By Patricia Milburn-Barile, RMT
When your child is participating in an intensive therapy program, combining physiotherapy and occupational therapy, the workload can be physically demanding. Adding massage therapy to the mix can provide numerous benefits to help your child achieve the best results. Here's why massage is an excellent complement to these therapies:
1. Supports Recovery and Reduces Discomfort
Massage helps your child’s body recover from multiple intensive therapy sessions by breaking down collagen fibers and adhesions that can lead to stiffness, soreness, and discomfort.
After the intense physical activity required to reach new milestones, massage increases circulation and supports the lymphatic system, which helps drain waste materials that can build up during exercise. This process reduces delayed onset muscle soreness and promotes faster recovery, ensuring your child doesn’t lose momentum during their therapy sessions.
2. Improves Range of Motion and Flexibility
Tight or tense muscles can limit your child’s range of motion, which is critical for achieving progress in intensive therapy. Massage works to loosen muscles and reduce muscle tension, making it easier for your child to perform movements, exercises, and stretches.
By improving flexibility and mobility in soft tissues, ligaments, muscles, and joints, massage can help your child overcome mechanical issues, tissue swelling, or spasticity that may restrict movement. The result? Enhanced participation and performance in therapy sessions!
3. Provides Relaxation and Stress Relief
Intensive therapy can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially for new patients adjusting to unfamiliar movements and routines. Massage offers a much-needed break from the hard work, allowing your child to relax and unwind.
Studies have shown that massage reduces cortisol levels (the stress hormone) by up to 30%, replacing it with dopamine and serotonin, the "feel-good" hormones. This helps your child relax, recharge, and even improve their sleep quality—essential for tackling the next day of therapy with energy and focus.
4. Enhances Overall Health and Wellbeing
The therapeutic effects of massage extend beyond muscle relaxation. It stimulates nutritional flow, improving digestion and elimination processes, while also regulating lymphatic flow to boost immunity and reduce swelling.
Massage also helps lengthen tight, shortened muscles while strengthening weak, low-tone muscles. By improving circulation and muscle tone, massage ensures your child’s body is in the best possible state to benefit from physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
Why Kids (and Therapists) Love Massage
Massage therapy is more than just a physical benefit—it’s something kids genuinely enjoy. That’s why our physiotherapists and occupational therapists are thrilled when their patients start or end their sessions with a massage. It sets a positive tone and prepares the body for the hard work ahead or provides it the necessary relief upon completion of a tough OT/PT session.
Adding massage therapy to your child’s intensive program can make a world of difference in their comfort, progress, and overall experience. It’s the perfect way to balance hard work with recovery and relaxation.
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