I got a Swedish Massage in Sweden

Enjoying Summer sun above the Arctic Circle in Vasikkavuoma , a nature reserve and marshland in Northern Sweden

And All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt

Like a lot of people, I enjoy getting a massage while I’m on vacation. On a recent trip to Sweden, I felt an additional motivation to schedule a SWEDISH MASSAGE!  After all, Swedish Massage is the very first class I took in massage school.  It’s often the foundation for learning therapeutic massage.  It’s the source of many of the moves people think of as typical to massage (think squeezing, kneading, and karate chop type stuff).  It’s considered the most BASIC type of massage. It’s frankly a little boring, and while it provides a fine full-body framework, very few massage therapists I know continue to focus on this style after finishing school. 

But I’ve traveled all this way, and I’m not going home without experiencing SWEDISH MASAGE IN SWEDEN!  I do an internet search, plan my route, and navigate to The Massage Expert in Gothenburg.  My therapist, Alex works at a charming storefront location in a hilly neighborhood full of the large boulders you’ll find all over the city. Alex does a quick intake and offers me a variety of techniques, but I’m here for classic Swedish Massage.  He does a great job, and the environment is very relaxing.  It’s always interesting to be in the role of the client, to have the uncertainty of little things like where to put your shoes or which layers of the linens to lay between.  Massage is probably something every traveler could use before, during, and after a trip!  I’m so grateful for the experience, and Alex is a real professional. 

One thing strikes me as almost comical about the massage: how similar it is to what I was taught in massage school over twenty years prior in the middle of the USA. So many of the textbook elements of Swedish Massage are there.  I recognize effleurage, petrissage, tapotement.  These are the smooth, long strokes; the squeezy kneading, and the karate chop with the side of the hand you’ve maybe seen in movies. I sort of can’t believe that what I was taught in KCMO is really, legitimately, SWEDISH MASSAGE.  But there is so much I recognize in this massage. We really DO learn a similar technique.  

This experience prompted me to revisit the origin of Swedish Massage, and what I’ve learned makes it all make a lot more sense to me.  Swedish Massage was originally one of three primary components of Swedish Gymnastics.  In this case “Gymnastics” means any exercise you do in a gymnasium.  A man named Per Henrik Ling codified a system of exercises in the late 18th and early 19th centuries focused on “the oneness of the human organism, the harmony between mind and body”.  The three components of Swedish Gymnastics were:

1 - Military Gymnastics (fencing, martial arts style exercises)

2-  Educational Gymnastics (calisthenics focused on self control), and

3 - Medical Gymnastics (massage and physical exercises for healing the body).  

For a succinct explanation of the Swedish Method, along with images and video of the exercise components, watch this awesome video.  I love the description of these exercises as something that “should not flavor too strongly of the circus, dancing school, or barrack, but should contain some of the good characteristics of each”

So in the context of a holistic program of preventive and curative exercise, Swedish Massage is something that would have been used for people who were sick or injured.  If you imagine it as a sort of passive or assisted version of the exercises in Ling’s methods, it starts to make sense why it’s a little boring, a little superficial.  It’s focused on range of motion, blood and lymphatic flow.  And that makes sense if it is meant for someone who is ill or bedridden.  It makes sense for someone who is recuperating from having had a low level of activity for a time.  In svenska: sjukgymnastikens passiva rorelser - or passive movements of physiotherapy.

The other thing which struck me when looking into the origins of Swedish Massage was how similar the movements of Swedish Free Gymnastics are to some of the exercises my colleague Keith Earl Winston and I used to teach in a class we called LimberJacks.  Keith and I branded that class as a type of motion stretching, but you would still work up a sweat!  We figured we could trick people into exercise by telling them it was stretching.  We sprinkled in a heavy layer of balance and mobility too!  If you’re interested in seeing a demonstration of that class you can watch this video from 2020 on my back porch.  When we created LimberJacks, we weren’t looking AT Swedish Free Gymnastics, but there is a lot of fun overlap!  Because OF COURSE THERE IS. People have apparently seen similarities in yoga, Tai Chi, and Swedish Free Gymnastics, with speculation that one was “taken from” or inspired by the others.  I think it’s more likely when an idea is good, and effective, you’ll see it appear naturally and repeatedly over time.  A bit like the concept of carcinization (read about how animals keep evolving into crabs here) And back to that description of Swedish Free Gymnastics as having a balance of circus, dancing, and barracks, I think that is also a very apt description of our LimberJacks class!

So after being a massage therapist for over 20 years, and teaching a class of my own, it took a trip to Sweden to help me rediscover an appreciation for Swedish Massage and the philosophy behind it.  I was stoked to discover that active motion and exercise are at the core of the Per Henrik Ling’s concept of health.  When I first started in this industry in the late 90’s, massage was often seen as something that was an extension of hair, nails, and facials.  I have always felt that massage was part of fitness. I have been lucky that our shop landed next to a gym, and that I’ve had the opportunity to understand the active components of health more fully as a result.  It’s always fun to learn something new about the history of something you love, and it’s great that after all these years there is still more to discover and revisit!  

What are your experiences with massage and exercise?  How do you incorporate the two?  Is massage your reward for sticking with your fitness routine?  Is massage something you use to avoid injury during physical activity? Does massage help you attain the gains you’re after in your weightlifting training?