Massage is the medium

Did you know that…

• Skin is the human body’s largest organ that accounts for 18 percent of our body weight and covers about 19 square feet…

• Since massage, like cocaine, stimulates the production of endorphins, lack of touch may lead to addictive behaviors…

• Massage feels good and it also reduces stress, eases back pain, fights anorexia, lifts depression and saves lives?

Life said so in an article entitled The Healing Power of Touch, chronicling the healing powers of massage, thus making it serious medicine. Yes, concurred a psychiatrist named James Gordon, "Massage is medicine" that can relieve and/or cure various illnesses (hypertension, among them).

According to the Life story, "Physical touch is more than skin-deep. There are as many as five million touch receptors in our skin – 3,000 in a single fingertip – that send messages along the spinal cord to the brain. A simple touch – a hand on a shoulder, an arm around the waist – can reduce the heart rate and lower blood pressure. Touch also stimulates the brain to produce endorphins, the body’s natural pain suppressors, which is why a mother’s hug of a child who has skinned his knee can literally ‘make it better’…

"… Stronger, sustained touch can have even greater effect. Massage may increase the lymph flow rate. It enhances immune function and lowers levels of the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine. Massage also stimulates the vagus, one of 12 cranial nerves that influence various bodily functions. One branch of the vagus travels to the gastrointestinal tract, where it facilitates the release of food-absorption hormones like insulin and glucose."

The truth is that discovery that touch can heal is as old as, perhaps, civilization itself.

The Life story recalls that the first written records of massage – the word comes from an Arabic word meaning stroke – date back 3,000 years to China. A bas-relief on the tomb of Ankh-mahor, a 2200 B.C. Egyptian priest, depicts a seated man receiving a vigorous foot rub. The Life story added, "Hippocrates, the Greek physician known as the father of modern medicine, was a 4th century B.C. proselytizer for massage. The physician must be experienced in many things, but most assuredly in rubbing..."

The medium, as you can see, is (the) massage. I mean, of course, honest-to-goodness massage, minus the "monkey business" that can leave you sensationally high. At no other time have spas and massage parlors (the "legit" ones, that is) mushroomed in Metro Manila as they do now, proof positive maybe that life has become so stressful that after a hard day’s work, we need to unwind, to be touched here and there and to be rejuvenated for us to feel new again.

In the Tomas Morato/Timog Avenue (Quezon City) area alone, there are several such massage parlors. Here are some of them:

First stop: Family Health Spa (Second Level, Tomas Morato Plaza, Tomas Morato corner Roces Avenue, telephone number 926-9322).

Barely a month in operation, the FHS offers all types of massage, including an Expectant Mom’s Package (massage and body scrub) and a Golfer’s Club Package (foot massage and cucumber-ginger cleansing rub for sore and sunburned skin).

I went there for the Chinese Foot Massage (P350) administered by a Chinese masseuse recruited from China (also to train therapists at the FHS). It was soothing, especially for my injured left knee which has been taking months and months to completely heal. The cubicle is equipped with a TV set; the massage chair can lull you to slumber while your feet, from thigh down to the knees and the toes, are given a thorough magic touch in one full hour. I thought I walked more easily after the session, even minus the knee cap that has been holding my troubled knee together since I broke it in November, 2000, walking through a dividing glass door at home.

The FHS occupies some 550 square meters of the Plaza’s second floor, with rooms for one person, for groups of threes or even a dozen (common area).

"All our therapists are college (PT) graduates," assured Zeny Feliciano, the FHS managing directress. "They have been screened as possessing the right attitude and values."

Second stop: Spa 168 (located several steps from the FHS, in the complex at corner Morato and Roces Avenues where McDonald’s and Zensho Japanese Restaurant are, both owned by couple May and Allan Acosta. Services offered include Shiatsu Dry Massage, Swedish Oil Massage, a combination of Shiatsu and Swedish massages (P350 for the common room and P450 for the exclusive room, plus additional P40 for efficascent oil and P5 for extra bar of soap). The place is open from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., the perfect stopover after a hearty meal at Zensho.

Third stop: Urban Escape (at the second floor of ESNA Building, #30 Timog Avenue, telephone number 373-7877/373-7887).

Besides the usual Swedish massage (P600), Urban Escape gives you other choices, such as the Japanese Shiatsu/Accupressure (P600), the oriental-based system of finger pressure where the focus is on the nerves, muscles and bones; the Thai Massage (P900) which consists of stretching movements using the palms, elbows and thumbs to relax tight muscles and revitalize both body and mind, said to clear up clogged blood passages; Aromassage (P1,000), a gentle, relaxing massage using aromatic essential oils which provide skin nourishment and enhance both physical and psychological well-being; and all sorts of scrubs (Salt Glow Scrub, Fruit Puree Treatment, Seaweed Scrub, etc.).

Next door to Urban Escape is the About Face skin-and-body-care salon (373-5377), owned and managed by Jacky Lim, with an array of services calculated to clean your skin and face and make them look fresher, younger and brighter.

Last stop: The M.T.O. (Mass Therapeutic Optimum) Spa (#8 Landsdale Arcade, Timog Avenue, telephone number 416-9104, with another outlet on Mabini St., Manila, telephone number 400-9775).

Actually, it was Bulletin’s Cris Belen who introduced me to M.T.O., which is usually her and husband Nards Belen’s last stop on their way home to Fairview from the Bulletin offices in Port Area.

Like the other spas, M.T.O. offers all types of massage (full-body massage done upstairs) but it’s the foot massage that Cris and I and some other showbiz friends (Judy Ann Santos included) go there for. Charge for a one-hour foot massage is P500, with a discount of P150 if you’re a card-carrying client.

To end this "spa tour," I’ll quote my witty friend who defines a "masseur/masseuse" as – you never guessed it – People who knead people.

Okay, now, on your back, please!