How to Massage a Senior's Hands

Video Transcript

"Okay in this segment we're going to be massaging the arm, hands and shoulder. Here since we have skin exposed, we can utilize the lotion that we used on the feet. So I'm going to just apply a little bit of lotion, again about the size of quarter. You don't want too much lotion, because then your hands will be sliding off her arms and it's not very comfortable for the person. You want to have enough lubrication to where your hands are easily moving. So if you don't feel like it's enough you can always apply a little bit more. But again, notice the strokes, they're going back towards the heart. When I pull my hand back it's just light, I'm just barely touching the arm, but when I push, my deep stroke is towards the heart. Notice that I'm not pushing too hard, it's just a gentle push and you want to stay gentle when you're dealing with the elderly and ill. You'll find that you have to watch their face, watch their breathing, if you're doing something that hurts them they'll winch, they'll grimace, you'll see that on their face. So you have to pay attention to the nonverbal communication as well as the verbal communication. So again, we're going to work here with the forearm, just doing some gentle strokes pushing the blood back to the heart. Work with both sides of the forearm and it just helps relax some of these muscles that they use in reading and writing and holding that cell phone all the time. We'll get down to the hand and here you want to work over the carpals. Now this area tends to just feel wonderful when you just do some gentle rubbing over the carpals. You'll see my thumbs here, but on the bottom side is where my hands are. So I'm actually working the bottom of her wrist with these fingers. So when I have my thumbs here, my bottom fingers are actually moving at the same time, so she gets double massage sort of speak at the same time. Then, I start working my way down the hand, the palm area. Again, with my fingers I'm just kind of pulling the palm apart, nice gentle stretch to open the hand. Anytime you can open the person's hand, it just feels wonderful, just put in a nice little gentle stretch on the hand anytime you do that and then start working in the inside of the palm. I'll show you from this angle, no I won't! There we go, here I'm stretching out the fingers and then working on the palm and you can just do strokes along the bones here in between the groves that you find here and anything in here is just going to feel wonderful. Then, work your way up the fingers, doing each finger to the end. Again, there's reflexology points in the fingers and we're not going to get into that in this segment, but just know that stuff that you do, massaging that you do on the hands will have an impact on the rest of the body as well."