Viliam, can you recommend any resources for massage safety? I’ve been doing self-massage for years, it’s saved my career from multiple chronic pain conditions. I try to read about safety when I can, but I don’t know of any good central resource, and this is actually the first time I learned about the varicose veins thing...
I had a university course and some supervised practice 20 years ago. Sorry, I don’t have notes, and I probably forgot a lot. Also, we never did self-massage, it was always other-massage.
The risk with varicose veins, if I remember correctly, is also knocking some plaque off and giving someone a stroke. (I suppose that could happen spontaneously, too. But perhaps with your “help” it would happen sooner, and maybe with a larger piece? No idea.)
Hands and legs massaged in the proximal direction, otherwise you could damage venous valves by basically pressing the blood through them in the opposite direction. (No idea whether that hurts or how much. We were taught not to do that, and I followed the advice, so I didn’t find out.)
With muscles, you progress through warming up, friction, smaller pressure, greater pressure. Warming up, because otherwise the muscle is not relaxed.
Don’t push on skin if there is a bone below it, you would be damaging whatever is between your finger and the bone. Don’t push on spine. (Though you can massage around the spine, making a “V” shape with your fingers, each fingertip on one side of the spine, moving in cranial direction.)
We only did the massage of back, arms, legs, neck, and face. I do not remember whether there was an actual reason mentioned for avoiding the front part of the body. (I remember from a different source that massaging the belly in a wrong direction could tangle your colon. Not sure if that’s true. The correct direction is clockwise for most people, but… there are a few people who have it the other way round.) Pushing on entrails is an obviously bad idea. Pushing on boobs is also bad, not sure why exactly (whether actually harmful, or just because massage sometimes encourages fat cells to release some fat, and women usually want to keep their boobs).
(And the idea of pushing on a pregnant woman’s abdomen is just… how the fuck could any sane person even consider this? Can you imagine how fragile are the organs of a fetus? Also, you get the feedback from the woman whether it hurts her, but you do not get the feedback from the fetus; it’s not like it can yell at you or move out of the way of your iron grip. This part just horrifies me; if a person needs to be explicitly told this—and quotes the advice with a question mark, as if there is some doubt to it—what else do they need to be told explicitly that you or me would just consider too obvious to mention? Don’t stab your fingers in other people’s eyes? Don’t crush their windpipe? Don’t punch their heart?)
Returning to the original topic, massage is taught at medical schools and sport schools, you could probably attend a lecture if you care about this. Or you could pay a professional masseur to show you how to massage your friend. That way you could also get some tacit knowledge, such as “when you do this, put your hands in this angle” etc. (If you know an experienced doctor, you could ask them whether they had patients who were hurt by massage, and what exactly happened.)
From my perspective, unlike the OP, you seem to generally know what you are doing.
Thanks a lot for the reply, this is valuable info.
From my perspective, unlike the OP, you seem to generally know what you are doing.
I appreciate the kind words, but I’ve made no systematic effort to acquire knowledge—everything I posted in this thread is just bits and pieces I picked up over the years.
As you can see from elsewhere in this thread, I suspect I might have given myself an internal injury about a month ago from doing deep tissue massage, likely due to being on a low dose of an anticoagulant supplement (nattokinase).
However, I do think this sort of injury is generally rare. And my health would be in far worse shape if it wasn’t for massage.
Viliam, can you recommend any resources for massage safety? I’ve been doing self-massage for years, it’s saved my career from multiple chronic pain conditions. I try to read about safety when I can, but I don’t know of any good central resource, and this is actually the first time I learned about the varicose veins thing...
I had a university course and some supervised practice 20 years ago. Sorry, I don’t have notes, and I probably forgot a lot. Also, we never did self-massage, it was always other-massage.
The risk with varicose veins, if I remember correctly, is also knocking some plaque off and giving someone a stroke. (I suppose that could happen spontaneously, too. But perhaps with your “help” it would happen sooner, and maybe with a larger piece? No idea.)
Hands and legs massaged in the proximal direction, otherwise you could damage venous valves by basically pressing the blood through them in the opposite direction. (No idea whether that hurts or how much. We were taught not to do that, and I followed the advice, so I didn’t find out.)
With muscles, you progress through warming up, friction, smaller pressure, greater pressure. Warming up, because otherwise the muscle is not relaxed.
Don’t push on skin if there is a bone below it, you would be damaging whatever is between your finger and the bone. Don’t push on spine. (Though you can massage around the spine, making a “V” shape with your fingers, each fingertip on one side of the spine, moving in cranial direction.)
We only did the massage of back, arms, legs, neck, and face. I do not remember whether there was an actual reason mentioned for avoiding the front part of the body. (I remember from a different source that massaging the belly in a wrong direction could tangle your colon. Not sure if that’s true. The correct direction is clockwise for most people, but… there are a few people who have it the other way round.) Pushing on entrails is an obviously bad idea. Pushing on boobs is also bad, not sure why exactly (whether actually harmful, or just because massage sometimes encourages fat cells to release some fat, and women usually want to keep their boobs).
(And the idea of pushing on a pregnant woman’s abdomen is just… how the fuck could any sane person even consider this? Can you imagine how fragile are the organs of a fetus? Also, you get the feedback from the woman whether it hurts her, but you do not get the feedback from the fetus; it’s not like it can yell at you or move out of the way of your iron grip. This part just horrifies me; if a person needs to be explicitly told this—and quotes the advice with a question mark, as if there is some doubt to it—what else do they need to be told explicitly that you or me would just consider too obvious to mention? Don’t stab your fingers in other people’s eyes? Don’t crush their windpipe? Don’t punch their heart?)
Returning to the original topic, massage is taught at medical schools and sport schools, you could probably attend a lecture if you care about this. Or you could pay a professional masseur to show you how to massage your friend. That way you could also get some tacit knowledge, such as “when you do this, put your hands in this angle” etc. (If you know an experienced doctor, you could ask them whether they had patients who were hurt by massage, and what exactly happened.)
From my perspective, unlike the OP, you seem to generally know what you are doing.
Thanks a lot for the reply, this is valuable info.
I appreciate the kind words, but I’ve made no systematic effort to acquire knowledge—everything I posted in this thread is just bits and pieces I picked up over the years.
As you can see from elsewhere in this thread, I suspect I might have given myself an internal injury about a month ago from doing deep tissue massage, likely due to being on a low dose of an anticoagulant supplement (nattokinase).
However, I do think this sort of injury is generally rare. And my health would be in far worse shape if it wasn’t for massage.