`Gold Medal Massage - Olive Oil Times
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enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Gold Medal Massage

By Nadine Cresswell-Myatt
Feb. 20, 2014 16:30 UTC

Jean Shea, a writer on pro­fes­sional spa and ther­apy prod­ucts, is one of a grow­ing body of indus­try pro­fes­sion­als extolling the ben­e­fits of using olive oil as a mas­sage oil.

“It does so much for the skin,” she said. ​“It helps mois­tur­ize, aids cell regen­er­a­tion and pro­tects against sun dam­age.”

While olive oil is not yet com­monly used in the mas­sage and spa indus­try there is a grow­ing trend towards this health-giv­ing alter­na­tive.

Jo Boyd, owner of the Bellarine Spa out­side Geelong in Victoria Australia, changed over to using olive oil a cou­ple of years ago.

“We are in the heart of an olive grow­ing dis­trict’ Boyd said. ​“One day one of our cus­tomers, Rosalind Ellinger the owner of Mason’s Creek Olive Oil, came in for a treat­ment.”

“She had lovely skin and explained how for years she had mas­saged olive oil into her face every night after read­ing how Sophia Loren had done this. She also explained how com­fort­able she felt putting some­thing so pure and nat­ural on her skin rather than chem­i­cal laden prod­ucts”

“As our skin absorbs what­ever is put on it into our bod­ies, I thought why couldn’t olive oil be used as a mas­sage oil,” said Boyd.

“We held a train­ing day. The pur­pose of mas­sage oils is to lubri­cate the skin to reduce fric­tion, which makes it eas­ier on the labor-inten­sive process of mas­sage. Our masseurs noticed that olive oil spread bet­ter than tra­di­tional mas­sage oils such as grape seed mak­ing the job a lot less labor inten­sive.”

Jo Boyd opted to use olive oils from Rosalind Ellinger’s Mason’s Creek Olive Oil, a ten-acre nearby prop­erty of 1,200 trees where pes­ti­cides are not used.

While slightly more expen­sive than tra­di­tional mas­sage oils Jo said that most cus­tomers appre­ci­ated the change.

“Customers in gen­eral are call­ing for more nat­ural sub­stances,” said Case. ​“Many peo­ple have grow­ing prob­lems with aller­gies and are seek­ing nat­ural alter­na­tives that have no added chem­i­cals.”

One of the rea­sons olive oil has not tra­di­tion­ally been used in the past is because of the scent. ​“People asso­ciate olive oil with cook­ing” she said.

Fortunately olive oil is an excel­lent car­rier oil for most essen­tial oils. Bellarine Spa offers var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions depend­ing on the client’s require­ments. To ener­gize, for exam­ple, they add drops of lemon and lime essen­tial oils; to calm gera­nium and laven­der; to cleanse pep­per­mint and patchouli and for stress ylang ylang and lemon grass and so on.

There are also a num­ber of other rea­sons for using organic cold pressed EVOO for mas­sages. It is rich in antiox­i­dants, includ­ing vit­a­mins A and E, polyphe­nols, phy­tos­terols and ave­nas­terol that help to neu­tral­ize free rad­i­cals and repair cell mem­branes. Olive oil also con­tains chloro­phyll, which can help com­bat signs of age­ing and pro­mote the heal­ing of skin con­di­tions.

When Rosalind Ellinger of Mason’s Creek Olive Oil was asked about the Bellarine Spa was using, she said, ​“the oil that Jo is using for mas­sage at the moment is so good that it won a gold medal at the Melbourne Show last year!”

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