Should You Get Adjusted Before or After a Massage?
Luckily, we’ve got another installment of “Ask Our Masseuses Anything” right below to answer this burning question! Let’s start by understanding how the two work hand in hand to bring you the best possible natural health results.
How Massage and Chiropractic Work Together
The best way to answer this question is to first talk through what a chiropractic adjustment does for your body, and then what a massage does for your body.
A chiropractic adjustment has a few main goals that can be different for every individual patient. First off, we want to reduce any pain that the patient is experiencing so that you can feel better quickly. We also want to make sure that your spine is properly aligned. This helps to ensure that your nervous system can freely send messages from your brain to other parts of the body as there won’t be any interruption along the spine–sometimes, misalignments can cause pinched nerves (and more) that disrupt signals. Lastly, we want a chiropractic adjustment to restore balance to your body so that things work exactly as they were designed and allow you to self-heal. This means you’ll be able to better accommodate and respond to stress, trauma and injury.
A massage session with us can be designed specifically for your goals just like an adjustment. For some patients, that means wanting to focus on an area of the body that’s causing them problems, be it an injury or tension. Often, we see this with the shoulders, neck and back. A massage can help relieve tension and loosen injured muscles so the area can heal better. Massage therapy is also used by patients who want to simply relax, unwind and de-stress.
Now that we know the goals of both an adjustment and massage, we can let the debating begin. In short, the answer to which should come first largely depends on the individual’s goals. For individuals that are incredibly tense, a massage often makes sense first as it will loosen you up and allow your body to prepare for an adjustment. For others, an adjustment can be ideal as you may have difficulty relaxing right away during a massage, and a chiropractic session often provides an initial dose of relief. After we get a chance to meet with you, we’ll happily let you know which makes the most sense in your specific case.
Learn More Today
Ready to book your massage or have additional questions about visiting us that aren’t addressed here? We’d love to speak with you. Feel free to contact our practice today to book an appointment, request a consultation or simply chat about our services. We look forward to welcoming you into our care and helping you achieve your goals in natural health.