PROPRIOCEPTION AND MASSAGE

09 Aug
2016

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How does touch influence our brain, and can it help improve our proprioception and kinesthetic awareness? In this article, we look at those questions and ask - why does it matter?

What is proprioception?

Proprioception is our ability to feel where we are in space.

Without proprioception we couldn’t scratch our nose because we wouldn’t know where it is in space. In other words, if we can’t see it, we wouldn’t be able to find it.

Proprioception happens thanks to sensory receptors (proprioceptors) which are found in our joints, muscles and fascia. These proprioceptors are sending information to our brains about our position, muscle tension, joint activity and balance. Once our brain has the message, our brain cells will fire up and send a message back to our muscles telling them to adjust their tension or stretch to produce an appropriate and coordinated movement. This allows us to fine-tune our movements, to adapt our balance and to protect our muscles from injury.

What is the difference between proprioception and kinesthetic awareness?

So if proprioception helps us to feel where we are in space (so we can touch our nose, for instance), then what is kinesthetic awareness? Is it different?

Kinesthetic awareness uses the same receptors (proprioceptors). While proprioception is our inner sense of the location of our own body parts, kinesthetic awareness is our ability to coordinate our movements in relation to where we are in space and time.

However we don’t have to be aware of our every movement all the time. Once our muscles have learned to do the same movement over and over again (like riding a bicycle) that movement becomes part of our muscle memory and we can then do it without having to think about it. It is thanks to kinesthetic awareness that we don’t have to relearn how to walk every time we stand up! Our muscles know what to do thanks to our proprioceptors sending messages to our brains.

How does massage affect our proprioception and kinesthetic awareness? And what difference does it make?

When we get a massage it is our proprioceptors that are sending messages to our brains to let us know how it feels. Then our brains can respond to this information and send a message back to our muscles to adapt.

It is always important when we massage somebody to go WITH the body and not AGAINST it. This is one of the key parts of massage education and something which becomes very natural to Evolve College students.

To illustrate this, let’s have a look at what happens when we stretch our client’s muscles. When a muscle feels too stretched, proprioceptors will send a message to the brain to contract that muscle in order to protect it from being damaged. This is called the stretch reflex. So when we feel some pain while we stretch our muscles, it is really a message from our brain to say ‘Stop! You went too far, I’m going to contract now!’

Gentle stretches on the other hand will work with our proprioceptors to help us feel a different length in our muscles which the muscle might well sustain after the stretch because it didn’t feel invasive to the body, and the muscle had time to integrate and adapt to this different length. So with this in mind we realise how massage is really a communication between the massage therapist and the client’s nervous system.

Together, proprioception and kinesthetic awareness are like another sense we have, which helps us to move smoothly and effortlessly. And the more we use this sense, the sharper it gets.

Research has found that massage has been proven to enhance proprioceptive perception, especially after injury.

Massage loads the central nervous system with sensory inputs. The more sensory inputs we have the more our muscles and our brain connect. The more connection we have, the better our proprioception and kinesthetic awareness will get. Good proprioception and kinesthetic awareness allows us to be more coordinated, more efficient with our movements and to have more balance. It is very important for people playing sports as they will get more precision with their movements but also for anybody who wants to move more freely and age without losing balance!