The story of massage – a world of experience, From Wimbledon clinic Massage

People all over the world have used the power of touch to soothe and maintain good health for thousands of years. It has probably always been intuitive to rub your temples with your fingertips if you have a headache, or to knead tired and aching feet. Over time, healers and professional massage therapists have developed the most effective ways to help the healing process and maintain well-being using touch.

Massage and the ancient world

Sanskrit records refer to massage as part of Ayurvedic medicine in ancient times. The medical text “Con-Fu of the Toa-Tse” (1800BC) refers to therapeutic massage 3000 years ago. By roughly 400 BC the Greek ‘father of medicine’ Hippocrates was writing about massage as a science, declaring that “ … rubbing can bind a joint that is too loose and loosen a joint that is too rigid …” The Romans took up where the Greeks left off, using massage to treat injury or illness in everyone from athletes to emperors. Roman physician Galeneven documented his use of what we can today recognise as sports or orthopaedic massage.

Out of the dark and into the light

The period of history we call the ‘Dark Ages’ roughly spans 400-1400AD. During that time, religious dogma increased its grip, taking a harsh view of alternative healing wisdom. It wasn’t until the end of the 18th Century that Pehr Henrich Ling revived touch as a soft tissue healing technique for gymnasts and paved the way for what we now call Swedish massage. A hundred years later, Johan Georg Mezger, a Dutchman, expanded on Ling’s work, embedding the science that would lead to modern deep tissue massage and Swedish massage techniques that we use today in Wimbledon Clinic Massage.

In the last 50 years

Since the 1980s, massage has found its place at the heart of our sports, training and fitness routines and, for many of us, as an essential therapy ensuring our wellness. Our English word ‘massage’ may derive from the Arabic ‘mass’h’, meaning touch. Or, it may come from the Latin ‘Massa’.

But what matters is that talented professionals working at Wimbledon Clinic Massage have a world of experience backing them up when they treat you with sports or Swedish-style massages. And they’re waiting for you to get in touch with clients near Wimbledon and offer you a fabulous massage journey