How to Give a Chair Massage

Video Transcript

MALU LUJAN: Okay. We're going to talk about doing chair massage. So you can do chair massage any way you like. Basically, the main thing is you just want that person to feel good. So an easy way to start is you just put your hand on their back and check in with your person about the pressure. How are we doing on the pressure here, [PH] Patty? PATTY: Perfect. MALU LUJAN: You want to make sure that you're not rubbing them too hard. If they have injuries, good to know that ahead of time. So just go down the back, say hello to the back and shaking is really nurturing. It just feels very relaxing and it's a good way to shake the tension out. The other thing you can do is use your thumbs and you just feel at the base of their skull. Now, some people don't like this so always ask and do what works for them. If you feel at the base of their skull, you'll feel little indents in there. And you just press, that reduces tension really well, and just work your way either from the base of the skull near the ears toward the center, or from the center toward the ears, and just feeling between the vertebrae with your thumbs and you can go all the way down their back doing this. One really great way to address the neck and shoulders is to go from the ears down the neck and out to the shoulders. There's a lot of tension in these muscles in most people, so putting your thumbs in here can feel really go and just work your way all the way to the edge of the fleshy part of their shoulder. You don't want to press on bone. You can press in a little crevices between the bones. But now I'm hitting bones, so I don't want to go any further than that. The other thing you can do is you can lift their arm up, just relax your arm. Pretend you couldn't speak any, Patty. And you put your hands in the fleshy area, in the muscles in between the spine and the shoulder blade. And the shoulder blades actually have a fair amount of muscle over them, so you can actually put your fingers in those muscles, that is very alleviating, that feels so good. You can lift their arms up into the air, and again, just remind them just relax the arm. Give a little gentle stretch. If anybody's ever dislocated in arm, you don't want do this maneuver. The other thing you can do is you can use oil. So I'm just going to get a little bit of oil here or lotion, whatever you have on hand, and rubbing out this way from the neck, from the spine out to the tips of the shoulder blades, that feels heavenly.