When combined into a person’s regular schedule, both massage therapy and fitness can serve to boost overall health and wellness. These two undertakings both tend to promote better physical health and improved mental health, but massage therapy and fitness approach these goals in different ways. For this reason, massage therapy and fitness can serve as fantastic complementary routes toward well-being.
Perhaps one of the best ways to understand how massage therapy and fitness can both serve to increase health and wellness is to understand how these two approaches differ from one another. In the most basic sense, the main difference one will usually find between fitness and massage therapy is that one is quite active while the other is typically passive.
As you may have guessed, fitness tends to be the active approach to health and wellness. Now, beneath the broad umbrella of the term fitness fall many different routines and activities. For example, one person’s notion of fitness may be to go running every morning, whereas another person’s notion of fitness might involve lifting weights for one hour after work five days a week.
Of course, many people tend to blend a few active pastimes to create their own well-rounded fitness routines. Typically, this means blending cardio pursuits, such as running or biking, with activities that aim to build lean muscle mass. Often, people will bring dietary concepts into the realm of fitness as well, taking action to eat more fruits and vegetables, less simple carbohydrates, fewer unhealthy fats and so on.
This is a simple take on what it means to weave fitness into one’s life, but it should give you a clear picture that fitness tends to involve action on the part of the individual, whether that action is lifting weights, riding a bike or consciously choosing healthier foods to consume.
As we turn our attention toward massage therapy and the ways in which massage also can help boost physical and mental health, it should be easy to see massage therapy tends to sit on the other end of the spectrum from fitness in terms of individual action. With massage therapy, the main action required is to book an appointment and show up at the session room.
From there, the individual may need to tell his or her massage therapist about any issues to address, but after that most of the action is taken by the massage therapist while the individual rests on a massage table. Obviously, this is a far more passive method of boosting one’s physical and emotional well-being. However, just because massage therapy tends to be more passive than fitness does not mean it is not as valuable when it comes to achieving greater well-being.
After all, much of wellness—both mental and physical—appears to depend on balance, and if a person only engages in fitness and is active all the time, he or she may be at risk of burning out or suffering an injury. Instead, balance all that action with the rest and healing provided by massage therapy.