Picture yourself lying flat on a massage table whilst Soothing music being piped straight to your soul. The air is rife with calming aromatic candles’ smell. Your therapist then massages you with essential oils and before you know it places hot stones at your body’s chakra (energy) points. This is what you should expect when you sign up for the most relaxing of all types of massages: the hot and cold stone massage.

The stones are egg sized balsaltic stones, usually gneiss or obelite. They are smooth and are usually gotten form mountain river beds after eons of eroding by the silted waters. The stones are heated by your therapist in a bath of hot water and then placed on your neck, spine, lower back, palms and in between your toes. The sensation is subliminal and all your tension evaporates on contact. The masseuse may even want to use them as pressure points if you want a deep tissue massage without exerting a lot of force as they normally would in an ordinary hand massage.

The warmth of the stones is retained for a while because the stones being rich in iron do not dissipate heat energy to the environment that fast. The heat will expand your blood and lymphatic vessels opening up your body’s waste disposal highways onward to better health. The heat also expands your muscles and body tissues allowing greater exchange of nutrients with your blood stream and vice versa with your body’s toxins. All this happens as you gain ecstasy from perfect and intense relaxation.

Once the stones eventually loose their deep seated heat (nothing good lasts forever, huh?) the therapist will replace them with cool marble crystals that are really are at room temperature but feel like ice packs in relation to the hot stones. These will undo what the hot stones did: that is they make your tissues and vessels to constrict. This helps to fast forward the waste and toxin removal form your body. The feeling is subliminal and utterly satisfying in terms of relaxation.

The therapist uses this period to reheat the stones. He/ she may also use the changeover period to manually hand massage you into perfect peace and tranquillity sometimes applying more oil to nourish your skin. He then alternates hot and cold throughout your massage session, which should ordinarily last for and hour or an hour and a half. The alternation of hot and cold has been proven to help soothe your body and rejuvenate your cells. Just ask those who use ice packs after an hour of intensive gyming or an hour of the sauna. All will attest to the claim that hot and cold are the perfect combination so why not apply the same principle to massages?

As the session come to an end, the therapist will redo a hand rub/massage whilst applying a combination of aromatic essential oils once more to rejuvenate and jumpstart your body. Just like a car need a warm up and a cool down so is your body. This is especially so if you are a ‘muscle-car’ kind of person (i.e. High stress, low exercise hence has high build up of tension).

Hot and cold stone massages should be administered by professional therapists at established massage parlours. The warm moist environment associated with this kind of massage is a haven for bacteria, so go to a spa that has good name sanitation wise. Also because the massage optimises your blood and lymphatic circulation, patients afflicted with blood clots should be aware that the massage may dislodge the clots leading to disaster. Also pregnant women should consult a doctor before getting a hot and cold stone massage.

The hot and cold stone massage has been proven to help people afflicted with Back pain and aches, poor circulation, osteoarthritis and arthritis pain, Stress, anxiety and tension, Insomnia and Depression. So when was the last time you took your body to the garage? Perhaps you should get a full service with the hot and cold stone massage!

Author Bio: Matilda regularly writes for TIR Massage Stone, the leading hot stone massage supplies provider. They carry such products as hot stone massage kit and basalt stone, as well as many other many other accessories for hot stone therapy.

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: hot stone massage kit,basalt stone