Deep tissue as the name applies, refers to the deeper soft tissues within the body including muscles and fascia. A common way that many therapists work with accessing the deeper tissue is to press firmer or harder in order to try and access the deeper tissue or muscles in the body. This can sometimes be painful for the client (and draining for the practitioner) and in some circumstances can cause bruising. Of course there are many clients who enjoy this type of massage and subscribe to the “no pain, no gain myth” and will request this and enjoy this style of massage.

However, if you are like me and avoided receiving massage for a long time as I didn’t like how much it hurts, then you may be pleased to hear that there is another way of releasing the deeper fascia and muscles in the body that is not painful, and rather is relaxing, enjoyable and has amazing results.

In clinic, I often have people asking for a deep tissue massage, without really understanding what it is that they are asking for. I like to share and educate clients as to what deep tissue means and the way that we can access working with the deeper muscles and fascia without having to hurt them.

The industry is changing and the way we are now teaching massage has taken a turn to support the client to relax, so that their muscles can release and relax. Ultimately it is important to remember that relaxation is at the basis of any form of remedial massage. If the person is tensing up due to pain, then we are promoting a protective mechanism in the body, muscle constriction, rather than the muscles letting go.

So how do we release the deeper lying muscles in the body without digging deep?

Warmth is the key – use plenty of effleurage strokes to warm up the outer, surface layers of muscles and tissue. Once these are warm and feel softer, then we are able to gently use techniques such as trigger point therapy to access the deeper muscles that lay beneath.

There are many deep tissue techniques that can be used with one of the most common being trigger points. The way I work with trigger points is through feeling and sensing what is happening in the muscle and the client’s body. Having warmed up the area that I am working on, I use gentle circles over the area where I can feel the built-up point in the muscle and gently release it using thumbs through the small movements. Feeling when the muscle releases beneath my thumbs I then use effleurage again to allow for the fresh blood flow into that area to promote restoration of the tissue and reintegrate the local area with the rest of the body.

Whilst receiving this technique, the client may feel a different sensation in their body with the release of the trigger points, but it should not cause a flinching or a high level of pain in any way. I often find clients relax deeply and sometimes even fall asleep.  They commonly report on how lovely it is to receive this type of massage and the results are long lasting and not a quick fix.

Donna Nolan works as a Remedial Massage Therapist in Balgowlah on Sydney’s Northern Beaches and teaches the Diploma of Remedial Massage at one of Australia’s largest and most reputable massage schools.

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The word ‘remedial’ means ‘to apply remedy’. Therefore Remedial Massage is about supporting the body to heal from an injury, tension or pain. Our aim as Massage Therapists when working with the musculoskeletal system is to relax and release tightly held muscles that may have a build-up of toxins from an injury, from overuse of muscles, stress or from incorrect posture etc. When muscles are held in tension our aim is to release and relax these muscles, not cause further tightness or tension.

Therefore, what is important when performing a massage is for the client to be able to fully relax in order to support the muscles to release. If the client is tense and bracing (which often comes when they are feeling pain) then it is difficult for the muscles that you are working on to fully let go.

Pain is the body’s feedback mechanism to say stop what you are doing. When pain is felt the body responds by causing the muscles to harden up around the injured site for protection to avoid further injury. Which of course is the opposite to what we are looking to achieve in the first place.

What can also be useful here is to haveanunderstanding that the role the connective tissue plays within the body. Connective tissue is a system of tissues that runs throughout all the muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones, nerves, blood vessels and organ overlapping and enveloping soft tissue structures like cling film.

The fluidity and moistness of the connective tissue allows for friction free movements and supports all our body’s systems from the inside out. Energy flows through our connective tissue and in its ideal state, the connective tissue supports our natural elongated posture and our organ systems to work together harmoniously. We can picture our connective tissue like a river that flows throughout our entire body.

 When pain is induced, the connective tissue (fascia) also hardens up to go into its protective state.

So we can see that force or pain inflicted causes not only the muscles to tighten up but also has an impact on the connective tissue and therefore an overall effect of creating more tension in the body. Again, this is the opposite to what we are looking to achieve which is to relax and release the body.

To make this practical to massage, I would like to use an example and discuss how this can be applied to Trigger Point therapy, a common technique used in Remedial Massage. A trigger point is an area in the muscle (usually in the belly of the muscle or at the origin or insertion of the muscles) that has a build-up of toxins. The client often feels a bit of pain when pressing on what is referred to as an active trigger point.

Rather than forcefully working into a trigger point where the body might tense up, it is possible to release the trigger points gently and access the deeper tissue and muscles in the body. We can do this through the use of lots of repetitive effleuragestrokes to first of all warm up the outer layer of muscle, this then allows you to naturally and easily access the next and deeper level of muscles (hence the name deep tissue). If you try to access the deeper muscles via force and without truly understanding the role of the connective tissue in the body, the outer muscles harden and go into protection going against what we are trying to achieve, which is to relax them.

Once the outer muscles have been warmed up, then we can access the deeper tissue in a gentle manner, with no force and without inflicting pain. The trigger point is able to release gently and the rest of the body hasn’t gone into protection. We have therefore released the point of tension as well as keeping the surrounding muscles and tissues relaxed. Goal achieved – with no pain inflicted.

Donna Nolan works as a Remedial Massage Therapist and teaches the Diploma of Remedial Massage at one of Australia’s largest and most reputable massage schools. She offer Remedial Massage at Balgowlah. 

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