To perform effective myofascial release treatments for your clients, many different parts of the hands and arms can be used. You can learn the techniques to make your treatments more effective.
Here is a list of 7 parts of your body you can use as tools to perform myofascial release:
- Finger tips
- Finger pads
- Metacarpal- phalangeal joints
- Palm
- Pisiform
- Ulna
- Olecranon process
While there are other tools out there, your hands and arms provide you with the sensitivity required to do this work, and direct contact provides you with a lot of important information.
Of course, the first thing you think about with massage is the hands. Let's start with the fingers, or phalanges. They are very articulate and move readily. There are three joints in the finger. Fingers can easily manipulate tissue and perform detailed work. We can use our finger tips like chisels to address minute areas of tissue. But with the articulation lies a compromise in strength. You will want to remember safety in numbers. Combining fingers results in combined strength. You can also combine both hands, which additionally allows you to cover more area.
Now, let's talk about the finger pads. They are very sensitive and provide a lot of information. They also have a sense of grip. By very lightly engaging the fingertips, you can use them to roll, lift, and separate the tissue from neighboring muscle tissue and away from the bone.
If you take your hands and press them together, you'll notice there is a blunt area formed by the metacarpal-phalangeal joints, or knuckles. You can use those joints in two capacities. From the palmar surface, you can press and stretch right through the body. From the dorsal surface, from making a soft fist, you can push the four prominent knuckles into the body, and it's like using a rake but in reverse. As you work through the tissue, you also get more depth and the surface of the trailing fingers acts like the wake of a boat.
Working up into the palm, you'll notice that if you squeeze the palm together, there is a little valley and two mounds of tissue. These mounds of tissue are called the thenar eminence, "thenar" meaning "thumb", and the hypothenar eminence, adjacent to the pinky. Right below those are the nine carpal bones, the bones forming the wrist. If you pull your hand back, you have a firm padded area, provided by the palmar eminences, with the solidity of the bone, provided by the carpals, underneath. This padded area is useful for kneading the tissue. This palmar kneading technique is great for warming up and lifting the tissue from the body.
Now follow the hypothenar eminence to where the wrist joins the ulna. You will find a distinct bony projection. This is the pisiform. Similar to utilizing the knuckles, you can achieve a bit more depth with the pisiform. To avoid injuring your wrist, you should refrain from using it directly. But, you can use it side to side or by rotating to delve into the tissue.
Those are the hands. Now let's move to the elbow. Just above the crease of the elbow, there's a flat surface on the ulna. If you place that area in your palm and rotate it, you'll notice you can get compression by making small movements.
On the medial side of the elbow, there's a large protuberance called the olecranon process that can be used following the same principle. The olecronon is useful for working with thick muscle tissue. Again, if you place the olecranon in your palm and rotate it, you'll get a sense of how it can be a useful tool. Also, keeping the olecranon in your palm, straighten the arm and bring it up slowly to your shoulder. Notice how changing the angle of flexion affects the depth into the tissue. When using this joint, decreasing the angle between the arm and forearm increases the depth.
So these are your tools. To briefly review, we have the finger tips, finger pads, metacarpal phalangeal joints from the palmar as well as dorsal side, the palm, the pisiform at the wrist joint, the flat area of the ulna, and the olecranon process on the elbow. These will be the main tools for applying myofascial release techniques.
When a client asks for deep tissue work or talks about chronic tension and pain, myofascial release can benefit them.
Myofascial release is a form of deep tissue massage calms the body while promoting healthy circulation and also creates change in the physical structure of the muscle and fascia.
You will need 1.5 hours to provide a full body session for your clients.
If you would like to learn Myofascial Techniques so that you can incorporate them into your massage therapy sessions you have several options:
- Learn from Online Myofascial Release Massage Training Videos
- Learn from a Myofascial Release DVD
- Get your CEUs and learn with an Online Myofascial Release CE Course
All of these massage training resources can teach you how to address specific client complaints and demonstrate step-by-step techniques for the entire body.
Myofascial release remains the foundation of John Hoffmann's work in chiropractic offices, as well as massage spas and on-sitecorporate massage because of its effectiveness in alleviating pain and in creating healthy changes in the soft tissues of the body.
John Hoffmann, LMT is the featured expert in the Myofascial Release Techniques training video, award-winning Craniosacral Therapy Techniques training video, Online Craniosacral Therapy CE Course and Online Myofascial Release CE course.
Hoffmann is a Licensed Massage Therapist and Massage Therapy Instructor and has been practicing in the Los Angeles area for over 15 years. His study of the body began with dance training. Developing a strong, intuitive, highly kinetic understanding of how the body works made the transition from dancer to body worker a natural, logical progression. He completed his massage therapy studies at the Institute of Psycho-Structural Balancing in California and is now the featured expert in online training videos and online massage CE courses.
If you would like to learn more massage techniques, Aesthetic VideoSource has an abundance of massage DVDs and online massage training videos. for your massage therapy education.
