Massage therapy is beneficial to everyone, all age ranges, and body types, including teenagers, helping to improve the growing teen’s mental health, biological health and emotional health. With rising pressure on our teens today, from society and the media, stresses are extremly high, Massage therapy can help in a safe and natural way.
Youth Massage is specific and sensitive to the needs of a young person going through the transition from childhood to adulthood. Teenagers can be self-conscious and shy about their bodies, but massage therapy can help improve body image and help decrease depression, anxiety, and stress. This keeps a teen connected to his/her body even as it changes in bewildering ways. Massage helps teens stay grounded. Bodywork has also reportedly helped cure eating disorders, a concern among teens.
Youth Massage also helps an adolescent understand and accept healthy nurturing touch, desexualizing the experience, and seeing it as therapeutic instead. It can also help teenagers manage stress, reduce the impact of emotional/hormonal transitions, relieve muscle tension, and improve sense of well-being and sleep and study patterns.
With the teenage years also comes soreness from sports and being active during the day. Changes in the body or behavior happen all the time because of puberty and hormone fluctuation. Puberty can’t be stopped and there are ever changing growth spurts throughout their teen years. They are on a roller-coaster ride of hormones and need to experience the calming effects of massage.
Massage Therapy for Teenagers can help with growing pains, body image, and learning to feel comfortable in one's body. Regular massage helps promote muscle and joint health, increasing flexibility all while improving circulation. All benefits to the active teen lifestyle.
As far as health goes, teens worry a lot about their bodies. Biological changes happen whether they want it to or not. The teenage body is in the midst of transformation, exponential growth and development, where massage therapy can be greatly effective. Consent forms must be signed by a parent or guardian for all patients under age 18.
And finally, a beneficial therapeutic relationship can develop between teenagers and massage therapist - practitioners during the years when adolescents need adult confidantes but keep their parents at arms length. The practitioner can become a supportive, trusted adult in a teenager’s life, and the session itself, can be a way to deal with all the physical and emotional turmoil of this tender period of one’s life.