Here’s How Often You Should Really Get a Massage, According to an Expert Therapist

Whether you work a desk job (hey, tech neck!) or are on your feet all day, many aches only get worse from repetition. If you’re the type who mostly enjoys an occasional massage while relaxing on vacation, a new tinge of pain might have trigger the question: how often should you actually go and treat yourself to a massage? And does it really matter?

To find the answer, I went straight to a reliable source: my own massage therapist that I’ve seen monthly for the past two years.

A few summers ago, I was dealing with particularly awful muscle tightness and a corresponding headache when I happened to see chair massages being offered at the local farmers market. Earlier in my life I’d experienced chronic migraines that left me debilitated for days on end, but over time those have mostly ceased and been replaced with semi-frequent tension and headaches. I figured trying a chair massage that day couldn’t hurt, so I sat down and almost immediately felt relief as this particular massage therapist seemed to pinpoint where I needed help.

Up to that point, I’d only ever had an occasional Swedish massage as a special treat, but I had never made getting them a part of my regular wellness routine. But the immediate effect I felt that day made such a difference that I realized I wanted to prioritize it moving forward—something that has significantly reduced the frequency of my tension headaches since.

Ahead, Angelica Love, LMT, a licensed massage therapist based in Milwaukee, answers how often you should get a massage (it can vary, as it has to do with your body, routine, and personal needs) and offers tips on finding the right therapist for you.

How often should you get a massage?

Love says the answer to how often should you get a massage can be found within your personal health goals. For the general goal of staying healthy, she recommends going in for a massage between once a month to once every six weeks.

However, for individuals dealing with certain health conditions or pain, the amount of visits will shift over time. “If you’ve got something that you’ve been dealing with for a couple of months or a couple of years, you’ll probably want to go once a week until you start to see progress,” she says. “At that point, your therapist, if they’re really good, they’re going to start tapering you off to every couple of weeks … until you can get to what we call [the] maintenance phase of every four to six weeks.”

Even if you consider yourself fairly healthy and don’t feel frequent discomfort—and certainly, if time and budget are hindrances—Love has a suggestion: “I can’t tell you how many times I have had clients who come in with one problem or come in and they don’t feel a problem, and then we get hands on and they’re like, ‘I didn’t know that was sore.’ … And that’s just because we don’t walk around touching different areas of our body.”

Love says going every two months is a good way “just to check in and really fine tune that mind-body connection, because you may find something during that session that you didn’t know was bothering you.”

Why you should consider regular massages

Besides it being a form of self-care and relaxation, Love says massage can help add a number of ailments or health conditions, including:

• Headaches and migraines
• Lymphedema
• Blood pressure issues
• Stress regulation
• Muscle tension
• Fibromyalgia
• Myofascial disorders
• Surgery recovery

Additionally, she mentions that massages can help you get over a cold faster through increased circulation, which can in turn help kick the virus out of your system more efficiently. However, she says there’s a flip side to consider: “It can also jump-start a cold. So if you’re at the beginning of a cold, it’ll hit you a lot harder, but it won’t last as long.”

And if you’ve had a recent surgery, such as a knee replacement, Love recommends considering massage as part of the recovery process. “It helps so much with the swelling post-surgery, especially replacement surgeries,” she says. “I had a client who had a knee replacement, and she was so almost angry because no one had told her about massage, and it had helped so much with the water retention and the swelling through her whole leg—not just around the knee, but the whole appendage.”

With premiere healthcare organizations such as the Cleveland Clinic offering oncology massage to chemotherapy patients, Love says we should consider massage as another valuable tool in the overall body work toolbox, along with physical therapy, acupuncture, or chiropractic work. “I know a lot of people have the misconception—or the preconception, I guess, that it’s just a luxury and it’s only for people who can afford to throw away money. But there’s so much more that it can benefit,” she says.

How to find the right massage therapist

When deciding on which therapist you should go to (and which style of massage might be most beneficial for your needs), Love says your ultimate health goals will influence what you’re looking for. For example, if you’re simply interested in a casual experience to help you relax and de-stress for a bit, Swedish massage might be the way to go.

On the other hand, people who are regularly active, including those with high-stress functions such as being in the military, Love says, “They’re probably going to look for more of the therapeutic massage. So a little more of … what’s considered deep-tissue.”

Love herself specializes in a type of massage called myofascial work, something she practices when I go in for massages. According to the Cleveland Clinic, fascia is “the band of thin, fibrous connective tissue that wraps around and supports every structure in your body.” Healthy fascia should stretch and bend with movement, but when the fascia becomes tight, “it can restrict movement and cause painful health conditions.”

Love says she enjoys myofascial massage because there are often chronic or reoccurring conditions that aren’t fully alleviated through other types of massage. “What we’re doing is we’re kind of stretching that fascia, letting it wake up, really hydrating it with all that bloodflow just from a really simple, almost light touch, just enough to engage that tissue and really get it moving better amongst itself and amongst the other layers of tissue,” she explains.

When it comes to finding a massage therapist, Love suggests searching through either the American Massage Therapy Association or the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals’ websites.

If you prefer booking appointments through either a discount website or at a franchised massage chain, Love generally recommends those more for people who are mainly seeking intermittent relaxation.

“If your goal is to relax and that is what massage is to you, that’s perfectly fine,” she says. “If you’re someone who has specific goals, you’re going to want to find your therapist, someone that you feel like helps you reach those goals, even in the first couple of sessions.”

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