“With relaxation comes healing. Deep healing is not possible without relaxation. You need to learn how to be completely at ease, how to do nothing.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Benefits
Therapeutic Bodywork recognizes the importance of safe human touch to support people, reduce suffering, and help them shift toward better physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. Massage is a form of therapeutic bodywork used for thousands of years by indigenous Australians and other ancient cultures worldwide.
Stress reduction Life is stressful for many people, and nervous system dysregulation seems the new normal for many these days. Far too often, we neglect our body’s need to rest and recover and forget how important it is to look after ourselves. On top of this, the aftermath of the pandemic years and the uncertainty of our time has left many people in a vulnerable state. While a certain amount of stress in life is normal and unavoidable, a chronically overactive sympathetic nervous system can cause severe physical and psychological health issues and is the reason for many medical problems. It can also affect the people around us and impact our relationships.
Nervous system regulation Massage Therapy promotes emotional regulation and helps to reduce the stress response by down-regulating the sympathetic nervous system. Treatments give you space and time to fully relax and thus help you to remain healthy and content despite the craziness of life. There is robust empirical evidence that safe human touch helps to turn down stress in your body. Treatments significantly reduce cortisol levels (which alleviate stress) and increase serotonin and dopamine levels (which have activating effects). Regular treatments may increase your capacity to be calm when stressful situations occur again and teach you valuable tools to regulate your nervous system.
Mental health improvement Massage Therapy is a valuable complementary therapy to manage anxiety, depression, and insomnia. While mental health is conventionally treated with talk therapy or medication, our mental health is also reflected in how we feel in our bodies. Massage Therapy can be a transformative ritual with physical, mental, and emotional benefits. Somatic experiences and therapeutic touch provided by professional therapists are the missing link in our mental health care system.
Pain management Massage Therapy can be a powerful therapeutic modality. It has been successfully used for chronic pain management and treating musculoskeletal tensions, injuries, and diseases, such as headaches, neck and shoulder pain, lower back and hip pain, and other conditions. Recommended exercises and lifestyle changes can help improve health, movement, and flexibility.
Peter A. Levine, PhD, recommends Massage Therapy as a first step to relieving chronic pain. Levine writes: “As you explore your body experience with the help of an experienced masseuse, you can begin to realize numerous important pain connections. For example, you may recognize that the shoulder or neck pain may start in your hips and back. The pain in your back could also originate from constriction in your ankles and knees. Massage can help you relax and become aware of how various types of tension in your body create the pain.” (Freedom from Pain, 2012) This awareness and curious attention can help reconnect and befriend the body and may eventually lead to less or even freedom from pain.
Post-trauma recovery Body and mind are of equal importance in trauma recovery. Therefore, Massage Therapy can be a complementary modality to support people who have experienced trauma and, as a consequence, might suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Physical pain and tension, irritability, depression, and anxiety might be part of the trauma response, which safe touch can significantly reduce. Treatments with a trauma-informed therapist can help women gain trust and experience touch in a safe environment.
Further, human touch can create a sense of safety and connection, essential elements of professional massage therapy and important aspects of mental health and trauma therapy. Trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk states, “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health.” (2014). Neuroscientist Stephen Porges summarises: “Cues of safety are the treatment.” (2016).
Transformation and change Massage Therapy can help manage the demands of transition times such as pregnancy, early motherhood, (peri and post) menopause, and other challenging times in life such as separation, illness, and aging. Treatments positively affect your mood and allow you to be still and deeply listen to your needs. They can increase your overall wellbeing and create self-awareness, enabling you to make necessary adjustments confidently.
Pregnancy and motherhood support Especially pregnancy and motherhood are profound times of change in a woman’s life. “To be pregnant is to be vitally alive, thoroughly woman, and distressingly inhabited. Soul and spirit are stretched – along with body – making pregnancy a time of transition, growth, and profound beginnings.” (Anne Christian Buchanan)
Pregnancy Massage allows women to connect deeply with their body and baby and prepare mentally and physically for labor and motherhood. Benefits of pregnancy Massage:
- mother-baby connection
- increased relaxation and reduced anxiety
- improved sleep pattern
- reduction of edema
- improved proprioception to support body changes
- eases back, shoulder, and neck pain and all joint and muscular conditions common in pregnancy
- stabilizes hormonal changes and blood pressure
(Pregnancy Massage Australia, 2012)
After birth, women need (and often don’t have) time to recover. Breastfeeding and carrying babies can cause soreness, and looking after children can be overwhelming. During motherhood, Massage Therapy can provide time for self-care that allows women to pause and receive, as no one can serve from an empty vessel.
Mindful pausing Beyond that, Massage Therapy can be a form of mindfulness meditation that supports healing, self-reflection, empowerment, and inner contentment. Treatments allow time out and just ‘be,’ which has become challenging for women with busy lifestyles who try to fill every minute with things they need to do. Mindful, intentional touch can make you feel more present and connected. Conscious breathing, body scanning, and tactile perception during Massage treatments are great ways to increase bodily intelligence. Consultations may help transform bad habits, support guilt-free breaks, and overtake agency and responsibility for one’s wellbeing.
Positive habit change and health ritual Regular treatments can be transformative, with physical, mental, and emotional benefits. A single Massage appointment will give you relief. Yet, just as with having a regular healthy diet, good sleep, and exercise, you get the most significant benefit when you experience massages regularly. Regularity can create a long-term habit change to pause and care for oneself.
Massages and human touch can also help older adults feel well. According to the Elder Care Alliance, “An absence of human touch can cause negative physical and emotional effects for older adults. Without human touch, elders are at increased risk of anxiety, feeling isolated, lowered trust in care partners, and decreased awareness of the senses.”
Other benefits of touch “Premature babies who have regular skin-to-skin contact with their parents continue to differ even ten years later from children who, after birth, were only warmed by an incubator. The former sleep better, are more resistant to stress, and achieve higher scores in cognitive tests. Even babies born ‘on time’ show measurable responses to direct contact. They breathe more deeply, have a more stable metabolism, and even at age one, perform better in stress-resistance tests compared to control groups who did not have skin contact after birth. For a medication, such results would be a breathtaking success. Studies on adults are also clear. This is especially evident in intensive care units, where a lot of data is collected because patients are monitored around the clock. Yet, this very monitoring can also be stressful: alarms blink and beep constantly, and examinations are performed repeatedly—even at night. Such recurring agitation teaches the body to unlearn relaxation; sleep becomes poorer, and internal anxieties increase. When people in intensive care receive regular, pleasant touch (such as through massages), they once again sleep measurably deeper, have lower blood pressure, a calmer breathing rate, and on average, even experience less pain.” — Guilia Enders, physician
Resources
Inspirational words
“Emotional release and muscular release are interdependent – one does not occur without the other.”— Elaine Mayland
“A new stimulus that is perceived as safe and meaningful has the potential to shift our physiological state towards health. Most touch is too busy and too focused on local fixes to promote global feelings of safety via interoceptive, inward touch. Slow relational touch can consistently access primal human needs to be acknowledged, validated and accepted.”— Steven Haines
“Massage is the art of touch, the language of compassion, and the pathway to a more relaxed and balanced life.”— Anodea Judith
“The art of massage is not just about healing the body; it’s about soothing the soul and calming the mind.”— Cindy Williams
“The more we learn about touch, the more we realize just how central it is in all aspects of our lives — cognitive, emotional, developmental, behavioral — from womb into old age. It’s no surprise that a single touch can affect us in multiple, powerful ways.”— Maria Konnikova
“Too often we underestimate the power of touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
— Leo Buscaglia
“Rest and self-care are so important. When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve from the overflow. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.”— Eleanor Brown
“Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.”— Parker Palmer
“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last and it always tells the truth.”— Margaret Atwood
“Touch is an exquisitely social sense, capable of allowing accurate communication of specific emotional states. Interpersonal touch is associated with well-being, promoting pleasant feelings, approach-related behaviours, and reductions in aversive feelings and acute pain.”— López-Solà
“Somatic awareness allows us to reclaim our inherent ability to heal and transform from within.” — Judith Blackstone
“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”— Rumi
“…I have a lot of patients that derive enormous value from massage, and I think massaging in competent hands can be a wonderfully therapeutic thing and I fully endorse it.” – Prof Jason Kovacic, Director and CEO at Victor Chang Cardiac Research Centre
“Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain.” — Carl G. Jung
“Touch heals. (…) Touch soothes the soul. It quiets the longing. It bridges the loneliness. It unites two people. Yet it is also a vital way to inform ourselves about the world. Out of curiosity, out of desire to know and experience, we reach out and touch- from picking up a mango from the stall at the stall at the roadside grower’s market to stroking the soft silk of a hand-painted scarf. Some things we have to touch to know. In this way, touch can enliven us. It activates all of our senses. It serves to enlighten us. (…) Massage is the art of healing touch that transforms. It softens suffering transmutes pain to calm and inner peace. It substitutes fear, pain, and harshness… with grace.” — Erica Tismer and Carolyn Flynn
Massage has been my vehicle of resurrection and renewal. It has helped me to see the dreams trapped in my thighs, to feel the breaths held hostage in my belly, to sense the memories etched into the soles of my feet. And all I have to do is to stay present and follow the hands, like guides, through the wilderness of my body, back to my most essential self.” — Gabrielle Roth
“By connecting with our bodies, we can make real and lasting changes, we can find more joy and agency within us – we have a huge amount of adaptability and creativity inside of us.”— Steven Haines
“The throbbing vein will take you further than any thinking.”— Rumi
I have often seen also that people who are very sick, long to be touched, long to be treated as living people, not as diseases. A great deal of consolation can be given to the very ill simply by touching their hands, looking into their eyes, gently massaging them or holding them in your arms, or breathing in the same rhythm gently with them. The body has its own language of love; use it fearlessly.”— Sogyal Rinpoche
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” —Mother Teresa
“Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard and valued: when they can give and receive without judgement; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.” — Brené Brown
“Not the world, not what’s outside of us, but what we hold inside traps us. We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.” — Gabor Maté
“The person who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing. And can face with us the reality of our powerlessness – that is the person who cares”— Adrian Fleming
“I see it, feelingly”— King Lear, Shakespeare
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”— Audre Lorde
“Sometimes we forget when people are sick or hurt that what they most need is to feel connected, to be loved, to be touched.”— Lissa Rankin, MD
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”— Mahatma Gandhi
The “skin is no more separated from the brain than the surface of a lake is separated from its depths.” — Deane Juhan
“Fear has not studied medicine. Although it claims expertise in every field and pretends to have learned it all, its diplomas are nothing but forgeries.” — Mariana Leky
Books we recommend
Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve – Stanley Rosenberg
Atlas of the Heart – Brené Brown
Atomic Habits – James Clear
Dare to Lead – Brené Brown
Freedom from Pain – Peter Levine
In an Unspoken Voice – Peter Levine
Lost Connections – Johann Hari
Mediation as Medicine – Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. and Cameron Stauth
Mindfulness in Eight Weeks – Michael Chaskalson
Stolen Focus – Johann Hari
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
The Art of Living – Thich Nhat Hahn
The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk
The Brain that Changes itself – Norman Doidge
The Care Manifesto – The Care Collective
The Courage to Be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz
The Mastery of Self – Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.
The Matter with Things – Ian Mc Gilchrist
The Myth of Normal – Gabor Maté
The Power of Kindness – Piero Ferrucci
The Power of Now – Eckard Tolle
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying – Sogyal Rinpoche
Together – Ece Temelkuran
When the Body Says No – Gabor Maté
Insightful videos
How does touch affect our mental and physical health | DW Documentary
The power of touch | Jane Anderson
The surprising benefits of self-soothing touch | BBC Global
When we touch – The science of why touch matters | Dr Michael Banissy
The (super)power of touch | Merle Fairhurst
The science of touching and feeling | David Linden
The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do For Your Stress | DocMikeEvans
How to make stress your friend | Kelly McGonigal
Understanding pain and what can be done about it | Kidshealth New Zealand
Why things hurt | Lorimer Moseley
The brain-changing benefits of exercise | Wendy Suzuki
The Curative Touch of a Magic Rainbow Hug | Janet Courtney
Research and other interesting articles
Evidence for massage therapy: A summary of current research
Packheiser, J., Hartmann, H., Fredriksen, K. et al. A systematic review and multivariate meta-analysis of the physical and mental health benefits of touch interventions. Nat Hum Behav 8, 1088–1107 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01841-8
The magic touch: how healthy are massages actually
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