Liz Seal Holistic Massage
This week, I have been on a training day to learn Hands Free Massage with the lovely Jeni Broughton at Wren Holistics. This technique allows the therapist to use their forearms to apply longer, deeper strokes giving the client an effective and relaxing deep massage.
Hands Free is an approach which was developed to allow the therapist to vary their treatment while also helping to prevent injury to the therapist. RSI is a condition which affects any of the joints which are over-used, and therapists who massage using their hands exclusively can suffer with RSI in the fingers and wrists. By introducing the forearms into the routine, the hands are ‘given a rest’ reducing the risk of injury.
I found the routine very interesting, while being a challenge! One of the main challenges will be to correct my own posture, to give a deeper, more relaxing treatment while protecting my own back and wrists. 
As students on the course, we learned by working on each other, I found the treatment relaxing and felt that the pressure was effective.
For a client, the feeling is of a longer, sweeping touch with a deeper while still unobtrusive pressure. There should not be any feeling of deep pain, the muscles are soothed and smoothed rather than feeling pummelled!
My intention is to use Hands Free techniques along side the other tools that I use during a treatment, rather than offering Hands Free as a stand-alone treatment. During a treatment I will employ the different tools I have learned depending on what my client requires. This is the reason why I offer timed appointments, rather than booking for a specific treatment, such as Hot Stones or Cupping massage, I often combine techniques to relieve the muscle tension most effectively for my clients.
For more information on the tools I have available, please see the ‘Treatments and Prices’ page of my website.