Tending to your physical well-being is just as important as tending to your emotional well-being through various therapies that help you explore your inner worlds and heal past and present emotional wounds. Because healing from a holistic perspective—integrating wellness for the mind, body, and spirit, not just the area specifically affected—is so important for achieving and maintaining sobriety and good mental health, massage therapy is often used as a relaxation and healing technique while in treatment for mental illness and/or addiction.
What Is Massage Therapy?
Massage therapy is a body-based therapy that involves the manipulation of deep tissue in your body where stress and tension may be stored. The physical toll your body goes through every day, in addition to the emotional toll your body carries, makes it important that you integrate both the mind and the body into treatment to fully experience wellness.
Benefits of Massage Therapy
Integrating massage therapy into your life can be a catalyst to healing. Benefits you can experience through massage therapy—whether it be for mental health or substance abuse treatment or just because—include:
- Reduction in anxietyÂ
- Relief from depression
- Decrease in stress
- Greater connection and awareness of the mind and body
- Increase in energy levels
- Lower levels of overwhelm
What massage therapy helps each person with will be different, as the way each person requires healing and experiences it is unique.
Types of Massage Therapy
When meeting with your massage therapist, you will decide which type of massage therapy may be best for your needs. At Avalon Malibu, our massage therapists are trained to facilitate the following types of massage therapy:
- Swedish massage
- Deep tissue massage
- Remedial massage
- Sports massage
- Thai massage
- Hot stone massage
Massage therapy can be an integral part of your treatment plan for mental illness and addiction as part of a holistic approach that honors the mind-body connection. Not only does massage therapy have several different benefits, but it also allows you to experiment with a variety of options to discover which types of massage feel best for you on your journey to healing.
Massage therapy can play a key role in addiction and mental health treatment. Massage therapy not only helps you release tension from your body, but it also helps you decrease high levels of anxiety, stress, overwhelm, and depression. It’s important to have types of therapy that heal the body as well as the mind, especially in light of the mind-body connection that is so important to recognize for overall wellness. To begin treatment for mental illness or addiction, call Avalon Malibu at (844) 857-5992.
