Men’s Beauty : Massage: Finding the right Rub

So you want a massage. Good, it’s a great experience beyond just feeling good, many people believe that massage has many health benefits as well. But the hard part is figuring out who to see or where to go for a massage.

First off, you should think about how you want to do this. Besides just the cost of a massage, are you more interested in having the practitioner come to your home or going to see them? Many different professional environments are available for the art of bodywork. You can find therapists in many gyms, full service salons, day spas or many high end resort destination spas. All of these setting offer different benefits. In the Salon, Day Spa or Spa setting, you typically will be working with a therapist who does more relaxing massage, while in more of a medical setting it’s often about pain management or rehab type of work. This of course is a general rule, not always the case. The advantage of course of having a Massage Therapist come to your home is that you don’t have to go anywhere. But usually your going to pay extra for the out call. If you are looking for a out call therapist, one of the many websites that you can look into is http://www.gaymanmassage.com. This site lists therapists all over the world. And on our website Adam4Adam.com, you will see many therapists listed under a pro accounts.

Next let’s talk about about the basic type of techniques that your therapist is going to be using. No matter if it’s in a Spa or at home, you should have a basic idea of how they are going to be working with you. The most often used type of massage is usually called Swedish. This type of massage is known by the long connective strokes that the therapist uses during the session. Another common type of massage is Deep Tissue. This type of work is focused on more deep pressure, often affecting the connective tissues of the body. Related techniques are Rolfing, Structural Integration and Trigger Point Therapy.

Then you may also see therapists advertising more exotic sounding massage. Such as Hot Stone Massage, which is various techniques that incorporate Hot Stones of various types into the massage. Thai Massage, Shiatsu and Acupressure are various types of massage using eastern medical ideas. And then you might also find energy work, Reki or Aura healing listed with some therapists. These tend to be ways of focused manipulation of the energies of the body, and may not actually include the therapist touching you.

So we know where we are going, and how they are doing it. But the last couple of things you might want to make sure to discuss with your massage guy is what sort of oil and/or lotion they are using, and how they drape you during your session. You may want to ask this due to any skin sensitivity issues you might have. I also personally stay away from massage products that use Mineral Oil, or any petrol chemical. You should also tell your therapist if you have any nut allergies, or gluten issues. Many massage products contain either of these things. Wheat Germ Oil for example is used in quite a few massage lotions.

As for draping, some therapists -for either legal reasons or policy of the location – are required to drape. And of course as the client, you may not desire to be fully nude. Many types of massage can be done around a pair of shorts for example. Shiatsu is usually done with the client wearing loose fitting clothing. If you want to discuss this with your therapist before hand, he should be open to having this conversation. Keep in mind that just because you are nude, does not mean that anything other than therapeutic work will take place. In the spa setting, most therapists could well lose their job for this. If you are looking for erotic work, a “full release” or “happy ending” you would more likely find that someone coming to your home would be more open to this type of work.

Of course the key point here is to know what your paying for before hand. Any Professional Massage Therapist should be open to talking about his training, certifications, special techniques that he does or any other questions you may have. If you aren’t comfortable with the answers you receive from him you may want to consider looking else where for a session.

Owen Edwards, California Esthetician and graduate of the Utah College of Massage Therapy.

(photo credit : massagebait)