Affecting the Nervous System, Massage, and You
By Jet Rupar, LMT CMLDT EP-C EIM-II
A friend came to me saying: “I would love to hear about how stimulating the afferent nerves of the body can change the nervous system itself and affect how the brain wires itself to function.”
Thinking through this, this is more than just talking about afferent nerves, because affecting afferent nerves effects how your brain interacts with the world.
What are afferent nerves? These are the nerves that take sensations from your body. Examples include: smell, sight, taste, sound, heat, cold, pressure. It also includes internal information as well as external information. Your muscles, tendons, and organs all have stretch receptors that give your body information as to what’s happening inside as well as your senses telling your brain what’s going on outside of your body.
Efferent (motor) nerves take the signals from the brain/spinal cord and send it out to various muscles so that we can move and do things.
We take in what’s happening around us through afferent (sensory) nerves, which then travels through the spinal cord into the brain, which processes what is happening, and allows us to decide if something is good, bad, or indifferent. If we feel threatened, our Sympathetic Nervous System will send signals to produce signaling chemicals like epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline), which will heighten our senses and put us in that fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode. The heart will start beating faster so that muscles can get more energy to get away from the predator that may be hunting us. The Parasympathetic Nervous System, on the other hand, does the opposite. It lowers heart rate and blood pressure, allows the body to rest, and encourages digestion.
Are we good so far? It can get technical, so I hope I’m not making it more difficult than it needs to be. Remember that Google is your friend, and it’s all good if you have to look a few things up (college students do it all the time). Ok, let’s get into how we fit this in to massage therapy!
Touch plays a very important part in our nervous system. Have you ever had someone put a supportive hand on your shoulder and you’ve felt yourself relax with a deep sigh? Conversely, if someone is lightly drumming their hands on your back, you may feel more invigorated? How we touch or get touched can affect our whole day.
When I was in massage training, one thing really stuck with me. We were told that when we work, our job is not touching bodies, but touching nervous systems. Meaning that: how we touch people and the rhythms we use will affect how people will perceive their massage. This means that the way we touch affects those afferent nerves I was talking about at the start of this. A touch can send a message of warmth, or invigoration, or harm. It’s all in how our bodies perceive the touch being given.
Feel into this for a moment: I put my hand on your shoulder. The nerves that are in those muscles feel a slight pressure, and a warmth coming from my hand. Those nerves carry all of the information they can gather from those nerves via afferent nerves toward the spinal column and then through the brain stem and into the brain where it then processes all of that information and determines if this touch is good or not. The brain will then send this information to other parts of the brain that allow you person to react based on how specifically your brain works. This happens throughout life, whether you are in for a massage, if you hit your leg against a desk, or you’re picking up your steamy hot food. Those signals get sent through afferent nerves to allow your brain to know what is happening and allows you to know how to react. If you get hurt, your brain will then send back a signal through your efferent motor nerves for you to move away from what caused you pain.
Working with the nervous system means that coming in for the right kind of massage can help to short circuit the chronic fight/flight/freeze/fawn response symptoms of that Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS), and help your body find the relaxation and regeneration of the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). Activating that PNS allows your body to absorb more nutrients from food, melt away muscle tension, decrease pain and inflammation, and give you a deep sense of calmness and clarity.
Bibliography
LeBouef T, Yaker Z, Whited L. Physiology, Autonomic Nervous System. [Updated 2021 May 9]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2021 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538516/
Tindle J, Tadi P. Neuroanatomy, Parasympathetic Nervous System. [Updated 2020 Nov 15]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2021 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553141/
Image Source: https://www.osmosis.org/answers/afferent-vs-efferent-neurons