Whether you are looking for a way to pamper yourself or treat any pain in some parts of your body, getting a massage is something that will definitely make anyone feel better.

Here are 6 benefits of getting a massage:

1.    It eases any muscle pain.

When you do a lot of physical activities every day, there’s always a big possibility that you will strain your muscles. This leads to abrupt changes in your body which can affect your daily activities. So in order to ease those sore muscles, get a massage to relieve it from pain. In fact, a massage therapy is one of the most effective methods to treat chronic back pain.

1.    It improves your sleep.

A simple massage promotes relaxation so if you have problems with getting enough rest and sleep, it’s the best method to undergo. Getting a massage can greatly improve your sleep every night. It’s one of the things that can help you overcome insomnia. Less sleep can cause a lot of health problems and increase your stress levels. So make sure to get a massage more often to improve your sleep at night.

1.    It soothes your anxious and depressed mind.

When one is going through depression and anxiety, one would need something incredibly therapeutic. One of the things that can help someone to deal with anxiety and depression is a massage. Studies show that when one receives a good massage therapy, they become less depressed and anxious. A relaxed mind is extremely important for someone who is anxious and depressed so getting a massage can definitely help.

1.    It helps to relieve headaches.

Getting a massage can help decrease the tension of pain in your head. So when you have a headache, you can always book for a last-minute massage. It can help you big time to relieve your headache. Headaches are absolutely frustrating as it can affect your daily activities. If you want to avoid taking any medication and want to treat it naturally, considering getting a good massage.

1.    It boosts your immunity.

The good effects of massage can help you fight off sickness. Getting a good massage can greatly boost your immunity.

1.    It improves your mood.

 

Recommended byPerhaps the greatest and instant benefit you will get from getting a massage is that it makes you feel better and food about yourself. With this, your mood is improved and help you face your daily tasks and responsibilities with a more positive outlook. That is the reason why after a long day at work or after a stressful activity, it is always a good idea to get a good massage.

Does CBD Really Help With Pain?

​The frenzy over CBD (also known as cannabidiol, the non-psychoactive component found in a cannabis plant) isn’t slowing down. Canada just legalized the use of recreational cannabis, including CBD, allowing residents to try CBD products to improve issues like anxiety, sexual performance and poor sleep. Many wellness centers are also jumping on board, using products like CBD oil ― arguably one of the most commonly used forms of CBD ― as a way to alleviate customers’ various ailments.
One of those issues? Muscle pain. Studies suggest CBD works as a pain reliever and may even help to relieve the symptoms of arthritis. Anecdotally, people have credited CBD for helping them with their back pain. One of the main ways people do this is by using CBD oil in a massage.
I suffer from sciatica ― a type of pain that affects a large nerve that extends from the lower back down the back of each leg ― along with some other constant aches that just come from being a mom who also sits at a desk most of the day. I’ve been searching for natural relief for quite some time, so I decided to give a CBD massage a try.
I visited The Spa Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada (where I live) to get a massage using CBD oil. My therapist spoke in hushed tones as she explained the benefits of the treatment, which she said include muscle pain relief, increased relaxation and reduction in inflammation.
CBD oil is colorless and odorless, so I couldn’t detect it during the treatment, and it didn’t feel any different from any other product used during a massage. As soon as my massage therapist started working on my back, I was whisked away from my mental to-do list to a familiar state of relaxation that comes when someone gives your muscles a good rub.
“That night, I happily realized that the usual pain I feel when trying to get comfy in bed was missing and I fell into a deep sleep by 9 p.m.”
Overall, the experience wasn’t divergent from massages I’ve had before. While waiting for a taxi following my appointment, I did notice that my lower back didn’t ache as much as it usually does. My always-too-tight calf muscles felt loose and tingly. However, the biggest difference came hours later: That night, I happily realized that the usual pain I feel when trying to get comfy in bed was missing and I fell into a deep sleep by 9 p.m.
I’m not the only one who reaped benefits from the experience: Claudia Rivas, the general manager at The Spa Ottawa, told me that purchases of CBD products, which the spa sells, and appointments for CBD massages have risen dramatically since the change in Canadian law.
“It’s a natural and organic painkiller,” Rivas said, adding that many of their clients have been using CBD massages to complement physical therapy.
(It’s important to note that the College of Massage Therapists of Ontario advises against registered massage therapists using cannabis products on a client during treatment until more research is conducted. Rules vary by country and state, so check your local regulations if you’re concerned.)
How CBD Massages Work And What The Science Says
A CBD massage treatment typically involves CBD oil that is mixed with another carrier oil or cream before a massage therapist applies it to the skin. The practice is said to help multiple pain-related conditions.
“Receiving a massage with CBD oil can potentially be very beneficial to patients who are suffering from symptoms such as localized pain, arthritis or inflammation, and skin disorders like eczema or psoriasis,” said Dr. Tanny Raz, the director of medical business development at Apollo Cannabis Clinics, a medical cannabis research organization and treatment center in Toronto.
The practice may also be an aid for those living with chronic pain who struggle with sleep. Individuals with a pain-related condition often complain that their discomfort wakes them or prevents them from getting deep, quality sleep. Meanwhile, research shows that being well-rested can help people better deal with pain. Studies have found that CBD may increase the amount of sleep people get (based on self-reporting), and research also suggests CBD has pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory benefits.
That’s the good news. But here are the important caveats: Research shows there are many benefits to getting a massage, including reduced tension and pain relief, so there’s no definitive way to say it was the CBD component of my massage that alleviated my pain. Also, like all treatments and medicines, CBD oil and massages are not right for everybody. Some people report feeling nausea, irritability or fatigue when using these products (typically when they’re ingested). There’s always a chance you can have a skin reaction with topical treatments. It’s always a good idea to discuss any new health regimens with your health care provider.
Is Using CBD For Pain Safe ― Or Even Legal?
CBD is becoming more widely available for purchase and in spas and massage therapy centers across the country. However, contradictory laws at the federal and state levels have contributed to some confusion about its legality, and CBD oil may be classed as illegal in some states. Additionally, many CBD products aren’t approved or tested by the Food and Drug Administration. If you’re worried, check the rules in your area to make sure everything’s OK before purchasing or proceeding.
When it comes to CBD oil massages specifically, experts say the treatment has no immediately known dangers associated with it (separate from any normal skin-related issues, reactions or irritations that may result from any other massage).
“Since there is no known case of a cannabis overdose on record, cannabinoid therapy is in a league of its own when it comes to safety,” said Dr. Blake Pearson, the founder of GreenlyMed.com and a practicing physician in Ontario, Canada. The World Health Organization states that there is no evidence of any public health-related problems or abuse or dependence potential associated with the use of pure CBD.
In a world of wacky wellness trends that don’t always do a lot of good, CBD massages stand out as among the more effective and relaxing techniques that are generally harmless for most people. That’s a fad I’m personally happy to adopt.

• Thomas Myers
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One of the primary benefits of massage therapy is that it stimulates the nerve endings in the myofascia, leading to a greater sense of interoception—a perception of what is felt within the body.All therapeutic interventions, of whatever sort, are a conversation between two intelligent systems. Whatever is happening to the tissue under our hands, we are also communicating with the client’s nervous system.
Your nervous system is your meaning maker. The feeling of our touch has to be first taken in by the client’s sensory receptors, and then made meaningful in the central nervous system by comparison with earlier experiences.
Manual therapists deal in perception and therefore must study how the brain perceives the body and the body-mind interface.
Fascia, the Most Wired OrganThere is plenty that science has yet to learn about how we sense the body in motion, and how our clients make sense of our work in themselves.
Fascia happens to be the most wired sensory organ in the body with more sensory nerves in it than you have even in your eye or your tongue, and it has maybe six times more sensory endings than your muscles.
That body you call me is actually a community of about 70 trillion hard-working cells, all surrounded by a fascial network—a kind of sticky, greasy fabric that runs around all those cells and holds them firmly together, yet miraculously adjusts to shape and accommodate our every movement.
The fascial network consists of fibers, made mostly from pliable collagen, stronger than steel, woven into ropes, nets and sheets.
This web runs everywhere. It is very dense in your tendons and ligaments, and much looser in the breasts, cheeks or pancreas—but all your cells are wrapped into this weave.
The other half of the fascial network is a transparent gel of variable mucopolysaccharides. (More simply: snot.)
Basically, your cells are glued together by this mucous, which is everywhere. These sponge-like gels take many forms—the gel in your eyeball, the synovial fluid in the joints, the chondroitin of cartilage—and is more or less watery (hydrated) depending on where it is in the body and what condition it is in.
Your various nerve endings—muscle spindles, Golgi Tendon Organs, Ruffini corpuscles and the rest, all modifications of stretch receptors—are woven and entwined into both the fibrous and the gluey parts of fascial matrix.
One of the primary benefits of massage therapy is that it stimulates these nerve endings in the myofascia, leading, of course, to less somatic amnesia and a more sensitive appreciation of the body, a more complete body image.
Fascia on the Front LineThe fascia of the skin and muscles has a lot to say to the brain about the mind-body connection—more than the muscles themselves. The fascia is on the front line for handling forces, and the various sensory nerves are its messengers to the brain.
In studying how the brain monitors the body, generally known as kinaesthesia, scientists have distinguished proprioception and interoception.
Proprioception is the awareness of one’s body, its position in space and how it is moving. Proprioception allows us to know where our various parts are in relation to one another, to bring a fork to our mouth and not our eye, to chuck a ball accurately or even walk.
We coordinate our proprioceptive signals from our connective tissues and feet, and combine it with our vision and our vestibular information, and after a few “fally-down” months in our first year, we get pretty good at matching our inner sense of our body with the world outside.
(Although you only have to step into a room whose floor was two inches lower than you thought it was going to be to understand how precisely your system “guesses” what it is about to encounter, and how it can be fooled.)
Interoception was originally designated as the signals coming from our organs.
Interceptors are also, like proprioceptors, mostly modifications of stretch receptors. Perception of stretch in the bladder or rectum tells us we need to find a bathroom. Lack of stretch in our stomach tells us it’s time to find lunch. Stretch receptors in our lungs modulate breathing, and similar receptors in our arteries help regulate blood pressure.
In other words, interoception can be described as a sense of the physiological condition of the body, and thus a connection to how we feel about what we feel.
We represent our body from within with interoception. By contrast, we represent how our body is relating to the outside world—what we are touching, what is its weight and what we are moving through—through proprioception.
A nice distinction, but like many of our presumptions about the machinery of our body—never as simple as we would like it to be—not true.
We have recently discovered that interoception extends into our musculoskeletal body as well as our organs. How you feel about what you feel is present in our movement self as well as our physiological self.
Want to feel this? Simply hold one arm out to the side, level with your shoulder; in other words, shoulder abducted and elbow extended. Keep it there as you read on. Right from the beginning, you can appreciate the proprioception—the contraction in the deltoid and trapezius, the joint receptors telling you where your arm is without you having to look at it.
As time passes, though, you will begin to notice other feelings. You will begin to look for excuses to take your arm down. It is not painful, exactly, and there is no tissue damage from holding your arm out there for a few minutes, but now we know it is the interoceptors that are letting you know how you feel about what you feel even in the fascia, muscles and joints.
You can take your arm down anytime now, but it is an interesting test to leave your arm out there as long as possible to watch the process of interoception: how annoyed and agitated you can get as the sensations increase.
Proprioception is emotionally neutral; interoception, from your organs or your musculoskeletal body, as emotion in it.
Followers of Wim Hoff test themselves against these kinds of interoceptive feelings by taking ice baths and such, and there may well be value in expanding the limits of your sensation in this way.
The feeling difference is because interoceptive endings tickle a different part of the brain than proprioceptive ones.
According to fascial researcher Robert Schleip, Ph.D, “These sensations are triggered by stimulation of unmyelinated sensory nerve endings (free nerve endings) that project to the insular cortex rather than to the primary somatosensory cortex which is usually considered as the main target of proprioceptive sensations”
Though interoceptive endings are important to help us maintain homoeostasis in the body, these sensations not only have a sensory, but also come with an affective, motivational or emotional aspect.
The relief you felt when your mom rubbed your boo-boo had been ascribed to the gate control theory of pain, but the mechanism now appears to be through your interoceptors. You may still have the pain, but you feel better about it.
Distressed interoception and altered insular processing is associated with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, alexythymia (emotional blindness), schizophrenic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and possibly fibromyalgia.
It has been proposed that the neural pathways associated with interoception may be considered as a essential component for consciousness, a fundamental part of presence.
3 Tools to Appreciate Your Own Felt SenseSlower movements. In bodywork, speed is the enemy of sensitivity. The slower you go, the more you feel.
When we do slow movement practices like yoga or tai chi, when we allow the mind to move beyond the actual sequence (the proprioceptive aspect), we can shift our attention to how movements feel in the body (the interoceptive aspect).
Try slowing your techniques down to be able to be able to listen deeply with your hands.

1. Simple breath meditation. This slowing down is extra special for the autonomic system when you apply it to the breath.

Focus on the coolness of the air as you inhale, and the warmth of the air as you exhale, and watch the feeling inside yourself as a result of the slower breath.

1. Change your routine. Take your autopilot experiences and turn them into something new.

Doing a particular sequence of yoga or training repetitively will develop mastery of the skill, but introducing novelty by changing your routine may give you access to a deeper listening.
Even changing the position of your massage table in your room or the music you play during sessions may provide a finer tuning of your interoceptive awareness.

1. Self-massage. When using any self-myofascial release tool, such as a roller or balls, slow down and feel. You will invite a deep parasympathetic response and an overall deeper listening to both proprioceptive and interoceptive cues.

About the Author:
Thomas Myers is the author of Anatomy Trains (Elsevier 2001, 2014) and co-author of Fascial Release for Structural Balance (North Atlantic, 2010). Myers has authored over 100 articles and 50 video programs on anatomy, the fascial network and postural manual therapy. Myers and his faculty offer continuing education for a variety of manual therapists worldwide, and professional certification in Anatomy Trains Structural Integration.