Chair Massage Techniques - Using Your Body Effectively Part 1

Chair Massage expert, Eric Brown, has created 8 principles for efficient use of your body that he encourages you apply to minimize the wear and tear on your muscles and joints. This the first article of a four part sequence:

Principle 1: Keep your back in a straight line

The back should be held in a neutral position. The curves of the spine ought not to be emphasized or minimized. By preserving this posture, there is minimum stress to the vertebral discs or the ligaments that support your spine. Because we normally have sedentary lifestyles, we tend to lack the strength and awareness required to stabilize the torso in this alignment.

For this reason you must be extremely aware of holding the back in this neutral alignment. This stabilization is critically important and lets you as the practitioner to transmit your weight nicely into the customer's body.

You really must lunge when applying many of the massage techniques. If our back is straight in a lunge position, you will notice that you are looking at the floor. This is a very unnatural position. We elicit an orienting reflex that causes us to align our gaze to the horizon. So your usual inclination will be to lift your gaze and bend your torso in a very upright position to look straight ahead. This takes the spine out of a neutral position and causes hyperlordosis in the lumbar spine. This makes it a great deal more strenuous to stabilize the low back and creates undue strain to the joints of the spine.

It's all-important to battle this instinct and to preserve a very neutral position of the spine. At first it will feel quite unnatural. Keep in mind, as you bring your focus to your back you'll start to understand in a kinesthetic way why this makes sense. At first it will take great effort to keep this neutral alignment. But over time you'll being to feel more comfortable with the feeling of this position and it will eventually feel much more comfortable to maintain.

Below you'll find a easy exercise you can do to get the feeling for stability in your back in this neutral position.

Try this exercise for an neutrally aligned back...

Coming from a background in dance, I've been made aware of different ways of thinking about the human body and the way it functions. Dancers don't have a lot of technical knowledge about the body's anatomy so they are likely to talk about movement using imagery. One image they habitually use, whether standing still on stage or jumping into the air, is the image of pushing downward into the earth. It's like Newton's third law of motion: \"Every action has an opposite and equal reaction.\" The more they push into the ground, the more their back elongates and lengthens.

For this first exercise, simply stand still in one position with your feet slightly separated. As you stand quietly for a moment, notice the sensations through your feet, your legs and your back. Scan your body with your inner eyes. Now as you are standing there in a relaxed way, think of pressing into the floor with your feet. Think about trying to push the floor away from you. As you do this, pay attention to what happens in your body. Be aware of how your legs feel as though they become more firm while at the same time staying relaxed. Feel your pelvis move into an upright position so that it feels like a bowl that supports your abdominal contents. Observe how your spine appears to straighten without any effort and how your body seems to lengthen and get taller around a central axis.

Repeat this process a number of times letting your body relax and then engaging your feet into the ground to really recognize that lengthening sensation in your body.