Therapeutic vs. Medical Massage
So, what’s the difference?
Before we get into the difference of what we do, lets explain why you want to choose us. Typically, massage therapy focuses on relaxation and reducing muscle tension. It's often provided in spas and massage chains to promote overall well-being. You’ll notice it’s a quite a bit more oil, formulaic, and almost always 10 minutes shorter than you were expecting!
At Moonshadow Medical Massage, it’s a full hands-on treatment for the duration of the scheduled appointment, as long everyone arrives on time, and they have filled out paperwork. The intake form gives us time to understand about your treatment goals before you arrive and a better view of your health history. Then we can ask good questions to come up with a treatment plan for you. No hidden fees for more pressure, muscles balms or in some cases the addition of essential oils, cupping, or even Graston Technique©. Our focus is clinical massage, so no couples massage or hot stones. Can we help you relax and unwind, of course! That’s what they taught us in massage therapy school. See in school, they focus on getting us ready for spa massage. It is up to us as individuals, to focus our work, studies and get medically certified after we graduated and go the clinical route.
Clinical massage is targeted towards addressing specific medical conditions or injuries. It involves techniques aimed at relieving pain, improving range of motion, and aiding in rehabilitation. Our therapists often work closely with healthcare professionals to develop treatment plans tailored to the patient's needs, or at least compliment your other therapies. Sessions include techniques that are tailored to address the patient's specific needs and may include deep tissue massage, myofascial release, trigger point therapy, oncology massage, scar tissue therapy and other therapeutic modalities. You will find different variation with every therapist, depending on the tools in their toolbox, but all great bodyworkers. We want you to expect better massage therapy work here.
Therapeutic vs. Medical Massage
Simply said, it comes down to experience and education. Our clinic is a teaching clinic, all our therapists are licensed massage therapists. Our therapeutic massage therapy team is somewhere in the process of getting their medical massage certificates and/or completing their hours of fine tuning their skills required before they are moved up to medical massage status. You are in good hands with our therapeutic therapists, and they are gaining the experience and the certifications as our Medical Massage or MAT therapists. The Medical Massage Therapists are certified specialists in Medical Massage Therapy. We have earned our NCBTMB Certificate, 100 CE Hours in Clinical Massage or Orthopedic Massage, and completed hundreds of continuing education and counting. Collectively, we have over 50 years’ experience and thousands of education hours between us.