful in-house certified massage therapist. Rose weaves together Eastern and Western techniques while listening to the body with an intuitive touch. As a certified yoga and chi-gong teacher, herbalist, and devoted meditator, she offers a holistic session that is informative, therapeutic, and relaxing. She balances deep tissue and trigger point therapy with more subtle, energetic practices, to allow for release of strained muscles, as well as space for you to relax into your body.
Rose offers a number of different massage modalities, to meet your specific needs:
This type of massage stimulates the lymph system which is a system of vessels and lymph nodes that helps regulate the immune system, calm the nervous system, and transport fluid and waste through the body. This modality is slow, gentle, and deeply relaxing to the nervous system.
Craniosacral therapy is a subtle practice of deep listening to the body and inviting the body into balance by releasing tension in the cranial area, spine, and sacrum. It is often experienced as a deep joint meditation.
Pregnancy and postpartum massage can support and nurture a mother during this physical and emotional intense time. Specialized massage techniques and pillows will support you throughout the massage to ensure your comfort and safety.
Chi Nei Tsang is traditional Chinese abdominal massage that addresses the body from the core – the abdominal area. Sound healing through vocalizing the organ’s sounds are often integrated into Chi Nei Tsang because it allows for expression and harmonizing of the organ system.
Rose provides person-specific massage sessions for those who are on the cancer journey. She adapts her practice to meet the unique and changing needs of someone undergoing treatment for cancer, or who has undergone cancer treatment. Her advanced training in Oncology massage gives me the tools and knowledge to offer a supportive, safe, and nourishing massage that works with the side effects of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.
If you prefer, Rose includes essential oils in your session which often includes aroma-acupressure. By weaving together acupressure and plant medicine, the points and oil support each other by enhancing and directing each other’s properties.
Click here to learn more about the care that Rose provides, or to book a session with her.
