The Best [Free] Massage You’ll Ever Get?

Categories: Blog Dec 03, 2014

At certain times of the year I travel a lot. Like summers. And sometimes, I’ll pass through an airport that has one of those “quick massage” places - the ones where you get a 15 minute rejuvenating and stress-relieving chair massage.

[caption id="attachment_2348" align="alignleft" width="350"] My traps are sore...[/caption]

I like massages. Actually, I love massages when they’re done correctly. And for me, “correctly” is always one of those Swedish massages - you know, the gentle ones. I judge a massage therapist by whether she can put me to sleep on the massage table. If she can, “Ding-ding-ding-ding!” We have a keeper!

I used to like those “deep tissue” massages, you know the ones, where you had to grit your teeth as the massage therapist ran her elbow re-enforced with almost her entire body weight down your tight IT Band, making you want to leap off the table, howling like a child. Or my other favorite, the “trap squeeze,” where the MT “squeezes” (crushes?) the trigger point in your traps. But I found that they never really did anything for me. Nothing was ever long lived.

However, I haven’t had a “real” massage in about a year-and-a-half since I left North Carolina. And honestly, today is the first time I’ve actually sat down and thought about it. Probably because of the time of the year - the Holidays - where we seem to burn through time and take a joyous season and turn it into a “stress-fest.”

I’ve been using one of my favorite resets, which at this point, feels just as good, and equally relaxing:

Rolling.

That’s right, rolling around. On the floor. On your back. On your sides. On your front.

I especially love it after I’ve been sitting a lot and doing a lot of writing. The floor is like one giant hand, especially when I can move my body over top of it.

I use all types of rolling: segmental, half rolls, egg rolls, barrel rolls, shoulder rolls… I’ll pause rolls midway and just breathe into them. The stress just rolls off - melts away. It opens me up. Loosens up anything that’s gotten stiff.

It’s not surprising really though.

What is surprising is that most people will never roll, let alone roll enough to de-stress.

Especially when discovering that not only will rolling release and relieve stress, it reconnects our “X.”

That’s right, it helps restore our reflexive strength, tying together both the back side and front side of our bodies, cross body, opposite shoulder to opposite hip. This X is critically important for little things like walking and running.

Furthermore, our skin is our largest sensory organ. It feeds our brain with information about where we are in time and space (proprioception) which increases our body’s ability to move efficiently in a coordinated manner. In fact, skin stimulation actually feeds and grows your brain, making your smarter, physically stronger, and even healthier by improving immune system function.

This means that stiffness, soreness, and tightness, often associated with movement dysfunctions, can be alleviated many times by something as simple as lying on the ground and rolling around for a few minutes or more.

No wonder I feel a hundred times better after I spend a little time rolling around on the floor.

This Holiday Season, and every other time of the year, take some time to blow the stress off and get down on the ground and roll around.

It just might be the best [free] massage you’ve ever had.

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