Simple Touches to Provide a Superior Swedish Massage Service Appointment

By Selena Belisle, CE Institute LLC Founder & Instructor

I recently experienced a Swedish massage on a cruise ship from a therapist who was training in Bali. It was wonderful. She provided some nice touches that elevated the massage experience, which I will share here.  

As a caveat before we begin, massage execution superiority is highly subjective.  Aside from issues like sanitation and safety, massage is often like ice cream, where each person might have a different favorite flavor.  One flavor of ice cream wouldn’t be considered better or more superior than another. A favorite ice cream flavor is simply a personal opinion, similar to how massage therapy is thought of, or evaluated:

Adding Sound to a Massage Appointment

The table service started and finished with a single chime of bell ringing. As demonstrated in the video below. The bell sound is pleasant, only rung once and is not overwhelming. Providing a consistent ritual in how massage appointments are started and finished is a great way to provide consistency to clients, for a more reliable experience.  Bells similar to this can be found with online retailers using search terms such as: Tibetan Tingsha Cymbals Bells. To view or hear a demonstration of a cymbals bell chime on our Youtube channel, please click HERE. 

Hot Towel Service with Massage and Healthcare Practices

Adding hot towels can be part of almost any massage or bodywork appointment.  It can be included as part of the service, or offered as an “add-on” for additional charge.  If charging extra for hot towel service, we recommend using aromatherapy essential oils to the water when making hot towels for various therapeutic effects, such as relaxation, energize, etc.  Just be sure to seek proper training in professional aromatherapy practices prior to application, so that you can efficiently check or respond to allergies, etc. 

Hot towel service is standardly applied to common areas such as:

• Feet before and/or after massage. Before the service creates a more sanitary experience for the practitioner. After the massage creates better safety for the client, so the client will have better stability with their feet, when they’re not greasy while bare foot or wearing things like sandals or flip flops.
  

• Hands before and/or after massage. Before the service creates a more sanitary experience for the practitioner. After creates better safety, so a client doesn’t grab a surface with a greasy hand for balance if they lose their balance and start to fall.
  

• Back before and/or after massage. Before the service can create a calming effect. The moist thermal therapy can also help soften the tissues in preparation for greater bodywork.  After the massage, it can help protect a client’s clothing from greasy residue, especially if shower facilities post-massage are not available.

When applying hot towel service to the back, it’s important to start the hot towel on the upper back which is less sensitive than the lower back, as shown in our youtube video HERE.  Applying a hot towel to the lower back first can be shocking for a client, especially if the towel is extra hot.  I personally like holding the ends of a hot towel with my fingers and then enveloping the hot towel between my inner forearms to evaluate the temperature before application.  

When finishing a back massage with a hot towel, it is recommended to pull the towel up from the lower back first.  This allows a therapist to pull the drape up with the towel, so that the back is not excessively exposed to open air which can create a chilling or constrictive event for the client.

Other areas or a full body hot towel experience: providing hot towel service anywhere throughout the body  provides a more sanitary experience and helps soften the soft tissues in the applied areas. Adding essential oils for aromatic benefit can also enhance this experience.

The Use of Knuckles

While most of us use our first knuckles for deeper tissue massage applications, this therapist from Bali used her 2nd knuckles to effleurage large fleshy areas such as the erector spinae of the back. This felt wonderful and was a good switch-up from standard effleuraging with a flat or molded hand.  She managed to allow a softer 2nd knuckle massage application in those effleurage strokes, rather than the sharp pointy use of knuckles which is typically applied as shown in the picture below:

Kneading Strokes With Less Squeeze

While normal kneading or petrissage strokes are applied as an alternating squeezing of the soft tissue while the practitioner’s hands work towards one another, this therapist moves her hands with the identical alternating movement towards one another without the squeeze. It really felt wonderful, and different. Afterall, it’s important to switch-up and not repeat the same massage strokes over and over again, which can lead to boredom for both client and practitioner.

Muscles Love to Be Moved and Bones Love to Be Traced

When is the last time you have purposely worked around the calcaneus in a Swedish massage?  Usually, massage therapists will simply effleurage straight over this bone, if it’s worked on at all! In this Swedish massage, the therapist flexed my knee while I laid in pronated position, and performed several almost circular strokes around my calcaneus with her thumb and pointer finger, in a pincer type of movement. It really felt wonderful and reinforced how much bones loved to be traced in massage therapy appointments, to me. 3D Photo of calcaneus bone below attributed to: BodyParts3D is made by DBCLS. - Polygon data is from BodyParts3D, CC BY-SA 2.1 jp, wiki28324270

Sanitation is Key

My massage journey is always improved when I’m not worried about sanitation.  This massage therapist washed her hands after entering the room, prior to starting my massage. She washed her hands again before providing my facial massage at the end of the appointment, where she incorporated some acupressure points over my sinuses to relieve them, and then washed her hands for a third time, before exiting the treatment room. The linens were clean and bleached white, void of any snags, tears or soiling. The room was extremely clean, without any dust or dirtiness. All of this allowed me to relax and enjoy the massage itself.

In Summary

There are a lot of wonderful touches that can be added to a massage session beyond anything I could extensively write about here.  I feel the best way to learn these touches is by seeking massage appointments from others, similar to how I experienced this massage appointment.  

If you want to learn additional massage practice above and beyond what was taught in school, CE classes like what we teach are a great way to obtain that information.  However, we also recommend seeking massage from others who were not trained in the same place as you.  One of the best places to seek massage from therapists trained from all over the world is on cruise ships.  Cruise ships regularly employ massage therapists from many different countries and backgrounds.  

When a therapist is in one area where most were trained by the same instructors in the same handful of local massage schools, their often trained in the same applications and strokes, sometimes with little diversity. Trying to learn new techniques from other therapists in the area may prove difficult. As such, it’s more than likely that you’ll meet a new therapist practicing different techniques when you book a massage on a cruise. You might be able to use that experience as a tax write-off benefit too!  Just check with your own licensed accountant first. Sometimes cruise massage isn’t great, and you can learn from that too. It’s equally valuable to learn what doesn’t feel good, so that you never repeat the same!

For more information about massage therapy education and practices, please visit: https://ceinstitute.com/