Massage therapy helps muscles, relieves stress

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Written by Lindsey Hoyt

Friday, 14 November 2008 09:02

Churning stomach. Reduced concentration. Knotted muscles. Bloodshot eyes. Pit stains. People walk around looking like this; stress is written all over their bodies.

You see them pounding away at a paper or hunched over a textbook and you think, “Definitely been there before.”

Or you think, “I’m feeling it as bad as they’re looking it,” because we all feel stressed sooner or later.

College stress doesn’t often slow down, and it never really stops. Freshmen and sophomores are on their own in an unfamiliar environment, away from family and friends. They have many new and fun distractions to deal with in college. Upperclassmen have their GPA, career goals, internships, graduation, post-graduate studies and “the real world” to worry about.

About half of all college students report having felt depressed enough at one time that they had trouble functioning, according to www.healthyminds.org, a Web site of the American Psychiatric Association.

Stress is serious because left untamed it can lead to anxiety and depression. So the big question is how to tame the stress beast.

Mentally, it’s all about balance and perception, Mental Health Counselor Brenda Tracy said.

“We need some stress. It’s what motivates us. It’s what makes us get up in the morning and go and do things. But then it’s when it gets to be too much, and we’ve overcommitted or we haven’t prepared or we’ve not taken care of ourselves, that it gets rough,” Tracy said.

A small amount of stress is good, she said, but too much stress is dysfunctional in that it works against us.

Managing stress means eating well, getting enough sleep, exercising and having down time. The aim is to maintain balance between studies, social life and activities, Tracy said.

Our perception of ourselves and of our situation can also have a big affect on our stress level, Tracy said.

Many more students use the University Counseling Center around midterms and finals, Tracy said. There are five counselors and four graduate or post-graduate interns available for appointment at 341 Knight Hall.

Another way to deal with stress is massage therapy. Amy Hollon is the massage therapist in the Wellness Center inside Half Acre Gym. Ninety percent of her appointments are for stressed students, Hollon said.

“People deal with stress different ways. A lot of people press through it, some people sleep through it, some people drink their way through it, just depending on the personality. Massage is kind of a nice alternative [to anything destructive],” Hollon said.

Muscles store memories from injuries even the drunken tumble down some stairs we didn’t feel at the time and we aren’t aware of it. Hollon said stress, minor injuries and small, repetitive motions are what build up in our muscles and create knots.

Tiny motions like the constant pressure of a backpack or typing on a computer cause bigger problems in our muscles, Hollon said

Certain muscles absorb different memories. Low back muscles store issues with family and support. The calves hold fears of moving forward in life. The neck and shoulders feel the weight of your world and wrists handle your flexibility in life, Hollon said.

So it isn’t only athletes and people who exercise a lot that can benefit from massage, Hollon said. She said she recommends, ideally, a maintenance massage every three to four weeks for everyone.

For those lacking the time or money to get a massage so often, Hollon said yoga and pilates are good exercises to prevent muscle knots. Those exercises are constantly stretching the muscles so that they don’t have a chance to get out of alignment and peak into knots, she said.

Hollon said weight lifting is the worst type of exercise for muscle knotting, because it compresses rather than stretches the muscles.

The types of massage offered at the Wellness Center are Swedish, deep tissue and sports. Hollon said she assesses each individual and massages according to what they need and can handle.

“Each body is so different,” Hollon said.

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