The Soma Institute Blog

Massage Useful For Anxiety

No matter what side you’re on, after this last election everyone’s nerves are not only fried, but extra crispy. If all the pundits and all your Facebook friends have left you feeling anxious then there’s no better solution than getting a massage.

In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry Mark Hyman Rapaport and his colleagues report the results of a randomized clinical trial using Swedish massage therapy as an intervention for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). The study conducted at the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, found that twice-weekly massage therapy may be a useful alternative treatment for anxiety in terms of reducing both, psychological and somatic symptoms.

Benefits of Breathing

Breathing. The simplest of activities, and yet so many of us are doing it incorrectly. When was the last time you took a few minutes, sat up straight, and inhaled deeply down into your belly? Deep breathing helps jump start your parasympathetic nervous system and takes a giant load off your heart from the daily grind of circulating your blood.

Now take a deep breath, hold it, exhale and read on….

Here at the Soma Institute our massage protocol contains several steps. Fascial work, joint mobilizations, deeper warming are all essential steps to many treatments, and each and every one of them starts the same way. We walk into the room, we ask if our client is ready to begin, we gently place our hands on our client, and we ask theme to take a few deep breaths.

Controlled breathing, like what you just practiced, has been shown to reduce stress, increase alertness and boost your immune system. For centuries yogis have used breath control, or pranayama, to promote concentration and improve vitality. Buddha advocated breath-meditation as a way to reach enlightenment.

Science is just beginning to provide evidence that the benefits of this ancient practice are real. Studies have found, for example, that breathing practices can help reduce symptoms associated with anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder.

Read more about breathing techniques here.

Massage For Election Anxiety

We’re not here to tell you who to vote for. However….

This election has proven to be particularly stressful for many Americans, and chronic stress has been proven time and time again to have an adverse effect on one’s health. Your immune system, your circulatory system, even the neurons in your brain can be damaged from long term exposure to stress and anxiety. This response that was meant to keep us alive in the wilderness is now wreaking havoc on us in the modern world, and when you’re bombarded in every news cycle by talk from each side meant to ramp up your heart rate its hard not to be adversely affected.

But it’s not too late.

You can be proactive about lowering your stress levels. Actions you can take include:

Listening to music.
Taking a walk.
Exercising.
Deep breathing (or mediation if you want to get fancy).
A hot bath.
Or, of course, GET A MASSAGE!!!!

Even getting a short, fifteen minute massage has been proven to lower levels of stress hormones in somebody’s bloodstream, lower their heart rate and increase their sense of calmness. If you have a qualified massage therapist working on you (such as one who graduated from Soma) the simple act of healthy touch can release a deluge of happy reward hormones and neurotransmitters in your brain and throughout your body resulting in something medical experts are calling “being totally chill.”

Worried about where the country is headed? Wishing your Facebook feed would go back to being videos of kittens acting like they’re not kittens?

Relax. Take a deep breath. And book a massage! (Which you can do in our clinics here!)

What Brought These Students To Massage (part 3)

MICHAEL

What did you do before Soma?

I worked in food service at a university and then at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

What brought you to massage in general, and to Soma specifically?

After massaging friends and family and realizing the impact touch could have even from untrained hands I wanted to see what I could do with trained hands. Soma has a good looking school and I had personal reasons for wanting to be in Chicago.

Do you like having classes in downtown Chicago?

I love it! I would not change a single thing about where it is located.

Who are your biggest influences?

Beyonce, her drive and influence inspire me to reach new heights. My best friend’s mom, she was the type of person I always try to emulate and work towards.

Anything else you want to add?

Massage is great. Having all this clinical education is going to be helpful even if I never work in a clinical setting.

What Brought These Students To Massage

At the heart of everything here are, of course, our students. Soma is very proud that we have such a diverse group with so many wonderful stories to share, and we’ve been asking them to write down some of their experiences for us. The first three stories we received were from a former personal trainer, a retail employee and a licensed cosmetologist.

RAY

What did you do before Soma?

Work in office setting also went to school for personal trainer.

What brought you to massage in general, and to Soma specifically?

I always liked giving massages. I knew I was good since I always made people fall asleep. So I decided to go to massage school but shied away feeling it was more of a female based field, but ten years later I got fed up working in an office and made the move. I only knew of a different massage school at the time, but didn’t have any luck when it came to financial aid. So when I redid my search Soma came up. I got a call the same day and started in May.

Do you like having classes in downtown Chicago?

It’s kind of far but being downtown gives me an awesome feeling and there’s always something going on.