Massage's are about more than just relaxation although that's the end result. It's about muscle injury and repair of it. Think of your muscle fibre as being like a spring and it stretches out and then retracts smoothly (like the spring), but injury happens when it twists and piles up in an area instead of just 'stacking' like it's supposed to. When it piles up, that is the 'knot' and as time goes by, other surrounding fibres begin to add to that knot as they also fail to retract smoothly. So not only does the pile throb when it's not in motion, but when you move, it gets pulled which hurts more.
A masseuse is looking for that knot and by putting pressure on it and stopping the blood flow through that group of fibres, the blood begins to build up behind the fingers like water behind a dam. Releasing the pressure then acts like high pressure fire hose and forces the fibres to straighten out which in turn gives the muscle a new chance to re-stack properly. When knots and spasms have been in place a long time, it can become necessary to have additional massages to help the tissue sort of relearn how it's supposed to be. I was a masseuse for horses for a couple years by the way, and they have the same issues that humans do and in the same parts of the body, i.e.. shoulders and their backs, particularly the lower back.
The first massage I ever went for personally was after falling off my horse in the paddock. I did manage to catch her, untack her and turn her out before I passed out at the barn door. I don't know how long I was out cold but believe me, getting back to the house when I did wake up was rough. I wound up spending the next week on the couch in excruciating agony before I was able to get to the massage therapist.
We always remember Glen as the 'sadist with the magic hands'. That treatment literally had my toes curling as I broke out in a sweat from the pain he was causing, but it was the start that got me going again. I had to go back three or four more times after that. Took a while before I got the sense of relaxation that Stormy describes.
