Tuina is a common therapeutic method in traditional Chinese medicine. What are its effects? Let's explore below:
>What is Tuina?
Tuina typically refers to the practitioner using their hands to manipulate the patient's body surface, injured areas, sites of discomfort, specific acupoints, and painful regions. This involves diverse techniques such as pushing, grasping, pressing, rubbing, kneading, pinching, pressing, and tapping. The goal is to achieve therapeutic effects including unblocking meridians, promoting qi and blood circulation, alleviating injuries and pain, expelling pathogens and reinforcing the body's defenses, and harmonizing yin and yang.
The therapeutic principle of Tuina lies in stimulating the body's meridians and acupoints to achieve effects such as relaxing tendons, invigorating blood circulation, unblocking meridians, and alleviating pain. Due to its notable efficacy for various ailments, Tuina massage shops have proliferated extensively across neighborhoods.Medical practitioners administer traditional Chinese tuina and massage treatments based on clinical diagnosis. However, unqualified individuals performing massage without proper training pose significant risks. They often disregard the recipient's pathological conditions and fail to identify contraindications, potentially causing minor injuries to skin and soft tissues or severe damage to nerves and bones—even leading to paralysis or death.
Primary Benefits and Functions of Massage Therapy
1. Promoting Blood Circulation, Relieving Pain, and Unblocking Meridians
The saying "blockage causes pain" holds profound truth. When qi and blood flow becomes obstructed and meridians are impeded, localized swelling or pain may occur. Massage therapy can restore normal qi and blood circulation, improve blood flow, unblock meridians, and alleviate bodily pain.
2. Regulating Functions and Harmonizing Yin and Yang
Surface acupoints correspond to our internal organs. Therefore, stimulating these surface points through massage can regulate organ functions and maintain yin-yang balance.Stimulating areas on the feet corresponding to internal organs or glandular reflex zones can enhance the functions of those organs and regulate glandular secretion. Each of our five major organs and six minor organs has corresponding points on the feet. Thus, stimulating the pituitary reflex zone on the feet can boost pituitary function, promoting overall health. It can also help regulate hormonal imbalances associated with menopause.
3. Relieving Fatigue and Stress
Increasingly, young people today find themselves in a state of sub-health, prone to fatigue and persistent feelings of exhaustion. Massage therapy can also benefit this demographic.By stimulating specific acupoints, physical and mental fatigue can be alleviated. For instance, those experiencing eye strain or visual fatigue can perform self-massage to reduce eye fatigue and improve work efficiency.Regular massage therapy can strengthen the body's resistance to disease. It can treat conditions like weakened immunity and allergic disorders. Even healthy individuals can benefit from massage therapy for wellness and disease prevention.
Common Contraindications for Massage Therapy
Individuals with severe heart, brain, or lung diseases; those experiencing extreme fatigue; patients with bleeding disorders; individuals with skin lesions or dermatological conditions; those with bone tuberculosis,osteomyelitis, severe osteoporosis, the initial stage of fractures, the early period after joint dislocation reduction, women during menstruation and pregnancy beyond three months, patients with suspected or confirmed bone/joint or soft tissue tumors, and those with severe symptoms but unclear diagnosis.
The above contraindications primarily indicate conditions unsuitable for massage therapy. Even when massage is indicated, attention must be paid to the intensity of techniques and duration of treatment. Many patients mistakenly believe that stronger pressure and longer sessions are always better.As stated in the General Discussion of Medical Canon of Golden Mirror: Essentials of Orthopedic Techniques, "The method emanates from the hands; only when the patient feels no discomfort can it be called manual therapy." Therefore, massage force must be moderate, and duration should not be excessive. Otherwise, it may lead to iatrogenic injury and fatigue of acupoints, much like excessive medication dosage or prolonged use causing drug resistance and severe side effects, ultimately resulting in poor therapeutic outcomes.Clinically, massage sessions should generally be limited to around 20 minutes, with full-body treatments for adults lasting no more than 30 to 45 minutes.