Any of us who have ever felt stressed, tired, overworked, underpaid or ill will know that someone taking the time to massage your shoulders or feet can be the answer your body was crying out for.

While massage may seem like a superficial or indulgent extra when life gets busy or challenging, it can prove to be so much more than body maintenance – it’s part of your physical and emotional wellbeing.

“Massage is part of your physical and emotional wellbeing”

Jennifer Young has fought long, hard and successfully to create and supply both products and treatment training to therapists and individuals, to offer spa treatments to those with cancer. Her approach to spa treatments is as factual and systematic as it is intuitive and sympathetic, and from her approach we can all learn a lot – massage, and indeed any spa treatment, is far from trivial.

Through careful research and challenging the status quo, which at the time dictated that massage is harmful to those with cancer, Jennifer ascertained that there are both long and short term benefits of adapted massage for those with and living beyond cancer, and frankly they apply to most of us whether we’re suffering from a particular ailment or not.

Short term benefits of massage include:

• Reduced anxiety, depressed mood and anger in breast cancer patients.
• Increased vigour.
• Reduced mood disturbances and perceived stress levels.
• Improved sleep quality.
• Improved quality of life.
• Reduced pain and improvement of mood, reduced stress levels.
• Reduced perception of pain, nausea and increased relaxation.
• Pain intensity, pulse rate, and respiratory rate significantly reduced immediately after massage. At study entry, the massage group reported higher pain intensity, which decreased by 42% (25% reduction in the control group).
• Reduced anxiety scores, depression, general fatigue, reduced motivation fatigue, and emotional fatigue.

Long-term benefits include:

• Reduced depression and hostility, increased urinary dopamine, serotonin values, natural killer cell number and lymphocytes in breast cancer patients.
• Reduced mood disturbances and perceived stress levels.

While all of these benefits are based on research and anecdote and are specifically related to those with or recovering from cancer, the majority of them have relevance to every individual.

The internet will give you any number of massage benefits from helping with sports and soft tissue injuries to anxiety, digestive disorders and insomnia related to stress, but at the other end of the spectrum it’s important to remember that every person and everybody is different, so the benefits are extremely personal.

We all have a story of someone we know or love who has been through a hard time, or maybe even just a period of time that’s a bit more stressful than we would like. Then again, you may be going through a period in your life where everything is fabulous and you just want it to feel even more fantastic. Whatever the reason, massage or any spa treatment, can feel like a luxury, but its benefits shouldn’t be dismissed as trivial.

Some time ago, when Spabreaks.com had just launched Recovery Retreats (spa days and breaks for anyone with or recovering from cancer), we organised a break at Grayshott Spa for a client and her friend who was ill with cancer. Between the time it was organised and the time she visited Grayshott, her condition had deteriorated. Grayshott worked with discretion and sensitivity to make sure that the client and her friend were offered a spa experience that worked for them – from the room type to the treatments and their location within the spa.

Three weeks after they visited we got an email from the client saying: “thank you so much for arranging our break for us. My friend passed away a couple of weeks after our visit, but on that break it was so nice to spend time together in an environment that wasn’t clinical, where we could just be friends and have fun.”

Every spa will have their own processes, expertise and capabilities when it comes to adapted spa treatments, but whether you’re having a regular massage or something more specialised, never underestimate the power of massage.

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