About Stress

Everyone experiences it. No one is immune, because stress is a necessary component of life. But you don't have to let it overpower you. You can learn to manage your response to stress. By gaining more control over your body's automatic reactions to anxiety-producing situations, you can reduce the negative effects of the stress in your life.

What Stress Does To You

Your body reacts unconsciously to situations you find threatening. Its emergency stress response primes you for fight or flight by causing certain physiological changes to take place.

As the stress response is set in motion, your body produces additional adrenaline. Your heart beats faster. More blood flows into your larger muscles. Your breathing becomes shallow and you start to perspire. The functioning of your immune and digestive systems is inhibited and the flow of blood to your extremities and internal organs is decreased.

Ideally, this defensive reaction will subside once the threatening situation is resolved, allowing your body to return to normal. However, if you experience frequent or unrelenting stress, you might remain locked into a pattern of stress response, unable to relax or let go. This can damage your body, ultimately leading to discomfort or pain, and is a contributing factor in most disease processes.

Due to the suppression of your immune and digestive systems during the stress response, the normal functioning of your body can become seriously imbalanced. The adverse effects of stress can manifest themselves as high blood pressure, changes in blood sugar, ulcers, headaches, hypertension, colitis, and heart disease. Accumulated stress and tension always diminish your energy and vitality, and can spoil much of the pleasure and productivity you find in life.

What Massage Does To Stress

The antidote to stress is the relaxation response. This is your body's message that it's time to slow down and take it easy. During the relaxation response, your endocrine and nervous systems activate changes to slow your heart rate, improve your circulation and digestion, and relax your muscles-in direct counteraction to the stress response.

Whenever stress starts to become chronic, it's obviously beneficial for you to find ways to introduce the relaxation response. There are many activities that can trigger it, such as exercise, deep breathing, meditation, or listening to soothing music.

Of course, one of the best methods to combat stress is therapeutic massage. You'll discover immediately that your massage session provides an island of calm amidst the sea of anxiety. The luxury of an hour or more away from situations that stress you, basking in a comfortable and secure environment, can have amazing results on your body, emotions, and mental attitude.

Massage can dramatically reverse the damaging physiological effects of stress by helping to lower your heart rate and blood pressure. It can improve your circulation and help to raise your skin temperature. As your sense of well-being is heightened, your anxiety level will drop.

During the massage, your tight muscles tend to relax as circulation to them is increased, and the pain associated with chronic tension is relived. This increased circulation will supply more oxygen and nutrients to your muscles and help rid them of metabolic waste. Blocked, deadened areas are thus able to respond to sensory input again. Massage also stimulates release of the body's own natural pain killers-the endorphins.

A program of regular massage will put you in touch with your body, teaching you to monitor its signals and needs so you'll know when you should take time out from the things that worry you. In this way, you can avoid the damaging effects of chronic stress and gain some control over this seemingly unavoidable menace to your well-being.

Relax and experience the art and science of massage.