fit!HK June 2006

Putting the ‘treat’ back into treatment
By Katie McGregor

Amazing fact. Individuals solving maths questions after massage therapy finished in half the time, with 50% fewer errors! But after dragon-boat training it wasn’t my brain that needed fixing (although some would disagree). Dragon boat may be a sport but it certainly isn’t good for your body. Lucky for me, I was to have massage therapy.

Massage therapy is new in Hong Kong and a welcome relief for those who aren’t injured enough to require physiotherapy, but need something more than the clockwork massage that you get when you sign up for a salon massage.

Massage therapists know bodies and they should do too. In Canada, where massage therapy is prevalent and regulated, a registered massage therapist will have ‘satisfactorily’ completed something in the demanding exams in order to receive both a Diploma of Massage Therapy and a Certificate of Registration. A registered therapist can use massage to effectively address a whole range of complaints, from migraines and sports injuries through to more serious conditions such as stroke and surgery recovery or bronchitis.

So back to my back. In a near faith healer-esque way, I knew my massage therapist could feel my pain without even laying hands on. As it happened, she had also been in a dragon boat the weekend before!

Sher Martelle, a registered massage therapist working at the new Sutherland-Chan Centre in Central, started off the session with a postural assessment. “I’m looking for gross imbalances,” she explained. “Typically people have one shoulder lower than the other, women’s hips are often unaligned and rotated from all those years of carrying kids, the calf muscle on the leading leg is usually larger and so on. This is all normal.” I followed the trend with my right shoulder being lower than my left. “People tend to always carry their bags on one shoulder, for example,” explained Sher. As a note, in an effort to even things out, I have tried since then to carry my bag on my left shoulder. It amazes me to realize, just five minutes later, that my bag has magically migrated back to the right shoulder. Old habits die hard!

After discussing my treatment I got down on the table and Sher started work. Heat packs were applied to “bring blood to the tissues and makes the massage easier and more effective’. Long flowing strokes were used to ‘calm my sympathetic nervous system’ and again, to warm the tissues. Then Sher got down to business. Using a combination of massage techniques from Swedish to trigger point, using her palms, fingers, elbows, and forearms, she really worked on my trouble spots. Then, to get me ready for the outside world, she finished with calming strokes and a few final stretches.

It was over all too soon but I appreciated the attention that had been paid to my aches and pains. My body had been ‘treated’ in more ways than one.

If your body is out of sorts check the Sutherland-Chan Centre web, www.sccentre.com.hk, for more details on how clinical massage might help.

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