A one hour session of this kind of massage

This is the ultimate oil-based massage with some very effective manipulations included for good measure. It is deep! Watching a typically small and gentle Indonesian doing a full body massage on another Indonesian gives no clue to the incredibly penetrating nature of what looks like a smoothly flowing massage along the length of each muscle. Europeans are wimps and usually find Indonesian

rather painful on first acquaintance. Like Tui Na and Thai massage, however, it is addictive. Pain soon becomes 'good pain' and before long, sheer pleasure! The soft tissue techniques of Indonesian massage particularly affect the connective tissue of the muscles – the myofascia and tendons. Tense, shortened muscles and contracted and fibrotic myofascia quickly yield to smooth, deep thumb pushing along the course of each individual muscle. All soft tissue work intuitively follows the courses of the Chinese energy meridians. It is done more briskly than a typical Thai massage but just as thoroughly. Indonesian manipulations focus very much on the spine and mostly involve spinal twists. A one hour session of this kind of massage is enough to leave you feeling relaxed, refreshed, rejuvenated and re-energised. It really is powerful medicine. As a therapy, it excels in the treatment of stiff and painful muscles and is also very effective for conditions affecting the abdominal organs such as constipation, indigestion, bloating, heartburn and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Rehabilitating Muscles The muscles in our bodies work in teams and never in isolation. The hamstring muscles are a good example of this. All three muscles in this team can flex the knee joint but only one of them can also extend the hip. Since each muscle has a slightly different effect from the other two,riiiddker the hamstrings are able to flex the knee, for example, in several slightly different ways. Suppose, for example, that we have two antagonistic teams of muscles called A and B. They control the movement of a joint. If team A muscles are constantly exercised and team B muscles are not, the balance between them is slowly affected. With repeated use, muscles become over-toned and shortened. This makes it ever more difficult for the antagonistic muscles to pull them back to their normal resting length – in fact, they do not. To add to the problem, the brain regards over-toned muscles as contracting and automatically reduces the contractile ability of those in the opposing team in an attempt to maintain balance between them. The result, unfortunately, is just the reverse. As team A muscles get over-used and thus over-toned, team B muscles get weaker. It is this kind of imbalance caused by repetitive strain that results in the muscular pain and stiff joints that are all too common in the West. Playing sports, driving cars with badly positioned controls, using a computer for hours at a time – all of these are likely to cause such problems.