Give a Great Back Massage | Mike Everson | Skillshare
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Give a Great Back Massage

teacher avatar Mike Everson, Instructor + YouTuber

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      0:59

    • 2.

      Back Relaxation 1

      15:18

    • 3.

      Back Relaxation 2

      17:15

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About This Class

In this class Mike Everson experienced massage therapist is going to show you how to give a great back massage. Back pain is one of the most common things in the world, knowing how to give a great massage is such an amazing skill to have so join me for this class. 

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Mike Everson

Instructor + YouTuber

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Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: My name is Mike Iverson. I'm an experienced massage therapist and I'm going to throw three facts out at you guys to determine whether this class is going to be useful for you or it isn't. Worldwide back pain is the single leading cause of disability, preventing many people from engaging in work as well as other everyday activities. Experts estimate that up to 80 percent of the population will experience back pain at some time in their lives. And back pain is also the second most common reason for visits to the doctor's office behind skin disorders. So with all that in mind, not only is learning how to do a great back massage, I think an essential skill. It's also something that is a selfless act. And I think anything that takes you away from yourself and brings you into helping somebody else to make them feel better to get rid of their pain is also going to make you feel amazing. And it's a way of alleviating stress from not only them, but also yourself. So join me and learn how to do a great back massage. 2. Back Relaxation 1: Now that we're getting into the massage, make sure to follow the formula. Superficial, deep, superficial. Afl Raj, Petrus, AHG FOR Raj. And one thing you want to consider here is the mechano receptors. If you want to give a very relaxing massage, make sure to go slow. So to apply the oil, get those circulatory techniques in, and then go really slow once you get to the deeper techniques. One thing about spinal massage that's a fallacy is that it's always relaxation massage. You're going to have people who want deep tissue. So how do you give deep tissue while also being relaxing? And that's to go really slow. So when you sink down into your pressure, make sure that you're sinking slowly into the tissue. And then once you go, go slow. And that's gonna make them feel very comfortable, very relaxed. And I think it's the best way to do deep tissue massage is to just go very slow. Okay, so as we started on the muscle or sequence, I want you guys to grab a pen and a piece of paper and write everything out. You know, as time goes on, make this view or during this process, you can see things that maybe you want to add in or change. Its all about individualizing it to your style. And as you practice on friends, family members, clients, it's just going to come naturally. One thing I'm going to say about posture is to keep your arm straight drop your body weight down into techniques. Make sure that you're not putting too much stress on all of your body parts and to use a lot of your body parts. So as you're massaging and as you're building up your skill, you know, it's okay to use your thumbs but gauge how much you can use them. Fingertips, hands, palms, flats, and Knuckles, even into your arm. And as you do more massages and you build up all the receptors in all these areas, you're going to become more fine tuned at, you know, experiencing and feeling out the musculature, feeling out the fluid filling out everything in the body. It's something that is a good practice. And also you're giving that person a lot of different sensory, a lot of different types of touch with all the different types of body parts that you can use. Before I go in and start with kind of flowy ethyl Raj techniques, I like to do a little bit of a fascicle pulling the shoulders. This is an area that a lot of people are height their shoulders towards their ears, even when they come in, they're going to tell you that they feel like their shoulders are up towards your ears. So to start the treatment by just pulling everything back here is a really nice way to get them to relax. What I do is I will press down, engage the tissue, and then slowly sink in. And here you're almost feeling for the fluid in the area. And it's kind of a subtle technique, but you're doing a little bit of a pump as you stretch out the upper traps. So place your hands down, engage the tissue sink in. And then after you feel like the body has accepted your hands in that area and there's no kind of guarding. You can pull down. And as you pull down, go down and in a bit to bring the shoulders back that way. So I'm pulling down and in. And as you're doing that, you're kinda doing these subtle little pumps just to get a little bit of fluid going with the lymphatic system and also the interstitial fluid in the area. And I'll usually follow this down into the lower back. And I'll go quite slow because you want the mechano receptors and the nervous system to be very relaxed as you go into start the treatment. So after that you're going to want to do some FOR Raj. And when I'm putting oil on, usually I'll just do some kind of wipes like this. And I'll just an easy way to apply everything onto the body. So for the first real stroke of the massage, What I'd like to do is I will sync and slowly and I'll move down both sides of the back just away from the spine. And you're sinking in with kind of a medium pressure here. Not too much to start. And I'd like to go all the way down into the low back. And then once I get to the hips, I will spread across slowly. And I'm going just over the bone there. And then I will come back up. I'll get a little stretch in through the ribs and then I will come up to the upper back. And then I will also do a nice little slide into the neck just on either side of the cervical spine and the neck. And right here you're going to loosen up your pressure. So it's just a nice light pressure. And I feel it's really nice for the client because it gives them kind of a tingly effect. That's nice and soothing for the nervous system. Now after I've done that initial stroke, I'll choose one side of the back and I'm going to focus most of my time here. Then I'll go to the other side and then at the end, I'll combine and do both sides. But for now, I'll stay on the right side of Ryan's back. And you're making sure that you're doing a couple of nice strokes, just very long, fluid strokes. And you want to make sure that you follow everything through until the end. So go as low as you can go into the lower back. And just keep doing that for a couple of minutes just to warm up this side of the back. I usually like to start by full body massage is by sticking in the back. So what I do here is I'll do the spreading technique where I bring this hand down. And then I'll go right into the lower back along the SI joint. And then I'll pull up and do a little bit of spreading. And then with this hand, I'm just anchoring down and I'm creating this spreading motion in between the hip and the lower ribs. And this feels really nice for stretching out the QL muscle. So I'll anchor down, pull his lower back down. And then with these fingertips, I'm coming up and sprouting and stretching along the QL muscle. So once again, just do a nice little spreading technique to stretch out all of that tissue. So after we've gone in and spread the tissue this way, now we're gonna go cross body. So what I'd like to do is I will cut my hand around. And then I'm just pulling back slowly, getting a nice little stretch along the hip and the lower ribs. And this finger is going along the edge of the hip. These two fingers are going in the QL muscle and then this finger is on the lower edge of the lower ribs. And then you're slowly pulling back. And you could even stop here once you've hit the edge of the QL muscle and just sink in and just allow them to breathe into it and allow the tissue to unwind underneath your fingertips. I find a lot of times when you get massages, people always feel like they need to be moving all the time, but it's actually very relaxing for the nervous system. Once again, the mechano receptors to just sit in a particular area for a little bit of time and allow the muscle to unwind. And after you stuck there for a minute, you can then just slide your fingertips across and get a nice little stretch in the belly of the muscle. And they're going towards the spine. And once you get towards the spine, you can once again just hold there with your fingertips. And then you can just stretch the muscles that are just off the spine and bring them away from the spine. Just creating a little bit of relaxation in that area, especially in this part of the back where the muscle and the tissue gets stuck along the spine because we all have this kind of kyphotic posture. So here it looks subtle, but I'm just going to show you more. So with my fingertips, what I'm doing is I'm just pulling that tissue away from the spine. And once again for this one, pull it away and just hold it for a minute and allow it to relax underneath your fingertips. So after we've done that more specific work, I'll start to work up the entirety of this side of the back. And you're just slowly moving up and you're doing a nice warm-up stroke FOR so you're not doing too much pressure here. But you're still remembering to go slow and to allow the tissue to just ease underneath your hands. Another nice thing you can do here is take this hand and as you go up, slowly, pull across the edge of the bone here and the shoulder blade. And then as you're bringing it down, you're going down the rotator cuff. So you're going down this way. And then what I'll do with the other hand is create a little bit of a Boeing. And this feels really nice. You can even hold it here and allow it to just sink and relax underneath your fingertips. And you're kinda wringing it out like you would a sponge. So once again, I'll do a nice little bowing here. And you can see how the tissues gathering. They call this a CBO. And then you're ringing the tissue up and doing that nice fluid motion. And then you can pull across the shoulder here. And usually there's going to be trigger points in this muscle, the supraspinatus. So once you've found one, you can hold on that area. And you're not looking to put a maximum amount of pressure in here, but you're definitely pressing down on the area. And here's a tip to help relax trigger points is gather the tissue around it. And if you've gathered the tissue around it, it actually helps it to slack in the trigger point and the adhesions in this area. And it will allow it to relax a little bit faster underneath your fingertips. And it also helps with client comfort and allows them to relax a little bit easier. After I've gone in and work the rotator cuff, what I'd like to do is a little bit of a hole here. So I'll place the flood of my arm down. And you're just lifting up the tissue and then pressing down in this area. And this is really nice because it allows the shoulder to relax. And also. There's some tendons and ligaments in the area and to get them to relax and help the shoulder muscles relax even more. Pressing down is the best way to achieve relaxation with those tendons and ligaments. So here you're just sinking and slowly and you'll feel underneath your arm, everything relaxing as you do this technique. And once it's relaxed, old it is usually takes 90 seconds. And then you can transition out by using your form. And you can go across the entirety of the shoulder blade. And that's really nice because this tissue is usually pulled up in people with rounded forward shoulders. So now that we're transitioning of that, one thing you could do here is also just follow your arm down the back of their arm. And this is a nice way to get in the triceps and get a nice overall fact for the back and the arm. You could do that a couple times. Just stretch everything down and back. And you're bringing the shoulders away from the ears. And you're also relaxing all that tissue in the arm. Then I will take my fist and just gently place it in the shoulder. And then I'll gather the tissue up to help relax everything. And I'll hold there. And then I'll slowly pull up and down. And this is good for stretching out the erector muscles along the back. And it also saves your fingertips for a moment using your fists. So you want to combine using your forearms, your fingertips, your thumb, and your fist because it also gives the client a nice mix of feelings and different contacts. If you're gonna use your thumb in this area. It's also nice to go from the top of the neck and slow down into the spine of the scapula, which will be right about here. And then what you can do is just hold there and slowly traverse across the spine of the scapula. You can even bring your other hand in and do another scoop this way with my other thumb. And go down slowly. And you want to make sure with this one once again that you follow it all the way to the edge, which will be right around here in the shoulder. And just keep doing that is really nice technique to do. People loved the thumbs and it's easy for you if you're doing a massage to feel everything underneath your thumb, you don't want to use them too much, but they definitely have a place in the treatment. And I would say this is one of the best places to use your thumb if you're gonna do the relaxation massage. Another nice thing you can do in the shoulders to enhance what we just did or to replace using your thumbs if you're not comfortable with that, is to stand on the other side of the client and then grip in on the upper traps, the your hand. And then you can slowly slide your fingertips along the upper traps. And you can follow that into the neck. And then you can slowly move into the neck and then up into the scalp just to enhance the feeling there. So once again, grip in pulled back. You can even just pull back this way. And that feels really nice to just a drop those shoulders down and back. Or once again, you can go up this way and bring your fingertips along the side of the neck, easing or pressure in this area right here. And then easing off even more as you go up into the scalp and slowly go up into the skull. 3. Back Relaxation 2: A key to a good relaxation massage is also focusing on opening up the breath. So what you can do is hook your fingers around the ribcage and you want to be conscious with female clients want to go too far around. But with men, it's okay to go around a little bit further. And your focus here is on pulling the tissue in the diaphragm and the front and the rib heads in the back. So you're slowly pulling up and you're going along all the ribs. And you could even follow that in along the spine and do a nice little stretch on either side of the spine. And this is good for doing the attachment site for the lats and many different other muscles. Once again, bring it back. Focus on opening up the breath and working along the rib cage. You can even work with the breath with the client in this situation so they can take a nice deep breath in and out. And you can stretch out as you're doing that. You want to make sure when you do this technique to that you're doing the lower ribs, the metal, and the opera. So you're getting a nice overall fact for the entire rib cage, opening up that area and allowing for an ease of the breath. So when you're going in the lower ribcage, your pressure is a little bit less. And you're following that along into the spine. And then when you go to the middle, you can do a little bit more pressure here and sink down and then pull back slowly. And then once you get to the opera, you can do even more pressure. Be a little bit sensitive to not go into the armpit here. And then you can also reinforce her hand on this one and bring the tissue back. Plays a little more pressure and slowly sink in to that area. Really, who we GUI relaxing technique is to go on either side of the spine. So feel where the spine is and then just slide off into this little ridge on either side. I like to use my thumbs for this one. And you're just moving really slow. You're not providing too much pressure in this area. But this is really nice for getting all the tissue around the spine, especially when it gets really tense in that area. It can cause neurological issues and it can also cause lack of range of motion and mobility. But this is also just really nice for the sympathetic nervous system to relax everything. And you're just following it all the way down. And as you're doing this, you can actually see which side is tense. So underneath my thumb right here, I can feel that right around here, Ryan is really tense. So there could be an issue, there could be a trigger point, and that's something that you can stop and explore. So I would take my fingertips and slide just off that spine into this little ridge. And then you can just slowly bring the tissue out and ease off all of the tension in that area. So as you're doing that, you're feeling for the tissue sinking underneath your fingertips and relaxing. You can even work with the breath here and get the client to take a nice deep breath in. And you have to think of all the nerves that run just along and across from the spine. So you're easing off everything around the neurovascular bundles. And once the nervous system is relaxed, the person will be relaxed. So after you've stopped off and eased off the tension in that one particular tight area along the spine. My teacher and school would always say that this is the money technique and that's two, continue along with your thumbs. And you're following on either side of the spine, continuing this laminar groove clearing. And in this area, you can hold it for a second because it's usually going to be tense and stuck down. So you wanna make sure with your thumbs that you're actually directing it out, word like that once you get to this area of the spine. So I'll just turn my thumbs just lightly just to make sure that the tissue is getting stretched out this way. So turning my thumbs slightly. And then once you get to the low back, flatten them out again, and go right into the SI joints. And then you could hold there and just press for a moment, allow everything to relax along the joint there. And then slowly to complete the technique and give it a nice overall full body effect. Go across either side of the low back. And then you could even come back up the side body into the rib cage with your hands. And then once again, make it a nice full, complete technique by moving along the ribcage, up along the top of the spine and into the neck. Now, as we're going to go from this side of the back to this side of the back, like to do a nice broad contact or long the erector muscles here. So I'll take the flats of my knuckles and I'll press down in the shoulders and then slowly move down either side of the back. This seems like a deep tissue technique, but really I'm not providing a ton of pressure here. It's just a nice slow, firm, relaxing pressure. And the one thing when you're a spa therapist is that it's not always going to be relaxation massage is people are going to want a deep do, deep tissue. The best way to do a relaxing deep tissue massage is to use the flats your knuckles like this. And it can be either a relaxation technique that's nice and broad, or it can be used as a way to put your body weight into the table, into the tissue and do more of a deep massage. And then you can follow it into the hips and just go across, kinda wiping across with the flats or your hands. Really nice thing you can do. And it's something that I think a lot of massage therapists shy away from. It was no harm in doing it. In fact, I think it will enhance everything that we've done around the ribcage and opening up along the spine more specifically and more broad is after you've done all that, you can do this kind of a rib walking technique which feels really nice for mobilizing the ribs a little bit and helping with the expansion of breath. So what you can do is a little bit of a butterfly hand pattern and you're just off the spine. You're not pressing down on the spine and you're going just off of it on either side. So with this hand, I'll pull off a bit and then just press down into the ribs. I'm not providing a crazy amount of pressure. But you're just doing a nice little rib walk, which is actually really relaxing. So you'll go down one segment, press down hole for a couple of seconds, with the opposite hand. Go down and then press in for a couple of seconds, move down another segment, and then press down and in hole for a couple seconds. And you can repeat that down the entirety of the ribcage. And you want to make sure that you're going pretty slow. But you're just getting that nice mobilization of the joints in that area. This is probably the most relaxing joint mobilization that you can do. And it's one that I really love to incorporate into any relaxation massage. And as you get into the lower ribs because it is more sensitive down here, just ease off your pressure bit and just do this kind of walking down. You can almost imagine it as like a cat when they're pulling on you and pulling on your back, you're just kind of moving from side to side and getting a little bit of mobilization and all of the joints. So after we've done all of those techniques and other really nice broad technique that you can use is place your forearms on either side of the back. And then here you're just pulling down on the shoulders. And this feels really nice because it pulls the shoulders down away from the ears. And you also get to go along this area and the shoulder blades, which doesn't get treated a lot or considered a lot. So you can either do your hands like this. For this area, I find a broad contact feels a lot nicer. So you can take your forums on either side, give your hands a little bit of a break here at this point in the treatment and then follow that along the entirety of the shoulder. And then down into the rib cage, rises a little bit stuck here so you can hold if they have any type of stuckness in the tissue. And then slowly bring it down along the rib cage, just easing or pressure off just lightly right here. Another way of doing this technique is that you can follow it Along the shoulders. And then you can also use that to go into the arms. So here I'm going all the way across the shoulder blades and then I'm going into the triceps and little bit of the biceps. And you're just stretching along the arms and you definitely want to ease off your pressure. Once you get into the arms here as well. Then you could even bring it back on both sides by stretching up the middle of the back and going up into the neck. So now that we've done about 15 to 20 minutes on this side of the back. And we've done the in-between techniques for the transition, which was along the spine, although by broader and then stretching and pulling the shoulders back from the years. What we're going to want to do now is go on the other side and do a similar sequence. But as we were doing on this side, you're looking for imbalances in the tissue. Because the whole key to a really nice relaxing massage is that you want to balance all of the tissue. So just like we found earlier in themselves that Ryan had a particularly tense spot right here. You're looking along the broader tissue in the lower back in the queue. Well, and once you've done this side, I have a nice comparison for how the other side should feel. So once again, this out of the back, you're going to want to work for 15 to 20 minutes. You're doing a similar type of sequence. Will start in the low back and then move into the upper back with a nice overall massage and then also through the ribs. So just to review, in the low back, you're going to start with you're spreading techniques. So you can anchor one hand down and then spread the tissue like this, opening up along from the hip into the lower ribs. So anchor down with this hand, pull the tissue down. And then with this hand you're stretching and spreading up. Then after that, you're going to come along and you're going to stretch this way, opening up along the hip, the lower ribs, and the QL just from a different angle. And I can already feel on this side that there's a little more tension in this side than the other one. So we're going to spend a little more time in this area treating the low back. And once again, once you feel point of tension hold, allow it to unwind underneath your fingertips. And after you found that the tissue has relaxed, you can continue to pull and do a nice little stretch here. And then once you get to the spine, you can just take a little bit of pressure off of the nerve roots here by taking the tissue and spreading it away from the spine. One thing I also like to focus on when I'm using my forums as well. Other times massage therapists will kind of move up the back this way. There was nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly fine. It feels nice. But as I'm doing that, you can see that the tissue is pushing up towards his shoulders. And we really want to decrease that effect when we're trying to relax someone. So what I'll usually do is instead of pulling up this way, I like to pull the tissue down. So use my form. I'll lock in and then you can do a nice little circular motion. And then you're pulling down and sinking in. Pulling down just slightly and slowly and then sinking into the upper traps and along the erector muscles. And once again, just low we moving down the back. And this is really nice for pulling all that tissue down off the back. Once you reach the middle in the rhomboid muscles right here, you can even drop down and just hold and allow all of that tissue to sink underneath your broad contact. And then you can slowly follow and move down. And with this one, I'm using this very kind of thick, meaty part of my arm and I'm making sure the client is comfortable. If you go down this way, it's not as comfortable as if you use this kind of thick, fleshy portion of your arm. So once you've worked and balanced the muscle on both sides of the back, you're just going to want to complete the sequence by going down and working both sides at once. And this is also nice to review and see if you can feel any more imbalances. But hopefully at this point, there's nothing left and the back is nice and even on both sides. And the musculature is nice and relaxed. And you can finish it off by following that into the neck. Is that always feels so good and amazing and right up into the scalp. So usually in a spot you're going to have hot towels. And here we do, but since it's an insanely hot in here, guys, I'm not going to put a hotel and Ryan and put him through that. But I like to do with our tiles is that I will roll it up kind of along the spine. And then in the low back, I'll double it over like this. And then just as you've started the massaged with that kind of somatic release. After you've finished the massage, you want to relax everything along the spine. So this is focused on the directors and heating everything up in this area because there's always so much tension in people's spine. And what I'll do with the hotel is I will hold down on the sacrum and also on the top of the back. And then I'll move my hands with his breath. So as he breathes in and out, I'm just gently kind of hovering over him. And I'm not placing pressure down here. I'm just subtly encouraging the low back and the mid back to relax. This is more of an energetic technique, a grounding technique, and it feels really nice to end the back sequence this way. Another really nice way to end the back sequence is to do a little sacred glide. So what you're doing here is you're finding the bone right here, the sacrum, and you're placing your palm down in that area. So you're just sinking in and you're not providing a crazy amount of pressure here. And then all you're doing is you're gliding the tissue down and back this way, creating a traction in all of the superficial tissue in the spine. So you can anchor your hand down on the table. And then with this hand, you're just gliding the sacrum at all of the tissue down this way. And this feels really nice and it's a great way to traction all the tissue around the spine. And really nice relaxing way to end the back sequence.