Using massage therapy as a tool for stress relief - Greenville News

[massage]

Chris Worthy | Greenville News


If you have ever carried a toddler through a theme park, balanced a diaper bag on one shoulder while carrying a car seat across your forearm, or hauled all the groceries inside in one trip, you have taken one for the team. And doing any of that on a regular basis likely means your body is, ahem, a bit tense.

Lynne Hawkins, a massage therapist with Bon Secours St. Francis Health System’s physical therapy location at SportsClub Greenville, is taking massage beyond a spa day to help parents deal with the stress, aches, and pains of life with kids.

“There's absolutely nothing wrong with relaxation massage,” Hawkins said. “It’s absolutely important. What we're seeing in society now is everything that causes so much stress and that stress leads to our other physical illnesses – ‘dis-ease’ is what I like to call it.”

Hawkins said that if we start from the premise that we need to reduce our stress levels to obtain better health, massage can help. Couple the stress of raising children, balancing budgets, living in a pandemic, and everything else on parents’ plates with the poor posture that results from computer and phone use and it is a recipe for pain.

“I am strictly a massage therapist, but I have worked in the physical therapy department since I was hired, which is almost 15 years ago, and I love working with not just the relaxation aspect, but also posture,” she said. “A lot of people are working at computers or they're standing on concrete floors, and that creates distortions in your posture. I like to look at the way that the person holds themselves and see if I can help the body ‘correct’ itself.”

We compensate for those odd positions – hunching at a keyboard, carrying a toddler on a hip, forever scrolling on our phones – by tensing up.

“You just get stuck in that position, and all of a sudden, you can't turn your head,” Hawkins said. “You think that it was because you slept wrong or because you sat at the computer for eight hours. Well, that's obviously a part of it, but we don't stretch and we don't do any self-massage, and we don't exercise like we want to or should.”

In addition to adding those healthy habits, Hawkins said massage might be a needed bit of self-care that can have profound benefits.

“My belief is in the long run I want you to be around for longer and (stay) healthier,” she said. “I like the word disease because I break it down to ‘dis-ease.’ We want you to be at ease.”

Learn more about Bon Secours St. Francis Health System’s massage therapy program by calling 864-527-7044. No referral is required.