Massage therapy is a gentle hands-on manipulation of the soft tissues of your body including your muscles, connective tissue, tendons, ligaments and joints.

Massage therapy is a safe and natural alternative health option that can help alleviate soft tissue discomfort associated with everyday and occupational stresses, muscular over-use and many cumulative trauma syndromes.

It can also greatly reduce the development of painful muscular patterning, if employed early enough after accidents involving trauma and injury.

Body Works Fitness & Physiotherapy's massage therapists will manipulate your muscles and other soft tissues of the body with varying pressure and movement, towards a desired outcome that helps relieve pain and tension.

Our massage therapists use their hands and fingers to perform specific therapeutic massage therapy techniques, but it is not uncommon to use forearms or elbows as well.

Why Massage Therapy?

There are many reasons why you should consider massage therapy as a component of your existing physiotherapy / rehabilitation program or as a part of a wellness program. Massage can have immediate and long term benefits for people from all walks of life – athletes, office workers, and pregnant women. It has also shown notable advantages in patients, who just had surgery, recovering from burns, or suffering from musculoskeletal conditions. Premature infants who are massaged have shown to gain more weight and autistic children also demonstrated less erratic behavior after regular massage therapy.

Massage therapy has been many times proven in a number of researches to decrease heart rate, reduce blood pressure, enhance blood circulation, relax muscles, improve flexibility, develop better range of motion, and promotes production of endorphins. There is a continued flow of research that support the numerous benefits of touch so for whatever reasons one may seek massage therapy – for stress relief, pain management, or simply a luxurious treat after a day's work – the benefits are multiplied many times over if you go to regular and scheduled massage therapy sessions.

Top 5 reasons to consider Massage Therapy

1. Helps relieve your stress and aids relaxation: By reducing heart rate, decreasing your blood pressure, and increasing blood circulation, your body reaches a relaxed state of mental calmness and enhanced ability to stay calm. This quiet state promotes stress relief which, in turn, can positively affect aspects of your life, both from a health and mental perspective.
2. Treat those pesky muscle aches: People suffering from musculoskeletal conditions such as arthritis, for instance, can achieve some level of pain relief after one or a series of massage sessions. This is also an important aspect of a pain management program for arthritis. Massage therapy has also helped people with muscular discomfort by easing muscle pain, relaxing stiff or contracted, muscles, promoting circulation in a deprived area, and restoring some range of motion.
3. Improve circulation of blood and movement of lymph fluids: Massage can dilate or open up blood vessels thereby improving the flow of blood as well as lymph fluids. Distribution of crucial oxygenated blood and vital nutrients as well as removal of waste products is enhanced throughout your body. Massage also reduces excess fluid in the tissue by promoting lymphatic drainage and waste removal from your body.
4. Reduce anxiety: A relaxed state is achieved and the levels of cortisols are significantly lowered so that the level of anxiety and/or depression is also reduced. Endorphins, also known as happy hormones, are released not only to ease pain but also elevate the mood.
5. Foster a sense of well-being and positive mood change: Massage therapy not only relaxes the body but also the mind. It encourages positive body awareness and an enhanced well being. It has holistic benefits that can be very significant.