Some Of The Best Endorphins, Are Massage Endorphins!

Endorphins are a wonderful thing in life, they help to regulate pain, increase your mood and help you to relax in the short term. Long term endorphins are even more helpful, activating the bodies immune system, helping to reduce diseases and kill cancerous cells, and even help to slow the aging process. 

So with all of these benefits of endorphins a cynical person would expect it to come at a high price, and if you don't like exercise that can seem like it's true. Working out, even something as simple as a walk can release endorphins into your system. But whether you like to work out or not there is a way that is, in my opinion even better then working out to get endorphins... A good old fashioned massage!

Now not everyone has the time or money to go to a professional massage therapist, sad but true. But there are some very easy massage techniques that can be performed by a beginner that can cause a release of endorphins.

Shoulder massage.
If you are lucky enough to have another person available to trade off massages a shoulder massage is a good place to start. Get behind the person and place your palms on the back of their shoulders just above the shoulder blades. Wrap your fingers down around the top of the shoulder and down towards the collar bone. Extend your thumbs down towards the spine. This is the base position for a good shoulder massage, you may move your hands up and down the persons back using the same technique I am going to describe here and it will work fine. One note is to make sure that you always massage away from the heart, so if you massage above the persons heart you want to massage in a pattern that moves towards the head. If you are massaging below the heart you want to massage in a pattern that moves towards their tail bone.

To start take your thumbs as low down their spine as you can move them without moving your hands and then press into the persons back lightly, and begin sliding your thumbs up along the side of the spine. As you do this, press your palms into the persons back and roll them towards the spine then up along with the thumbs. Take your fingers along the collar bone and slides them out towards the shoulder then curl them just a bit. As you curl your fingers, move your palms out towards the shoulders still pressing into their back and move your thumbs to your index fingers (where it would be if you were giving a salute). From here press your palms down and slide your thumbs down, moving your palms and thumbs along the shoulder blades, while your index fingers slide in curled position along the top of the shoulders. Finally slide your hands gently back into the position you started, the motion should make a circle and you should end up where you started. At this point just keep repeating at whatever speed and strength the person you are massaging is comfortable with, don't press too hard or you could cause a bruise.

Depending on how good of a grip you have you can use the three parts of the hand separately or all together. For example if you are massaging a persons lower back it is usually easier to just use the thumbs and not the rest of the fingers. For a person's middle back about heart level it's usually easier to just press your palms into their back and make a slow circling motion. Do whatever feels comfortable for you.

No one around? No problem!
You can perform a shoulder massage on yourself quite effectively, and just about anywhere that you have a few minutes to spare. Simply move your hand to your opposite shoulder, lay the palm of your hand on the top of your shoulder and extend your fingers down at an angle towards your spine. You will probably a feel a knotted muscle under your fingers, this is where you are going to massage. Press your fingers into this muscle with as much pressure as you feel comfortable with and then press lower into your back, out towards your arm, up to the top of your shoulder, then over to your spine and finally back down to where you started. This full circle motion will cause the muscle to release tension and endorphins at the same time and feels pretty good.

Ear Lobe Massage Bonus!

This may sound strange but one of the best ways to cause an over all feeling of relaxation and release endorphins is to massage your ears. Regardless of whether you are doing this to someone else or yourself the technique is done the same way. Gently grab the person ear lobe, if your doing it from the front place your thumb on the inside of their ear lobe, and your finger tips on the outside. If you are behind them leave your thumbs on the outside and your index fingers on the inside. Don't press too hard, this only requires a gentle touch. Once you are in position gently rub your fingers and thumb up and down in opposite directions similar to the 'money' hand gesture that people sometimes make rubbing their thumb  up and down their fingers to signify they have a dollar bill in their hand. Start at the very top of the ear lobe and slowly slide your fingers together and work your way down to the part of the ear lobe that is traditionally that part that gets pierced. Rub that part then slowly work your way back up. It may sound strange but try it, it feels great!

I'll post a few more massage tips in future posts but for now try these out and see what you think! I am sure that after you try them you'll agree with me that some of the best endorphins are massage endorphins!

Good Luck!

P.S. Special thanks to my roommate who was kind enough to help with the pictures above!