Massage and Anxiety

Last week a couple people asked me if massage is helpful in dealing with and reducing anxiety. I do have clients who include massage as part of their treatment and self-care for anxiety issues, but aside from that I didn’t know if massage had any proven effects with regards to anxiety- until I came across this article from the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. There hasn’t been a ton of research done on massage, but apparently massage’s positive effects on anxiety and depression are “widely agreed-upon by MT researchers”. The article states that a single session of massage can be helpful in reducing “state anxiety”, the kind of anxiety we feel in a certain moment, and that multiple sessions significantly reduce “trait anxiety”, the kind of longer-term anxiety that some of us live with day to day.