Basics of Deep Tissue Massage

Video Transcript

"If you've ever wondered about the basics of giving a deep tissue massage, I can help. I'm Sundae with Natural Sundae. Now the most important thing to remember with deep tissue is that you don't hurt your client. And the basics for deep tissue are generally the same as for any massage, you really want to start superficial to deep which means you need to relax your client first. You can't just dig right in with your elbow. That's really going to cause pain and it's going to hurt them and it's going to cause some tissue damage. And they're actually not going to relax so that you can get in there, they're going to tense up which is going to make your job a lot harder. So you want to first, in a deep tissue massage, "excuse me", just try to relax your client and do some relaxing moves. Make sure they're definitely going let you in. They're going to allow you in. They're going to allow you in there. So just do some nice gliding, make sure you relax them. And now that we've relaxed our client, one of the techniques I find most useful is to use my forearm and my elbow. And it takes a little bit of practice so you need to do this very carefully, especially if you're going along the spine. You definitely don't want to hit the spine, you don't want to go anywhere near the spine, you don't want to go on the spine. Okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my forearm, I'm going to kneel down, so I can get right up here, near the shoulder area, use my body weight and go right near the spine. This is actually the muscle called your Erectus Spinae and then you could actually see it right here, going right on this rounded area. This rounded muscle right here is what you're going to hit, so you're going to go down with your forearm and up with your whole forearm and then down laterally across the gluts and up. And this is just a very, very basic deep tissue massage technique, but it's one of the most effective and the one I'm sharing with you today. I'm not going to go too in-depth because you really need a license to do a deep tissue massage from a professional. So we're just going to show you this. You can do either side, either of forearm you can use. You're going to go up, across like that. And then you can actually go back up with your forearm, with your elbow a little bit, go down. You can actually switch arms like this, use that forearm to go down across the shoulder, use that top of the arm and then down. And this is my favorite deep tissue technique, it's really effective. It's actually good exercise for the therapist and it feels really good for the client and you can go really deep. And as you can see where my arms have been, it's red. That's increasing circulation to the surface of the tissue and that brings healing to your back. I'm Sundae with Natural Sundae."