You might be surprised to find out that I help a lot of my clients with foot pain. Yup, massage is not all about New Age music and relaxing. In fact, most of my clients use me to help with pain management and use massage as one of many tools to help manage their overall health.
So you might be thinking, “How do my feet relate to my overall health?”
First, let’s get acquainted with some foot facts:
- There are some 200,000 nerve endings that surround our heels, arches and toes. (Maybe this is why playing footsies is so much fun?)
- All organs of the body have a nerve correlation with the bottoms of our feet (and hands, btw).
- Did you know that by pressing on the tips of your toes, nervous stimulation occurs and can provide relief to areas of the head like your ears, nose, eyes… and headaches are relieved by pressing on acupressure points in the feet and hands.
- And stomach issues can be lessened by loosening the tendons that connect to the muscles that surrounds the correlating nerves in the feet.
Our Body’s Foundation
One important thing I’ve learned over the last 20 years of treating people:
Our feet are our foundation; therefore, if our foundation is weak then our entire structure will suffer.
Think about it, if a building is built and the foundation has cracks in it, or the actual ground soil is not strong enough to properly hold the concrete in place, what happens?? Ultimately the building will suffer and cracks will occur and undue stress on support beams will cause an unsafe place dwelling.
Now let’s look at our bodies… the muscles in our feet are designed to hold and support our tarsals and meta-tarsals (technical terms that mean ‘foot bones’) in an even way in order to support our legs and the weight we carry around.
What happens if the muscles in the arches of your feet start to lose their flexibility?
What happens if your heal starts to hurt and it causes you to shift the way you walk?
Or what happens if you stand on your feet all day and wonder why you have so many back and neck problems??
The Answer Is Simple
The bottom line is that anytime you have pain in your body’s structure, there’s a big chance that your feet are in desperate need of major stretching and deep muscle work…
And that’s where I come in!
Over the past year I have been developing more and more techniques in order to release the tightness in my client’s calves, feet and ankles.
There are dozens of different techniques in giving someone the ultimate foot massage, but I think I’ve come up with a technique that not only eases foot muscle tension, but doesn’t hurt too much in the process. And we all know there is nothing worse than a painful foot massage with no real results!
Have you ever gone to a “foot spa”? It’s so frustrating when you go to a place that offers “foot reflexology” only to have some person blindly squeeze your feet to oblivion or have someone barely use any pressure and just rub lotion on you!!
What I do is different. I use pressure point technique that gives my client a chance to focus on one spot at a time instead of brutally raking my thumbs up and down the sole of a foot in order show off how strong I am… But after warming the entire foot up and gently pressing and then firmly holding a spot at just the perfect angle and direction, the client can actually feel the muscles in their feet ‘letting go’!
Of course, there is a degree of discomfort; after all I am pressing on torn, sore muscle tissue. But my approach is slow, and once the person trusts what I do then they usually have no problem dealing with the temporary discomfort. And besides.. The pay-off is tremendous! The minute they stand up, they realize that just the simple act of walking is a much better experience!
So there you have it… Now you have a great excuse to treat yourself to a foot massage knowing your whole body will thank you!
For booking inquiries please contact me via email: MikeSantana2010@gmail.com
Appointments are done at my office in Waldwick, NJ.
House-calls are available upon request, travel fees apply.