What Is Stretch Therapy
Stretch therapy is an important, effective and complementary approach to your general physical health, injury prevention and rehabilitation, as well as a highly beneficial recovery tool for training or exercise.
By supporting and encouraging the body to release, relax and go into a state of rest and repair, our stretch therapy sessions work to recover the body, as well as calm the nervous system and improve the functionality of your entire body.
Our therapists analyse your range of motion and any restrictions in your joints, muscles or limbs, to conduct a treatment specifically designed for the needs of your body and your lifestyle. We physical and electronically map your body, to help correctly determine the areas we need to improve, and determine progress. Our Therapists next work with you towards your goals and needs, whether it’s an on-going treatment plan to achieve greater flexibility and mobility, protecting against injury, aiding rehabilitation or just pop-in treatments to address certain muscle groups causing you discomfort.
You’ll finish feeling like you’re walking on a cloud, whilst internally your body benefits from a range of positive impacts for days afterwards.
A Holistic & Collaborative Approach
As with all Selph treatments, your Stretch Therapist will consult with your treating practitioners about your treatment history and areas of focus to facilitate the most effective and holistic treatment for you. Your stretch session thus works in unison with your other treatments at Selph and complements your rehabilitation and recovery.
We recommend combining a Stretch therapy session before a remedial massage, physiotherapy consultation or Chiropractic appointment, as your body will be limber and relaxed, allowing for greater mobility for treatment by your practitioner and enable a more effective therapy.
Benefits of Stretch Therapy
Deep stretch therapy benefits many areas of your active life, improving the functioning of your entire body, and providing both immediate and long term advantages.
Assisted stretching immediately may reduce the risk of injury for more active people, supporting a release of muscles, an increase in blood circulation, and the relaxation of muscle groups.
With ongoing stretch therapy sessions, you may see benefits of far greater flexibility and mobility, improved posture, and a kinaesthetic awareness within your body. This will result in less aches, pains and discomfort in your everyday life, leading to a happier and more positive outlook.
Primary benefits that our Stretch sessions may achieve are:
Improved flexibility, mobility and range of motion: Through ongoing deep stretching the range of motion in your joints and muscles can be achieved, promoting easier movement, functional mobility and as a result performance in physical activities. Having greater range of motion and mobility improves the quality of your life, particularly as the body ages.
Reduced joint and muscle pains: Stretching helps to alleviate tension built up in muscles, in turn reducing muscular and joint pain and facilitating injury prevention.
Greater kinaesthetic awareness: With a Stretch Therapist assessing and educating you on your body’s mobility, muscle tension and flexibility, you gain a greater conscious awareness of the feeling of tension or ease within you muscles and body, of your joint position, as well as of your balance and movement.
Enhanced training, physical and sporting performance: Regular deep assisted stretching increases your flexibility and thus allows access to less reachable muscles to develop and loosen them. Regular stretching also aids in the physical body’s recovery, by preventing muscles stiffening up and reduces the accumulation of lactic acid build up.
Better Posture: Allowing the muscles to loosen and lengthen helps your posture, particularly beneficial for those who spend long periods of time sitting at a desk.
Better Sleep: A more relaxed body with less muscle tension and lactic acid build up means the body can go into a deeper rest state and facilitate greater sleep.
Injury prevention and rehabilitation: Keeping your muscles relaxed by relieving the build up of tension and increasing blood flow, reduces the likelihood of an injury. It also facilitates rehabilitation and your sessions will be coordinated together with your treating structural Selph practitioner.
Stress and mood management: A tight and tension filled body can cause a depression in mood and an increase in stress levels. By regularly deep stretching, we seek to eliminate aches and pains in the muscles and joints, stiffness in the body, and allow greater movement, energising the body. Stretching benefits both your physical well-being and your mental health, as it allows the blood and oxygen to flow better, improving mental clarity.
Improved circulation: Stretching increases the blood flow throughout your body which helps to reduce the risk of injury and increases the strong supply of blood to vital organs with sufficient oxygen and nutrients to operate effectively.
Stretch Therapy Techniques at Selph
Our assisted stretching goes deeper than just a general stretch, accessing and building on the stretching of muscles that are difficult to reach, with the goal of increasing their planes of movement. This is important as often these key muscle groups support the range of movement and proper functioning of other critical muscles and limbs.
At Selph we employ the Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF) technique, which is an active form of stretching, originally developed by Physiotherapists to rehabilitate stroke victims.
In this form of therapy a small muscle group is passively stretched and then contracted isometrically against a form of resistance, whilst it remains in a stretched position. As the muscles relax into the stretch after contraction, they will lengthen and the range of motion will increase. You will also gain awareness of your body as you learn to activate and isolate certain muscles one by one.
One-On-One Sessions
Our one-on-one sessions allow our Stretch Therapists to focus on your needs and work with your unique body. Everyone uses their body in a different way and therefore requires individual programs and focuses to get the best results.
Your therapist will go through a series of exercises to map out in our software your areas lacking flexibility and causing tension and establish a plan for you. They’ll additionally communicate with your other treating Selph practitioners on your past and current treatment to build the most effective treatment plan. At the end of your session you’ll be given stretches to take away and work on before your next session.
A 60 minute session focuses on stretching the body in the deepest way. You will find a state of relaxation and peace as your body relaxes and sinks into the parasympathetic (rest and digest) phase of the nervous system. You will leave the studio feeling refreshed and renewed after having your body stretched from top to bottom.
A 30 minutes session is used to focus on one specific body part causing your discomfort or tension.
Recommended Treatments
We recommend a 1 hour stretch session once a week for people wanting to achieve the benefits of deep stretch for general health, relaxation and recovery, and twice a week for those doing 30 minute sessions.
Sessions before and after any major fitness event is highly recommended.
Be sure to wear loose fitting or work out style clothing that allows for maximum mobility of your muscles and joints.
Group Stretch Classes
Thursdays at 6pm in the Movement Studio.
Group Stretch Therapy sessions allow you to experience the benefits of hands-on stretch therapy in a group environment.
These intimate classes will be limited to 8 people. Bookings are essential.
Purchase a Stretch Therapy session gift voucher for someone special.
Choose from 60 or 90 minute treatments.