If you’re a seasoned recipient of massage, you may strongly prefer getting it on a massage table – or not. If you’re a man who stumbled across my blog and immersed himself in its pearls of wisdom, I’ll tell you the pros and cons of massage tables. And which option you’d get if you came for a massage to me.
The only pro of massage tables
that I see is not for you, but for the masseuse. If it’s for you too, then very indirectly. Only in the sense that if the masseuse is 100% comfortable while massaging you, she’ll transfer her comfort and well grounded energy to you through her touch. And that will enhance the healing effect of the massage. But I said indirectly. And if you ever get to know me, you’ll find out that I don’t waste words. The pro of massage tables is very definitely for the therapist. Massage tables were invented to help the masseuse keep a straight back and be able to walk around you for easy access to every part of your body. Her straight back will prevent pain in it, thus enhance her comfort…. And enable solid pressure in certain movements during the massage. But that’s about it.
I and my friends who have been on them find massage tables immensely uncomfortable because:
- they’re too narrow, which makes you have to lie very still and constrainedly in order not to destabilize the table. The masseuse’s movements and mainly pressures destabilize it enough, let alone you wanting to move a limb!
- they’re not rock-solidly stable. That induces a feeling of the possibility of falling, and even though falling is highly unlikely, emotions aren’t logical, and having that worry at the back of the mind is not exactly conducive to relaxation.
- the massage tables that have a hole for the face are the worst, because gravity does its magic whether we like it or not and after a while of motionless lying your face will feel like wanting to be sucked out through the hole, which can be painful. A massage is to induce relaxation and destroy, not create pain!
Massaging on the bed
is not good either. This is because the mattress absorbs most of the pressure of massage movements that are to compress the deep tissues to stimulate an influx of blood and circulation into them. Thus the only option that remains and I find the best by far is to massage on a special massage and physio mat on the floor. Can you deduce why? If not, never mind. You can always ask me.
