Massage therapy is a type of treatment in which a trained and certified medical professional manipulates the soft tissues of your body — muscle, connective tissue, tendons, ligaments and skin — using varying degrees of pressure and movement.

Massage therapy dates back thousands of years. References to massage appear in writings from ancient China, Japan, India, Arabic nations, Egypt, Greece (Hippocrates defined medicine as “the art of rubbing”), and Rome.

Later massage became widely used in Europe during the Renaissance. In the 1850s, two American physicians who had studied in Sweden, introduced massage therapy in the United States, where it became popular and was promoted for a variety of health purposes.

It is generally considered part of complementary and integrative medicine. It’s increasingly being offered along with standard treatment for a wide range of medical conditions and situations.

Studies of the benefits of massage demonstrate that it is an effective treatment for reducing stress, pain and muscle tension, as well as reduce “state anxiety ” (a reaction to a particular situation), blood pressure , and heart rate, and multiple sessions can reduce “trait anxiety ” (general anxiety -proneness), depression , and pain.