Tai Chi Massage for the Back

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Sufi Bradshaw with Expert Village. I'm now going to go over the back. It's just one of my favorite parts of the body because there are so many muscles. It's always good to start out with a nice clean drape to just fold the sheet over itself a couple of times until it gets to this, right in this area. Right before the glutes or the back ends. It's also good to keep your oil close to you so you don't have to disconnect from the body as much as possible. I am a fan of putting oil here on my forearm. I'm doing this because I'm going to apply a stroke called ironing, which is basically a deeper tissue stroke. What that does is it penetrates the muscles at a faster rate than just doing an efflorage or something superficial. I'm going to start out with placing my forearm on my clients back here, up around the neck area. I'm going to remember to sink into my legs and use my legs as the guide. Just follow that muscle, erector spinae, all the way down to the glutes and then pull up. And I'm going to do that, repeat that a couple times. What this does is just wakes the muscles up and tells the muscles that they are connected. The entire back muscles are connected on a sheet. There's also something called the inner skin, which is your fascia, which connects all of your muscles together. So, what this stroke is really good for is loosening up your fascia, which is the inner skin that holds the muscles in like a cord type of thing. And you can go down the middle of the back with it. I'm going to move over and do this side as well. There's oil here on my forearm. Stand my legs and glide. Massages are so beneficial. I like getting my massages in the morning to start the day. So, that way my bodies prepared, my mind is prepared, and I'm prepared. And then there's also another deep tissue stroke called fists, which you just take your two fists and you glide down the muscle this way using your hip to push you not your hands. It?s very similar to the ironing earlier accept their fists so they're a little bit more shallow. And then lastly, I'm going to do something called wringing, which is just taking the back, crossing the hand over itself. And a lot of this is coming from the pelvis. And you can also apply any of these strokes to any part. You can take the ironing like we did earlier and you can push it on the shoulder blade muscles, which is a lot of a stressful part because so much of our day is sitting up, or in the car, or by the computer. These muscles here, which are connected to the clavicle, they get extremely tight. So, it's always good to push those things out. And you can also apply fists to those muscles as well as any of the other strokes we learned, such as, stripping. You can do combo strokes. It's all up to you as a massage therapist. So this is the back and this is the last part. I'm going to end this session by covering up the body. And then much like we started, I'm going to just add depulpment here to sort of just say goodbye. This is a parting because this has been a unit. It's a very, very spiritual thing. Down the entire body, take the hands up into the hair, massage the head just a little bit. Introduce yourself to every part. And then separate."