10/20/2025
Medical massage isn’t just about feeling good for a moment—it’s about creating lasting shifts in your body. That’s healing, not luxury.
Massage therapy can support pain management, improve flexibility, circulation, and digestion, promote better sleep, reduce stress and anxiety, ease painful periods, relieve TMJ and migraines, promote healing from injuries and/or surgeries, and more! Massage therapy helps us feel comfortable in our bodies—something many take for granted. This physical awareness is a powerful and revolutionary practice.
If you’ve never had a massage or had a session that didn’t feel good, it can be hard to know what’s “normal.” Here are five tips for self-advocacy:
1. Share your goals up front.
Let your therapist know what’s bringing you in, whether it’s stress, chronic pain, or something else. That helps shape the session with your priorities in mind.
2. You can speak up at any time.
If something doesn’t feel good—pressure is too deep, you feel cold, or you just want a quiet session—it’s okay (and encouraged) to say so.
3. Pain ≠ Progress.
Massage should never feel harmful. Soreness is different from sharp or shooting pain. Your massage therapist wants to know if “that feels too intense.”
4. Silence is okay, and so is talking.
Some community members prefer to heal in quiet. Others feel more grounded talking through the experience. Let your therapist know what works for you.
5. Your body, your boundaries.
You can ask about the plan for draping/covering of your body, techniques they will use, or preferences around skipping areas of the body altogether.
Massage therapy at the Healing House is part of our whole-person treatment model and is currently only available to those receiving primary care through the Healing House. (We are not accepting massage therapy only patients at this time).
Friendly reminder: Medical massage in WA state requires a referral from your primary care provider.