Pictures of our office

Georgetown Therapeutic Massage LLC

978-352-7677

Pictures of our office:

Massage room 1

Massage room 2

Set up for couples massage

Clients are fully draped. Only the part of the body that we are massaging is discretely exposed.

We have our own bathroom in our office,
eliminating the need to walk thru public areas.

To find out more about the benefits of massage, please click on the article you wish to read.

Research on the benefits of massage
excerpts from
American Massage Therapy Association website

Massage to Keep You Young
presented by Sue Daigle
fall 2007

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Health Benefits of Massage

A study published by the American Hospital Association (AHA), with support from the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA), shows that many hospitals are incorporating massage therapists into their pain management programs.

Massage therapy is more effective for chronic back pain than other complementary therapies.
Massage therapy promotes relaxation and alleviates the perception of pain and anxiety in cancer patients.
Massage therapy reduces post-traumatic headaches better than cold pack treatments.
A pilot study conducted at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found that massage, as part of hospital-based surgery treatment, reduces pain and muscle spasms in patients who have undergone heart bypass surgery.
Massage stimulates the brain to produce endorphins

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Cancer

A study published in the journal Cancer studied 4,139 cancer survivors about their use of complementary medicine.

11.2 percent of cancer patients use massage as a complementary therapy.
16.6 percent of female cancer patients, and 3.9 percent of male cancer patients use massage.
Massage was found to be an especially popular complementary therapy with breast and ovarian cancer patients.

Sports Medicine

In a first of its kind animal study, conducted at Ohio State University, researchers tested the benefits of massage in a sports & fitness setting.

Muscles massaged after exercise recovered an estimated 60 percent of strength in the following days, compared to restoration of about 14 percent of strength in muscles that simply rested after exercise.
Muscles massaged after exercise had fewer damaged muscle fibers and virtually no sign of white blood cells, compared to rested muscles. The absence of white blood cells indicates that the body did not have to work to repair muscle damage after exercise.
The massaged muscles weighed about 8 percent less than the rested muscles, indicating a reduction in swelling.

Doctors are recommending massage

57 percent of those who talked to their doctor about massage reported that their doctor strongly recommended or encouraged them to get a massage.
Among 18-24 year olds, nearly 70 percent said their doctor strongly recommended massage.
Sixty percent of Americans would like to see massage covered by their health insurance plan.

to read the full article click here

Massage to keep you Young!
Everyone has a massage, when you were a new born, someone stroked your face. As a child someone rubbed you where it hurt. You have applied creams and lotions. Your hairdresser has massaged your head. Massage is touching with a beneficial or therapeutic result.

Massage as a recognized form of body care, has been around for over 4,000 years. We now know that the act of massaging gives the body a signal to release certain chemicals that will help you relax, feel nurtured, and if there is pain or injury to help the blood reduce the swelling in the area.

But how is massage going to keep you young?

Well, what is it that makes you feel old?

Is it stiffness?
This can be from an old injury. When you injure your muscle, such as a sprained ankle, or a twisted knee, tiny tears happen to the muscles. When you tear or cut your skin, you put a bandaid on to help hold the tear closed so it will heal.   When tears happen to a muscle, the body forms something called an adhesion. Which is the body’s version of a bandaid.

If you would please think back to a time when you have applied a band aid and after awhile it gets too tight and starts to pull on your skin. That is what can happen to the muscle.

Here is a bit of info about how your body works together. Every muscle is connected to at least two parts of your body. For example, the muscle that moves my elbow is the bicep. It lets me raise my arm, bend my elbow, and turn my forearm. Now if there is an adhesion in the biceps, (grab my bicep) I cannot easily move my arm. And it is either going to hurt to do that motion, or I won’t be able to have full motion, or I might not be able to do the motion at all.

In massage school we are taught special techniques to help breakup those adhesions relieving that stiffness and putting some spring back into your life.

What else is making you feel old? Is it pain?

If it hurts to stand, and your lower back is telling you to sit right back down, it can be your legs that are tight. The pelvis sits on the top of your legs, if the muscles in your legs are tight, then can be pulling on your pelvis. Here is where the body starts to become very interesting. Why are the leg muscles tight? Did something happen to your knee and the muscles are trying to hold that knee in place? Is something happening with your feet and the way you walk is off?
And once that pelvis gets pulled what happens to the rest of your body? It is pulling the upper body even up into the head.

If you think about how a house is built, if the footing is not level, the house is not level and everything will tilt to one side. If that happens to your body, the other side of the body has to try to pull back and to keep things stable and upright.

Massage therapists are trained to look above and below where the pain is to try to find what is causing pain. We try to get the body back to it’s original state – everything relaxed the way it was when you were younger/

Do you find yourself worrying more, feeling a bit stressed out? Maybe your not sleeping like you used to, or you feel too tired to do anything during the day, making you feel older than you are.

Our bodies were designed for short-term stress responses. You may have heard of the idea of fight or flight. When we sense danger, our body releases a chemical (cortisol) to give us an energy boost so we can either fight a battle or run away. Everything is focused where we would need it, blood is diverted from non essentials like digestion, and instead whisks stored energy reserves to various parts of our body, our blood pressure goes up, heart rate increases, we are ready to respond. When the danger passed, the body would stop releasing that chemical, and our body, exhausted, would feel like we “crashed” and it would begin to return back to it’s normal relaxed state.

But, in our society our stress is usually not from a danger that we can either fight or run from, ours is ongoing stress. And the longer the stress response, the greater the risk to our health, our body is pumped up with no place to go. It has even been shown that long-term release of cortisol kills memory-forming neurons.

Massage activates a part of your body called the parasympathetic nervous system, or in layman’s terms - the rest and digest system. This system counteracts your body's response to stress, relaxing muscle tension and allowing your heart rate, blood pressure and circulation to return to normal.

Once this system is activated, it does quite a few things,

It stimulates your immune system, which helps fight off infection,
It increases digestion getting the food you ate ready for the body to use
And it improves circulation to non vital organs, like your skin and extremities.

With the increase of circulation around your body, your lymphatic system, can do it’s job which is remove all the waste products from your body, allowing the blood to flow to increase, bringing the nutrients your body needs.

It releases chemicals called endorphins, better known as the feel good hormone. Endorphins, when activated will reduce pain and make you feel better overall.   Just as a point of information other ways to stimulate the release of endorphins is by laughing or eating chocolate. Massage while eating chocolate…..heaven. Anway…

So, I have explained how massage can help reduce the things that seem to drain us and make us feel old, stiffness, pain and stress. And how massage re-activates the systems in our body that help us feel more alive.

But, Massage does one more thing, it is the is the reason I love giving massages the common response after receiving a massage.
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It makes you feel really great.

It is a peace filled time, focused solely upon you being cared for.

Filling your senses, it begins with the room, relaxing, inviting, and warm. The sheets feel clean and soft, The table makes you think you are floating on air, soft relaxing music fills the room, the moisturizing lotions make your skin feel alive again, the therapists skilled soft strokes remind your body of gentler days and you to just drift away. When you get off the table, you feel like you have been renewed.

And isn’t that how we all want to feel?

To feel renewed,

To feel like our body is alive again?

Youth isn’t an age, youth is what you can do with your body. Take charge, have a massage, 4,000 years and it has never been recalled, there is no fine print, few contraindications, and it is what grandma told you to do: rub it and you’ll feel better.

Massage, it will keep you young!