Restorative Massage
Many people use massage as a way to experience well-being.
It is documented that humans need regular touch in order to thrive. Releasing our cares to a session of massage therapy and letting ourselves sink into the moment by moment experience can reset our nervous system and allow us to return to our responsibilities renewed.
Massage Impacts Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a theory by Albert Bandura that refers to a person's belief in her capacity to accomplish behaviors necessary to attain specific goals. It allows us to make long-term behavior changes that are shown to improve health outcomes. Many participants expressed statements that the non-pharmacology treatment of massage therapy assisted them in making a variety of positive decisions, thus alluding to the question of self-efficacy.
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/2760/
This research study reported several studies that showed improved self-efficacy in patients who got regular massage. These included HIV positive participants, who found that regular massage improved their self-efficacy. Improvement in T-cell counts were also found. Another group looked at self management in a population of underserved rural people who had chronic illness. Self management of their illness improved with regular massage.
It also found that touch had a positive impact on depression, which started at the fourth massage and continued into the sixth and eighth massage.
Children living with HIV receiving massage were shown to have an increase in self-help abilities and in communication.
https://daneshyari.com/article/preview/2619495.pdf
This study tested the effect of regular massage on the self-efficacy of people with multiple sclerosis and found a positive outcome.
Emotional regulation in chronic pain
This is an interview of an author who writes about the connection between emotional pain and the physical impacts to our health. The author, who is a science writer, went through a divorce and used her lived experience to explore the physical changes that her body went through. She used various types of self exploration to process through her emotional experience and to improve her physical health.
The emotional/body connection is being explored by researchers who are looking into the possibility that trauma from earlier in our lives makes us more susceptible to chronic pain from physical injuries.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29502762/
This is a review of the body of research that suggests that maladaptive emotional regulation might be a risk factor in chronic pain.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01514/full
This study found that when people practiced pain acceptance that they had a higher pain tolerance.
Using massage to address the emotional pain held in a person's body from past heightened emotional experiences is not a new idea. Many massage therapists have stories of clients reliving past emotional experiences during a massage. This is often associated with a specific part of the body, and massage therapists talk about trauma being held in that place.
Chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy + massage
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31229205/
massage before each chemo infusion protects against chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) in this study.
https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO.2019.37.15_suppl.e23067
https://www.asco.org/about-asco/press-center/news-releases/patients-chemotherapy-induced-peripheral-neuropathy-experience
Conclusions: We observed sustained reduction in patients with long-term CIPN up to 6 weeks after treatment completion for the more intensive 3X week, 30 minutes per session massage group, regardless of massage treatment site. A large-scale efficacy trial is warranted to validate the role of oncology massage therapy for CIPN.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21766161/
2011 case report on a single patient with CIPN. Circulatory massage was performed on this person and by the end of the treatment schedule they had significantly reduced peripheral neuropathy.