Next time you need a few fresh ideas about massage cream, simply look inside your kitchen cabinets and even your refrigerator. As you may have noticed already, quite a few of the massage creams that are popular with professional practitioners happen to contain ingredients similar to those you could find in nearly any grocery store.
Let’s start with one of the most common ingredients one might find in a massage cream—oils and butters derived from nuts and seeds. If you happen to keep almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts and other such snacks on hand, then you are seeing the source of several common massage cream ingredients.
When used in a massage cream, these nuts and seeds tend to blended and pressed into oil form, adding a natural element of glide to the massage cream. Other common nut- or seed-based ingredients you might find in a quality massage cream include grapeseed oil, shea butter and jojoba butter.
Turning our attention toward the produce section of the grocery store, there are plenty of fruits and vegetables that might serve as the source of the ingredients in various massage creams. Again, many of these are pressed and blended into an oil form before being added into the overall massage cream. For example, you might see avocado oil, coconut oil or carrot oil listed on the label of your favorite massage cream.
Another category of natural ingredients for massage creams may not be found in every grocery store and kitchen, but rather in the garden or growing wild in the great outdoors. These are the plants—herbs and flowers—that often are pressed or distilled into liquids and mixed into the massage cream.
In certain pain-relieving massage creams, for example, it is a plant that serves as the active ingredient, Arnica montana, which has long been prized and cultivated for its natural ache-easing abilities. Often, other specific herbs and flowers make their way into those massage creams that aim to bring the benefits of aromatherapy into the session room.
A couple common ones include lavender and rosemary, which are known, respectively, for their relaxing and rejuvenating effects. These herbs tend to be added to massage creams in the form of pure essential oils—a big difference from synthetic scents that have been created in a laboratory.
Of course, the source of the many essential oils that go into massage creams are not limited to herbs. These can also include the essential oils of fruits, such as lemons and oranges, or the essential oils of flowers, such as roses and gardenias. Again, most of these essential oils are added to massage creams to provide the benefits of aromatherapy.
When it comes to the wide array of massage creams on the market today, it is even possible to get into the beverage and dessert categories when it comes to the natural ingredients that compose these massage creams. For example, you may find massage creams that contain ingredients like cocoa beans or green tea.