Massage for Chronic Pain? Yes & No

As Physio students we were taught massage techniques, most especially Swedish Massage. We were taught to position our client comfortably, well supported with pillows, screened with sheets and encourage to pace our hands on work at a speed to either relax and calm, or to wake up usually before we asked them to do some exercises.

Since the 1990's massage hasn't been taught in UK Physiotherapy degree courses, so it's become the domain of beauticians, and complementary therapists.

Since the 1990's the whole industry has exploded & now there are all manner of different variants of massage, deep tissue, sports, aromatherapy, fascia. Many practitioners almost offer a menu of different kinds of massage at various fee charges. Review and you'll find some really interesting claims for different types of massage are out on websites.

My colleague Paul Ingram who is also into pain science, published a great article on his blog in August this year (2020). He also does a lot of paper reading and has spent quite some time looking into massage. To quote from his blog:

"Researchers compared the effects of garden-variety relaxation massage — classic Swedish — with allegedly more advanced “structural” massage, consisting of an assortment of typical treatment methods. The results were the same, showing clearly that a typical selection of structuralist massage techniques was not one stitch more effective than simple relaxation massage.

A course of relaxation massage, using techniques commonly taught in massage schools and widely used in practice, had effects similar to those of structural massage, a more specialized technique.

All that pretension! All those assumptions and lovely-sounding structural theories. All those expensive technique workshops those therapists went to, and all the extra money they charge real patients for their “expertise” to help pay off their investment in the workshops. It all added up to … nothing. They could have done relaxation massage instead and their patients would have been just as well off."

And that final sentence says it all, because there is merit in simple massage, for relaxation. The kind where the person is well supported by lots of comfy pillows, in a warm calm safe space. A gentle way to ease their system, limbic system, nervous system, to calm with gentle voice tone, soothing tough and the massage pacing and ritual and slow movement causing the individual to settle.

In fact, massage just the way we were taught way back at uni when I studied.

So if you have pain, and can afford to pay for a massage, find a local practitioner. Someone you get on with, maybe an independent so they can be helped in it's during the Covid time. If they can work safely. Someone, who can perform Swedish style relaxing massage, there is no point in paying for extra special kinds.

Another option, you could try a floatation tank, or a session of mindfulness, or some Feldenkrais slow movement, or a walk and sit by a soothing river in the sunshine, they are likely to all have a similar effect.

xXX J

Below is a link to Paul's Blog, which is really good

https://www.painscience.com/articles/does-massage-work.php