Do you sometimes wonder what’s the difference between all these occupations? Is one more effective than the other? What do you use each one for? The main difference between Physical Therapist and Massage Therapist is in philosophy and methodology. Actually, I recently discovered that Physical therapy was borne out of Massage therapy back in WWI. So as far as philosophy, massage takes on a holistic approach (body, mind and spirit), looking at the person and treating the illness or injury as a whole, encouraging all body parts to work together in order to achieve harmony and balance; while physical therapy is more about developing a goal to address the specific injury. It’s sort of a dualistic approach to treating the injury. For example, when a body part is injured, the treatment is focused on rehabilitating and strengthening the injured body part where as in massage, addressing the physical, emotional and psychological is part of maintaining their health and well being. And as far as methodology, massage involves the use of hands to manipulate the soft tissues, the fascia (connective tissue) and physical therapy uses equipment/instruments as part of the rehabilitative process. Both types are valid and have proven to be effective with good outcomes. What about Body work? Body work is also a type of massage but the main difference is without the use of lubricant. Body work takes on many forms such as Reiki, Yoga, Thai massage, Shiatsu and Acupressure to name a few.
There you have it.
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