Thank You for Your Service

Massage therapy can help battle the stressors of military life, not only for our servicemen and servicewomen, but their families as well

-By Craig Outheir

LIVING IN A CRAMPED METAL TUBE with 120 fellow sailors for six months isn't as uncomfortable as it sounds. Really, it isn't. The Navy provides  treadmills and a weight room to stretch out the limbs. And the mess hall? Sooo much elbow room. That's the line that Amber Carlson's husband-a 15-year U.S. Navy serviceman-always feeds her when he returns home to Bremerton, Wash., from one of his multimonth submarine deployments in the Pacific Ocean. But she doesn't really buy it.

"You get pretty stiff and sore in a small space like that," Carlson, a social worker, says. "The bed is so small, the galleys are so small, you definitely develop tightness and kinks." Those very same kinked joints and knotted muscles are what motivated 20 Massage Envy therapy clinics in the Puget Sound area to donate free massages to active-duty service members and their families during a special oneday promotion last July. Conceived as a way to honor and recognize western Washington's robust population of sailors, soldiers and airmen, the promotion was enormously popular, proffering more than 700 free therapy sessions. Massage Envy Regional Director Barney Nelson wholeheartedly supports the "Massage for the Military" event.

"In general, massage therapy can be enormously effective in relieving stress, and serving in the armed forces is one of the most stressful jobs there is," Nelson says. "So it was a natural fit for us. You have a population that everybody loves-the military. And one of the best, most easily accessible ways to relieve stress and lower blood pressure-massage therapy."

YEAR-ROUND APPRECIATION

Nelson doesn't know for sure whether Puget Sound-area centers will run "Massage for the Military" in 2013, but he does offer a year-round discount for service members and their families. Likewise, most Massage Envy locations throughout the country offer a Military Discount Program, discounting massage service prices for activeduty personnel.

The same therapeutic principle of massage also applies to military personnel family members, who often don't see their loved ones for months on end while shouldering added household burdens. Stress and tension are givens. Carlson accompanied her submariner husband to the Massage Envy in Gig Harbor, Wash., for the free massage event and found it habit-forming, even though she doesn't personally pull six-hour crew shifts in the Navy's underwater "silent service.""I'm a social worker by trade, so it's not the least stressful job in the world," she says. "It's medical social work-drug and alcohol issues, and people who aren't able to take care of themselves anymore-so it's very high stress and demanding."

Hunched over a keyboard for much of the day, inputting patient charts and other data, Carlson banks tension in her upper body. "[Massage] takes my shoulders from my ears back down to my shoulders," she says. For her husband, the problem areas are "more in his hips and legs." Both of them suffer occasional bouts of fatigue.

VALUABLE COUPLE TIME

That the couple would gravitate toward massage therapy makes sense, according to experts at the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA). "The positive effect of massage therapy is something routinely discussed among our members," AHMA Executive Director Steve Cadwell says. "For many [patients], it offers immediate relief. And it's also relationship-centered care that looks at the patient as a whole person, one of our  core principles."

The continued benefits keep Carlson coming back. After all, the military wife isn't solely focused on her stiff shoulders. She also wants to optimize couple time when her husband is back in port, which is a big part of their personal postsubmarine decompression process."Most of the time, we go to the massage clinic together," she says. "And when we get out of our sessions, we're in the same place. It's nice."