How to Give a Massage

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Gretchen Rivas with Relax to the Max Massage Therapy and today we're going to be talking about how to give a massage. When you are working with someone and you want to give them a massage what you want to do is oil their back up first and I have already done that. We don't really need to add a whole lot. You don't want to put so much oil on someone when you are giving a massage that they're like sliding around in oil and grease so just enough to give you some nice glide is all you need and then just do some nice soothing strokes, choppy short strokes are not always the most comfortable or feel the best. You want to do long gliding strokes to make the person feel connected and then some nice other massage strokes that feel good are those that go against the muscle fiber called cross fiber friction and since most of the muscles in the back run this way what you would like to do is go across and the opposite way and that really feels good and helps loosen up the muscle fibers and release tension and stress in the person. You can work in the shoulder area through here, around the shoulder blades and come up through the neck and you can do this on any part of the body, this long stroking and soothing strokes down on the arms and also when you get to the leg area you can do that too. The main thing you want to be careful of is not to rub on the bone. You want to avoid the bony prominences on the body, work on the muscle tissues and ask for feedback from the person you are working on so that way if you are new to this and you are just playing around with a friend and just trying to give a massage and not professionally trained, have them give you feedback on how you are doing and if you are rubbing on anything that is painful. You want to be careful about that. Just go nice and slow and stroke through the areas that need it and that's how you give a massage."