Emotional Healing through Massage Therapy

Emotional Healing Through Massage Therapy

Sometimes you have to be dangerously close to a problem to see and or effect the solution. In seeking a path, Clients who may have suffered from trauma or abuse benefit from some form or forms of emotional healing - it is not always easy and requires a certain bravery and trust. But the rewards are worth it. It can change your life. Many of these people are touch averse and their brain more frequently associates touch sensations as negative.  Part of our nervous system has a "decider" switch of sorts, when your nerves are stimulated by a touch impulse, a "pre-signal" is sent and very quickly the brain has to decide if this is good touch or bad touch and respond accordingly.  To illustrate how this works, think of your self and a frind you are starting to like, or a significant other and you are walking along in a park and your upper arms touch.  How does it make you feel?  Probably warm, probably wanting more?  No imagine you are sitting on a bus or train and some undesirable person is next to you and they move so that their arm rubs up against yours.  Now how would that make you feel?  Creepy? would you pull away?  But its the same sensation!  Only in context is it good or bad.  For touch averse people, their brain sends out the "bad" signal even when the touch is "good" until it gets re-trained.

In order to help the healing process one must retrain their brain to associate certain touch with positive, and over time the positive feeling push aside the negative ones and healing begins.  We all need touch, it has been proven, And yet we are all in some small way becoming touch averse, even if we have not suffered a traumatic experience.  We are living in more interconnected than ever with the internet yet at the same time we are more isolated than ever for the same reason, the internet.  Moreover society has been making all forms of touch taboo.  Things you might have seen in the 1950's as normal, a teacher and a student, a parent and another persons child are all more and more being assumed to be "inappropriate"  Touch is becoming associated with fear, and this needs to change.

But back to trauma and emotional healing.  Very often the people that need touch most experience it the least.  The good news is that it does NOT have to be that way.  Healing can happen, in everyone. But you need to start.

This is among the work of which I am most proud.  If you are or know someone who has suffered and would like to regain control and begin or complete the healing process, please contact me or share my contact information with them. I say begin or "complete" because in most cases individuals in this situation will seek out therapy (verbal therapy) support groups (again mostly words) and never get around to the core which is touch itself.

The following post is a beautifully written poetic piece on the idea of bodywork for emotional healing. I share it with you here in its entirety for you to read and enjoy.

Persons seeking a path to heal might be justifiably nervous about what seeing a massage therapist like myself might entail. Rachael Scott, a colleague wrote this and I believe sums things up in a simplified, poetic, non-technical post.

​- enjoy 

What happens in a Bodywork Session? (trauma)

 What happens in a Bodywork Session? *

Whether a single, jarring incident or hurt inflicted over time - trauma permeates every layer.

The pain is conscious and un(der)conscious.

It's physical, emotional and spiritual.

It's communal, familial.

Trauma creeps down our spines, makes a home in our bellies, connects wires to our brains where the machine replays the most terrifying moments of pain.

Over and over on a loop so we don't forget.

Trauma winds, spirals, clenches and creeps.

It drips into every cell, making its way into the past and future.

Now bodywork... that's here.

Here in between these four walls, you're safe.

You, me, this pain.

Just the three of us ready for a different kind of conversation.

I reach out my hand to find the place where it hurts.

You breathe in, tentatively at first, unsure but ready to listen.

The pressure feels pleasant.

A welcome reprieve.

You breathe deeply, discovering new places within yourself.


Through my offered touch you embark on a sensory journey.

The trauma and the pain show up as guides.

And we get to know them.

They don’t want to hurt you.


They say, “I have something to show you.”

We wander over and explore new sensations.

And it gets easier.

Then you say, “My body is my friend.”

Thank you Rachael Scott
See her original post here