Is Holistic Health More Than a Buzzword?

In the medical world, holistic health has managed to become a buzzword. To someone who is new to this kind of practice, it may not be very clear what it entails.

Simply defined, holistic health refers to any form of treatment that focuses on the overall health of the involved individual. It will focus on physical, spiritual, social, and emotional health.

Massage therapy has been around for quite a long time now, perhaps one of the oldest forms of medicine. Just think of a caveman hitting his head on the top of the cave. What would be his instinctive remedy, but to rub the pain?

Massage therapy involves the manual manipulation of the soft tissues in the human body (connective tissue, muscles, ligaments, and tendons) to help in enhancing the well-being and general health of the involved individual.

As you can probably see, both massage therapy and holistic health have the same aim.

However, the question is, are they related in any way?

Is There a Relationship Between Massage Therapy and Holistic Health?

If you wish to become a massage therapist, it is essential to know what your massage therapy education may not teach you. If you have a sit down with most massage therapists and ask them about their experience working, most of them will give you a story of how one of their clients wept during a massage therapy session. Weeping is something that only happens when an individual’s emotions get triggered. The emotions will get triggered as certain areas of the person’s body are being treated.

If a massage therapist can trigger emotions via his or her work, this means that incorporating holistic health into massage therapy is easy. The human body is usually an information storehouse. With the right guidance, it is possible to bring consciousness to patterned behaviors such as tension headaches, chronically tight shoulders, and even torqued hips.

Most of the physical ailments that massage therapy is used to treat do have an emotional story they can tell. Applying holistic health in massage therapy will help determine the root cause of the issues that your client is facing.

Taking a Holistic Therapy Approach

Maybe you did learn how to manipulate the soft tissues in a human body to relieve pain at one of the best massage schools Winnipeg. If you are to include holistic health in your massage therapy, you will have to do more than just manipulate the soft tissues.

What you will need to do is avoid only focusing on the physical state of your client. You need to also have an interest in your client's challenges and joys in his or her life. This will help you learn the stressors which might be available in your client’s life. These stressors could be impeding the client’s process of healing.

When you know the stressors available in your client’s life, you will have the ability to help him or her figure out how to eliminate them and hence aid in healing. When a patient has more awareness, it will be easy for him or her to avoid relying on outside help to deal with the health issues bothering him or her.  

I want to make clear that as a massage therapist, it’s important to understand our scope of practice. The training you received as part of your massage therapy education did not equip you to be a counselor as well as a massage therapist, but having the tools to refer on your clients to the help they need to heal the mind will also help in the healing of their body.