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We have 3 UVic massage therapists practicing and offer massage therapy 7 days/week!
- Jaime Coy, RMT – Mondays – Friday
- Justin Attfield, RMT – Thursday – Saturday
- Adrain Tomei, RMT – Sunday – Wednesday
For more information about each practitioner, reviews, blogs, rates and exact hours please visit the information tab, found under the main menu.
Massage therapy works on several different physiological systems in the body: muscular, vascular, nervous, and hormonal.
The first and most known is the muscular system. When muscles become tight due to either repetitive strain (improper lifting, poor posture), acute trauma (car accident, sports injury) or emotional stress, they can become painful or even reduce movement. Massage therapy can isolate the specific muscles causing dysfunction, stretch & kneed them and ultimately get them closer to their “resting state”.
Tight muscles can impact localized circulation, causing decreased blood flow to the area. When the body has reduced circulation, healing time is slower. Massage increases circulation to affected areas, essentially bringing in new oxygen and nutrients to tissues and removing stagnant tissue fluid and the waste products (by products of metabolism like carbon dioxide or lactic acid) that go along with it.
One of the most basic methods for pain relief is massage: when something hurts, you rub it. It’s a reflexive action that we do when we bang our shin or have a headache. This is because massage has an instant effect on our nervous system, calming pain receptors and helping to block pain signals to our brain. The nerve receptors in our joints are also affected with massage. If you have decreased movement, massage may help. RMT’s use techniques like joint mobilization, muscle energy, passive movement, stroking, compression, traction, gentle rocking and shaking to help reset joint receptors and restore proper function. Not only does massage calm pain receptors and reset joint receptors, it feels good, too. We have all experienced how calming a massage can be. Our nervous system is broken into two parts, our sympathetic nervous system (stress response, also known as “fight or flight” response) and our parasympathic nervous system (our relaxation response). This calming effect helps elicit our parasympathetic nervous system. With long term stress comes a variety of negative effects like poor sleep (which slows healing time), depression, inability to concentrate, agitation and a decreased immune system.
Stress increases the production of our stress hormone cortisol. Increased cortisol levels slow healing by decreasing the body’s ability to produce collagen, which is needed for tissue repair. Countless studies have proven that massage therapy decreases stress hormone.
Massage therapy treats a wide variety of conditions both mental and physical. Some common conditions clients come in for are:
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What to expect on your first visit:
A massage therapy appointment can be broken into three parts, assessment, treatment, homecare/prognosis. A massage therapist (RMT) will sit down with you to go over you health history verbally. The RMT may perform some orthopedic tests to assess what is causing the physical dysfunction (if there is any).
The next step is the treatment. Some people have heard massage therapy may be painful, it doesn’t need to be. Your treatment should always be within your pain threshold. Please ensure you have an open dialogue with your RMT. If the pressure gets to be too much inform the RMT and they will adjust their depth so you remain comfortable.
Before leaving you should receive some advise on things you can do at home to assist with your concerns. This advise may include stretches and strengthening exercise, the use of heat & cold and when to use what or a referral to another practitioner. Your RMT should give you a treatment plan and information on how they believe massage therapy could help with your condition.
We are UVic’s complementary healthcare clinic, also accepting patients from the greater Victoria area. Our approach is comprehensive; we work closely with each other to help restore our clients back to optimal health. Our clinicians deal with a wide range of symptoms including: muscular dysfunction, joint pathology, gastrointestinal problems, lack of energy, insomnia, anxiety, and depression. We use techniques such as diet changes, massage, joint manipulation, eastern techniques like needling and others to combat these common conditions.
