Swedish Massage

• What is Swedish massage?
• What are the benefits of Swedish massage?
• What separates Swedish massage from other modalities?

What is Swedish massage?

Swedish massage is the most common type of massage that people envision when they think of massage therapy. Most therapists customize the flow and feel of this modality with a combination of different types of massage strokes to best suit client needs. A swedish massage can be “flowy” and relaxing or vigorous and objective, depending on your therapist’s personal style. Swedish massage is often the main modality for merging techniques from other modalities into.

What are the benefits of Swedish massage?

Swedish massage is a technique that loosens the soft tissue of the body, improve circulation, and milks toxins from connective tissue, flushing them out of the muscle and into the lymphatic system with the aid of flowing strokes. Swedish massage is very beneficial to the immune system because of this process. The lymphatic system is the major blood filtering system of the body, meant to detect foreign or harmful materials/organisms in the blood and moves the majority of the filtrate towards the kidneys where it is then flushed from the system. This is why it is always good to drink water before, and after, a massage.

What separates Swedish massage from other modalities?

Swedish massage is a physical modality, as opposed to energy based. It was created by Johann Georg Mezger, a Dutch physician, in 1838. The name became “Swedish massage” because Mezger borrowed a sub-set of techniques from a system assembled by Dr. Pehr Henrick Ling, a Swedish doctor often referred to as “the father of physical therapy”. The techniques are focussed on alleviating physical tensions that impede the healing process of physical rehabilitation. Swedish massage is often referred to elsewhere as classic massage, and due to its utilization of effleurage, a flowing stroke, has the tendency to be very relaxing.