THE IMPORTANCE OF STRETCHING

Stretching is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your body, besides eating right and getting enough sleep. It can improve your posture, maintain your flexibility and even help to relieve tension and stress! While it can be difficult to find even 10, 15 minutes of time to just stretch, there are many you can do just sitting at your desk at work or while watching TV. 

Having a desk job usually means you're sitting at that desk... a lot. This can cause back and neck pain, carpel tunnel, poor posture and poor circulation. It also means that when you are more active, you tend to wear out more easily, get more muscle soreness and may not have a good range of flexibility. Stretching can help to reduce the amount of pain you feel sitting at your desk and can improve your life overall. 

What are some of the other benefits of stretching?

Stretching has many benefits. These include: improved posture, decreased risk of injury, improved blood supply to muscles, reduced fatigue and joint pain, release tension and stress and gives your body and mind a small break from the day-to-day routine. Stretching can also maintain or improve flexibility by elongating the connective tissues and muscle fibers, allowing you to have an increased range of motion. 

Are there stretches I can do in the office?

Yes! In fact, most healthcare professionals recommend getting up to stretch about once an hour during the business day to keep the blood flowing and give yourself a small break. It can also help to refresh your mind, improve your memory and keep you feeling alert at your desk.  Here's a few that I like to do every day while sitting at my desk:

Holding one arm in front of you, point your fingers down and grab them with your other hand. Gently pull the fingers back towards you, creating a nice stretch in your arm. Do this for 10-15 seconds on one side, then do the other. This helps relieve muscle aches and pains associated with typing/using a keyboard.

The cross-body stretch: Take one arm and fold it across your body towards the opposite shoulder. Taking the free hand, grab your elbow and gently pull your crossing arm closer to your body. This helps to open up the shoulder and improve circulation to your arms.

 The back twist: Planting both feet on the ground while sitting on the edge of your seat, slowly reach around and grab the back of your chair until you feel a nice stretch in your spine. From there, see how far you can look around to help extend the stretch to your shoulders and neck. Slowly release and come back to the middle, facing forward, before repeating the stretch on the other side. 




Chest-opening stretch: Lean back in your chair and look at the ceiling. Take your arms and interlock your fingers, then "press" them, palms up, to the ceiling until you feel a pull in your wrists, chest and back. This helps prevent that "hunched shoulder" look you can get from sitting staring at a computer screen for too long!






Another simple one: Get up from your desk and stretch your legs! Do this about once an hour to keep your blood circulating and reduce stiffness in your legs and back. This also helps keep you alert and can even help you with things like writer's block or getting stuck on a problem. When going for lunch or a quick break, take a walk outside instead of sitting at your desk. You'll get fresh air, a bit of exercise, and if you happen to be speaking with a colleague there's a chance you'll remember the conversation better!

You can also use a standing desk or an exercise ball instead of the traditional chair. This helps to improve your balance, keep you alert and engage your muscles. Just be sure not to annoy your coworkers with it! 

Do you have something you'd like us to discuss in an upcoming blog post? Comment below or email us at: massagelamesa@gmail.com!

Contact us at: 619-917-4675 OR  massagelamesa@gmail.com 

Book now by clicking HERE.

"EMERGENCY MASSAGE" VS "MAINTENANCE MASSAGE"

A lot of people that come in for a massage aren't regular clients, meaning they only pop in once in a while when they're in too much pain or too stressed to handle it on their own. On the other side of that is the regular client, the one who comes in consistently as part of an ongoing treatment plan set up to act more as a general upkeep. We've had people ask about the pros and cons of coming in for massage regularly, so here's a general list of what regular massage treatment can do for you along with why it's more beneficial versus coming in whenever you feel pain:

Pros

- As part of an ongoing treatment plan, regular massage clients build a better rapport with their therapist and a better working relationship. This allows the therapist to be more "in-tune" with the client's body and gives them a better idea of what's needed. 

- Having a regularly scheduled massage gives you something to look forward to! Imagine sitting at your desk on a Friday, working tirelessly, to see the sticky-note you left yourself reminding you of your massage appointment later that evening. All of a sudden your day just gets a little brighter knowing you'll be jump-starting your weekend in just a few hours!

- Massage clients that suffer from chronic pain can actually improve over time when seeing a massage therapist regularly due to an ongoing treatment plan put together by the therapist and client. If a client were to suffer from chronic pain in their back/shoulders, for example, the massage therapist can work on that area and slowly reduce the tension, muscle aches and pain felt in the area while also working on the rest of the body. 

- Regular massage helps with depression, anxiety, insomnia/sleeplessness, stress and many others. This is something we have covered several times across multiple blog posts! 

Cons

- Finding money to get massages regularly can be difficult, especially with how crazy the world is sometimes. Financially, "splurging" on yourself for a massage seems like too much, or you don't deserve it. Let's leave it at this: it's not spoiling yourself to make sure you feel good, just like you're not spoiling yourself by visiting your doctor for your annual checkup!

- Everyone's schedules in this day and age are various and inconstant. That can make scheduling regular appointments difficult, especially if you're visiting a clinic where your therapist has several other clients. In an ideal world, coming in every week at the same time would be the best, but sometimes life just gets in the way. However, as long as you're coming in fairly regularly, you're doing your body justice!

Time and money are the two biggest factors when it comes to people not coming in for a massage. Many clinics, including our own, will offer discounts to people who purchase a massage package (multiple massage sessions) ahead of time, allowing them to pay once, save some money, and not worry about having to pay after every single session. Time is a completely different factor though. That's something that needs to be worked out with your life style, schedule and your therapist's schedule. 

Sometimes people are discouraged at first by the "lack of results" after a few sessions, and still have chronic pain. However, 10+ years of pain will not be resolved in only a few sessions as it takes time and hard work to get through the worst of it before you can get better. Coming in only when the pain becomes unbearable is simply not ideal because you're not doing much to help reduce future occurrences of a "flare-up." 

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Coming in regularly for massage is more beneficial when compared to only coming in when you're in pain simply because having consistent work done on your body will further your improvement and you can get a lot more resolved by coming in often. If you were to think of massage along the same lines as working out, and decided to only work out once in a few months, you wouldn't see any improvement in muscle definition and would be discouraged by the results. If you were to work out consistently, however, you would see much more improvement in your strength, flexibility and muscle tone. Massage is the same way. In order to get better results, it's important to come in frequently enough to actually allow those results to show. 

  
Do you have something you'd like us to discuss in an upcoming blog post? Comment below or email us at: massagelamesa@gmail.com!

Contact us at: 619-917-4675 OR  massagelamesa@gmail.com 

Book now by clicking HERE.