With time, the body and its function gradually slow down. Due to bad postures, overuse of certain muscles and ageing process, the body starts losing its elasticity, the muscles start becoming stiff, our shoulders and neck start forming knots. All these things lead to discomfort, pain and stiffness of the body.
Gua Sha may be less explored by many, but this ancient oriental therapy, is practiced today to take care of many such problems, using certain gua sha tools. Alternative therapies like fire-cupping and acupressure are well known, but now massage therapists, sports therapists, chiropractors, beauty and skin therapists are exploring Gua Sha as a safe and effective way to restore the body’s physiological balance. Gua Sha helps in improving blood circulation, reducing inflammation, and stimulating energy flow, all which ensure good health and wellbeing.
Gua Sha is a healing technique, in which the skin is massaged with scraping and pressing actions using a curved and smooth-edged instrument. The gua sha massage usually leads to redness of skin in an orderly manner to produce modest bruising. This bruising, just shows increased blood circulation, and is different from the redness sustained due to injury.
Gua sha massage helps in lymphatic drainage. Gua Sha tool is used to apply pressure on the skin, in such a way that it affects the underneath part of the skin called ‘fascia’. The pressure eliminates tension and breaks the knots under the skin. It increases blood flow under the skin. ‘Gua’ literally means ‘Scraping’, which result in ‘light bruises’ on the skin that appear as red or purple marks known as ‘Sha’.
Gua sha massage tools are available in various shapes and sizes, depending on which body part you want to use it on. It can used to massage the face for an anti-ageing treatment and to tone the skin. It can be used on the neck, back, shoulders, arms, legs, calves, behind the knees or soles of the feet for pain relief, scar removal and removal of toxin buildup.
Benefits of Gua Sha Massage
- Helps manage the carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Enhances immunity.
- Reduces inflammation.
- It can also be used as an effective way to treat cold, fever, or lung-related problems.
- Its very effective in reducing post-surgery scarring. The scraping action breaks the adhesions and increases blood flow to the part, allowing new skin to replace the scar.
- Breaks fascial adhesions.
- Menopausal women, who experience frequent headaches or insomnia can also get relief with Gua Sha massage.