Before getting a massage, your massage therapist needs to know about you. Do you have any health conditions? What is your pain tolerance? These are just examples of things that your massage therapist is going to need to know about you to ensure that your massage is relaxing and is as pleasurable as possible.
1. Health Conditions
Things like chronic pain are things that you need to tell your massage therapist about. There are different types of massages they can use to alleviate the pain and the symptoms that are brought upon by chronic pain. A deep tissue massage would help chronic pain the most, as the massage focuses more on the muscles.
You will also need to be sure you tell them if you have a cold or any contagious illness. It’s only fair if you warn them that you may be contagious, because most likely they won’t want to become sick and risk their other clients getting sick too.
Tell them of any allergies you have. If you have an allergy to an ingredient in one of the lotions or oils, they need to know to ensure they don’t use them on you.
2. What You Are Getting a Massage For
Are you stressed? Do you have a condition for which the symptoms can be relieved by massage therapy? Not knowing why you’re there is hard on the massage therapist, as they don’t know exactly how they can help you.
3. Medications Being Taken
Some medications if combined with a massage can be fatal. For example, if you are taking blood pressure medication and your therapist doesn’t know this, your blood pressure will decrease and you will become dizzy.
4. How Much Pain Can You Handle?
If you don’t tell your massage therapist about your pain tolerance, you may find that you’re in a lot of pain – especially if your pain tolerance is very low. It’s important that you let them know how much pressure you can handle because something that may not be painful to somebody else, may be extremely painful for you.
On the flip side, if you can handle pain, you need to tell your massage therapist that too. You don’t want them to not apply enough pressure and not get the full experience of a massage. You want a massage to work and for it to be worth your money.
5. The Number of Times You’ve Gotten a Massage
Obviously they don’t need the exact number of times you’ve gotten a massage, but if they know that you’ve had multiple massages, they know that you can handle a little more intense of a massage than the “introductory” massage known as the Swedish massage.
It’s extremely important that your massage therapist is warned about these things. Their main goal is to ensure that your massage is the best that is can possibly be. If you don’t tell them that you can’t handle pain, then you may walk away from you massage feeling very sore. Massages should be relaxing, so ensure that you provide your massage therapist with all the tools to make it as relaxing as possible for you.
