Hands Massage Therapy - How To Give Great Hand Massages

By Arthur Bakeright

Hands Massage Therapy is a simple but highly beneficial practice that you can give to others or to yourself. This article looks at the benefits of hands massage therapy and how you can give great hand massages.

Apart from the face, a persons hands are one of the first things noticed by others. This is why many people can become quite vain about their hands appearance. Have you ever noticed how a person can look very youthful in the face but their hands show their true age? But if people took the same care of their hands as they did with their face, their hands could also maintain that youthful and healthy look.

Hands massage therapy apart from being highly pleasurable will go along way to maintaining the health of your hands. But first here are some day to day general hand care practices you should make a habit of.

General Hand Care

• Wash them thoroughly daily.
• Use a natural scrubber such as a sisal brush. This not only exfoliates but also stimulates the skin to regenerate cells and draws blood to the surface to nourish the skin.
• Nail care, cut and file nails regularly and clean under the nails whenever necessary.
• Apply a hand care cream or hand care lotion at least once per day. I use sorbelene which is one of the cheapest cream available but also one of the best and highly recommended by podiatrists. Don’t get fooled by marketing nonsense to buy unnecessary expensive hand care creams.
• Yes you guys need to do these things too. Even in secret if need be, but for the sake of your hands health, don’t neglect your hand care because “real men don’t do that”.

Benefits of Hands Massage Therapy

• Very simple to do and highly beneficial.
• Great way to demonstrate care for others.
• Can do for yourself virtually anytime and anywhere.
• Helps keep joints mobile.
• Increases circulation in the hands.
• Tones the hand muscles.
• Helps rejuvenate the skin.

How to Give Great Hand Massages

• Start by placing about a half teaspoon of vegetable oil or other massage oil into the palm of the receivers hand and using light strokes, spread it out to cover the skin of the whole hand.
• With the palm facing up, support the hand with your fingers underneath and use both your thumbs starting from the midline and working their way out, away from each other.
• Hold the receivers hand with one of yours and with your other hand take each finger in turn and move it left and right, up and down, and in a circular motion, around its range of motion.
• Next do the same with the thumb taking note that it has a greater range of movement.
• While doing the fingers and thumb, use your thumb and finger tips to ‘grip’ the finger applying pressure for a moment, then releasing and repeating while moving down the finger at 1cm intervals. This is to promote circulation; you are basically encouraging movement of fluids. You are not actually massaging muscle; nearly all the hand muscles are located in the arms. The hand is predominantly made up of bone, tendons, fat, nerve and blood vessels.
• Next, turn the hand over and you can feel the 4 long metacarpal bones under the skin. Using both your hands to grasp adjacent metacarpals, lift them up and down independent of each other. Do this will all the metacarpals.
• Then, using gentle strokes massage the oil into the back of the hand and knuckles. This is a very bony area so this if predominantly for the benefit of the skin. Remember that the skin over this area is often exposed to sunlight and therefore ‘ages’ faster than many other parts of your body. Regular massages with quality oil will help keep the back of the hand youthful.

When giving a ‘self’ hand massage treatment, you are obviously restricted with what you can do. However, having practiced the above on others, you can easily modify each step and apply it to yourself.

Hands massage therapy is intensely pleasurable for the receiver and if giving to yourself, it is a simple habit to form that is exceptionally beneficial to both the health and the appearance of your hands. Use the steps outlined above to give great hand massages to yourself or someone you care about.