Massage For Health 2: Massage and the Sixth Sense

 Massage For Health 2: Massage and the Sixth Sense

Six senses?

One of the most important aspects of how touch helps your body reset has to do with proprioception. What is proprioception? It is your body’s ability to sense where it is in action, location and movement. It’s why you can touch your nose or other body parts even with your eyes shut. Sometimes it’s called the body’s sixth sense because it is so innate to all people. Ever wondered why you feel better when someone hugs you? It’s because gentle pressure on the body gives proprioceptive input. Your body is constantly communicating with itself in regards to location in time and space.
Brain: Hello? Arm? You there?
Arm: Yup! Still here!
All day long back and forth. When the body is under stress, the brain asks more and gets freaked out about whether everything is where it should be because it thinks there is a threat that could change the location of a body part or injure it. But when someone hugs you all the nerve centers in your body are validated to the brain and the threat of injury seems less.
Brain: You there?
Hug: We are here… we are safe…you can relax now.
Body: relaxes because it’s exactly where it should be even if it was stressed about that a minute ago.

Proprioceptive Therapy

Any time the body is given a deep gentle pressure on the surface, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated and the body goes into “rest mode” releasing serotonin and dopamine to give a feeling of safety and comfort. This sort of touch can be applied for therapeutic benefit for people with a wide range of challenges and needs.

Research has shown deep pressure therapy benefits people with autism, sensory processing disorders, anxiety, ADHD, depression, dementia, post traumatic stress disorder, and even just poor sleep or stress.

Tools of therapy include simply using touch in a gentle but firm way such as hugging either yourself or the person in need, using brushing, acupressure or massage. Ever swaddled your baby? That is using the same concept of deep pressure therapy to promote relaxation. Used a weighted blanket? Same idea! It’s wonderful for good sleep and overall calming even when it’s just a lap blanket.

Massage and Proprioceptive Therapy

Massage involves touch and everywhere the  hands glide over the brain is given this positive proprioceptive response which leads to it letting go of the stress response and enjoying the positive input from the touch on the skin of the body. Using a firm pressure to release tension in the muscles and stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system at the same time, massages leave you feeling relaxed and calm for hours afterwards. Some interesting things that are “side effects” of massage because of this include: feeling like your brain is wrapped in cotton or “massage brain” after because you are relaxed and your body went into rest mode, being hungry during or after because your digestive system is part of your parasympathetic nervous system, and finding that if you drink alcohol later that day it hits you really hard (because your metabolism is in high gear just like the digestive system).

Touch is so important for the well-being of all humans: there have even been numerous studies done that show babies fail to thrive when they are not touched and held. The rule applies to all humans, we are meant to be touched and held it’s a part of our design that our body craves and when we don’t have it we get depressed, anxious and just plain miserable. It may look different for everyone but it is a vital part of our lives to experience touch on a regular basis.

Think this is interesting? Read my first massage For Health blog about stress Here or the third in the series about Massage and Injuries Here

Stay strong. Stay healthy. Keep fighting for yourself, you’re worth it.

From: Ame Hinman at Hinman Healing