Why massage menus are so confusing
The confusion is not your fault, and it is not random. The names on a menu come from three completely different categories, and nobody tells you which is which.
Some are actual techniques — a specific thing a therapist does with their hands, with a definable method behind it. Trigger point therapy is one. Myofascial release is one.
Some are broad buckets. “Deep tissue” is not a technique. It is a category that could contain half a dozen different approaches depending entirely on who is working on you and what they were trained in. Same with “medical massage.”
And some are branding. If you see something on a menu with a name you have never heard anywhere else, it is usually a house name for something ordinary.
Worth knowing before any of the rest: almost no therapist works in only one style. Nobody is stuck in a single box. Most of us blend several, and what actually determines what you get is the individual practitioner’s training and experience — not the label on the menu.
The styles, explained
Swedish massage
The classic. What most people picture when they picture massage — long gliding strokes, a fair amount of oil, light to medium pressure, relatively quick pacing, full body.
It was developed in Sweden in the late 1800s, which is where the name comes from. The odd part is that every technical term in it is French, because its originator moved to France and the style became popular there. So the vocabulary you will hear is French words for Swedish massage:
- Effleurage — long, flowing gliding strokes, generally worked toward the heart
- Petrissage — kneading and lifting the tissue
- Friction — smaller, more focused rubbing
- Vibration — shaking or trembling movements
- Tapotement — the rhythmic tapping and karate-chop percussion you have seen in films
What it is good for: relaxation, stress relief, general circulation and overall wellbeing. Think of it as an oil change rather than a repair — routine maintenance for the whole system.
What it is not for: a specific structural problem. If you have a rotator cuff tear or you are recovering from a knee replacement, a Swedish session is not aimed at that. You might find a practitioner trained in Swedish who can help you — but they will be reaching for other tools to do it.
There is also deep Swedish, which is the same approach with more pressure, and which starts to overlap with the next category.
Deep tissue massage
This is a bucket, not a technique, and that is the single most useful thing to understand about it.
“Deep tissue” tells you one thing reliably: more pressure, aimed at deeper layers of tissue. It does not tell you what method is being used to get there. Deep Swedish sits under this umbrella. So do some styles of sports massage, some trigger point work, some myofascial release, and a lot of what gets called medical massage.
Which means two people can book “deep tissue” at two places and have entirely different experiences. If your therapist has training in neuromuscular work or myofascial release or structural integration, you will likely get focused, specific work. If they are essentially doing deep Swedish, you will get a broad, general session that is simply firmer — which may be exactly what you wanted, but is not the same thing.
Some additional techniques you might receive under this heading:
- Cross-fiber friction — working across the direction of the muscle fibers rather than along them, which addresses how disorganized collagen fibers are laid down and promotes local circulation
- Muscle stripping — the opposite orientation, working slowly along the length of the muscle in the direction of the fibers. Sometimes called longitudinal friction, and used when the intention is to lengthen
- Pin and stretch — holding one part of a muscle still while the rest of it is moved away from that point. Can be passive, or active with you doing the movement, which involves your nervous system more directly
One thing worth saying plainly: there is a point past which more pressure has no therapeutic benefit and only causes more pain. Deeper is not a synonym for better, and a therapist who only has one gear is not using the deep end well. Pressure that produces lasting gains should feel productive rather than painful — what I call comfortably uncomfortable.
Sports massage — and what people usually mean by it
This one has the widest gap between the professional definition and the everyday one, and the gap matters.
What sports massage actually means to practitioners: work done for athletes around an event. Before a race, to warm the tissue and prepare the body. After a race, to help flush the tissue and recover. In both cases the work is light and fast, not deep.
That surprises people, so here is the reason: deep work immediately before a race will make you hurt and will make you slower. The same is true right after. Heavy work belongs in the training block, where there is time to recover from it — not in the forty-eight hours either side of the event itself.
What clients almost always mean when they ask for sports massage: deep tissue work for an athlete. Which is a real and useful thing, and something we do a great deal of. It is just not what the term means technically.
When someone asks us whether we do sports massage, we hear “do you do deep tissue work for athletes,” and the answer is yes. If you genuinely want pre- or post-event work, say so — because it is a different session.
Trigger point therapy (also called neuromuscular therapy)
These two names mean the same thing.
The origin is a good story and it explains the method. It was developed by Janet Travell, a physician who spent the first half of her career in cardiology and clinical pharmacology — including nine years as a consulting cardiologist at a Staten Island hospital.
Her patients kept arriving with chest, shoulder and arm pain that presented as cardiac and turned out not to be. Investigating, she found small tender knots in the pectoral muscles, and discovered that pressing on them made the referred pain go away. She spent the rest of her career on musculoskeletal pain, and later became President Kennedy’s personal physician.
That is the whole principle. A trigger point is a tender spot in soft tissue that refers pain somewhere else. The treatment is sustained pressure — typically thirty to ninety seconds — waiting for the point to soften, at which point the referred pain usually diminishes.
Travell mapped these points across the body and published the maps, which remain a good starting reference. But your trigger points are not identical to anyone else’s, because you do different things with your body than they do. The maps tell you where to start looking, not where yours will be.
What it is good for: specific, local pain conditions — and it can work fast. Carpal tunnel symptoms, rotator cuff pain, knee and hip pain, low back pain.
What it does not do: guarantee the relief lasts. Often the real value is that it gets you comfortable enough to do the other things — physical therapy, movement, strengthening — that stop it coming back. The quick relief is frequently the bridge rather than the destination.
Myofascial release, Rolfing and structural integration
Some housekeeping first: Rolfing and structural integration are the same thing. Ida Rolf, who developed it, disliked that it got named after her — structural integration was her own term. Myofascial release sits alongside that family and is somewhat broader.
What they share is the target: fascia, the connective tissue that binds everything together. There are broad sheets of it between skin and muscle, layers between each muscle, and a wrapping around each individual muscle fiber. It is woven all the way through you.
Apply slow, sustained pressure to fascia and it gradually softens, which allows the tissue to lengthen. It is slower than most massage and it is less comfortable on the table than a Swedish session — but the effect lasts considerably longer.
How much longer is the honest question. Nothing in the body is permanent, so semi-permanent is the accurate word. A fast relaxation massage can feel wonderful during the hour and be largely gone a couple of hours later. Myofascial work tends to hold for days to weeks, and sessions layered in a series build on one another — which is the basis of how we work here.
What it is not: comfortable in the way a spa massage is comfortable. Most people describe it as feeling like the right thing is happening rather than feeling nice while it happens.
Shiatsu
From the outside, shiatsu looks a lot like trigger point work — find a point, apply pressure, wait for it to change. Underneath, the theory is entirely different.
Shiatsu comes from Japan and is built on the same framework as acupuncture. Rather than pressing a muscular knot to soften it, the practitioner is pressing a point to move energy along a meridian — the same idea as an acupuncture needle, delivered with a thumb, elbow or knuckle instead.
Whether that framework describes what is physically happening is a separate conversation, and not one we are qualified to settle. Acupuncture has been studied extensively, with genuinely mixed results and a persistent difficulty separating the effect from placebo. And even where there is a benefit, that does not tell you the mechanism — nothing has demonstrated that meridians exist as physical structures. What we can tell you is that the outward method looks similar to trigger point work and the reasoning behind it is not.
It is traditionally done on a floor mat rather than a table, clothed, and it leans toward general wellbeing rather than specific pain conditions — though experienced practitioners do more localized work.
Thai massage
Also built on energy lines, also traditionally done on a mat on the floor. The difference from shiatsu is how much movement is involved: Thai massage incorporates a great deal of stretching, with the practitioner moving you into positions and lengthening you through them.
The practitioner is generally thinking about energy meridians rather than about muscle and fascia, even where the physical result overlaps with what a Western-trained therapist would produce.
One practical note if you are in New York: Thai massage training and New York State massage licensure are not the same thing, and some practitioners certified in Thai massage are not licensed to practice massage in this state. Worth checking rather than assuming.
Lymphatic drainage massage
Very light, very superficial work. The lymphatic system sits just beneath the skin rather than down in the muscle, so the technique deliberately stays at that depth — by the standards of the other styles here it is barely pressure at all.
Where it has a clear role: oncology care, where lymph nodes have been removed or affected by surgical scarring, and during chemotherapy when the system needs support. Also for people whose tissue is too fragile for meaningful pressure, where it offers something useful without risking damage. And it has a genuine place in recovery after some surgeries, including cosmetic ones, on an appropriate timeline.
Several of our therapists are trained in it, and we do offer it where it is indicated.
An honest opinion, and it is an opinion: if you are a reasonably healthy adult who exercises, lymphatic drainage probably will not do much for you that a walk around the block would not. It has become extremely fashionable in the last few years and a good deal of it is being sold to people who do not need it.
And one thing we do not do. There is a trend — sometimes sold as “Brazilian lymphatic,” sometimes as “deep lymphatic” — for firm work in the days immediately after cosmetic surgery, marketed as preventing scarring and lumps.
“Deep lymphatic” is a contradiction in terms. The lymphatic system sits just under the skin. Pressure deep enough to reach muscle has, by definition, gone past it and is no longer lymphatic work — whatever it is being called.
We know your surgeon may have told you to get it, sometimes the very next day. That puts you in an awkward position, so we would rather explain than just decline.
A licensed massage therapist cannot work on open incisions, fresh sutures or broken skin. That is not a house policy or an abundance of caution — it sits outside what our license permits. A surgeon can tell you what they would like done. They cannot extend our license to do it.
And if hands-on work genuinely belongs in the first days after a procedure, it belongs with people who can legally provide it in that window — your surgical practice, or someone working under their direct supervision. That is a real answer rather than a brush-off: ask them who on their team does it.
Once your incisions have closed, we would be glad to work with you, cosmetic surgery included. There is genuine post-surgical work to be done — scar tissue, restricted movement, and the compensation patterns that build up while you are guarding an area. It simply starts later than the day after. Post-surgical massage is where that sits.
Prenatal massage
Exactly what it sounds like — massage during pregnancy.
The myth worth killing: it is not true that you cannot have massage in the first trimester. You can have massage throughout a pregnancy. What is true is that there are real differences in how the work is done, and your therapist needs to be trained in them.
This is one of the very few places where we keep a distinct item on our own menu — not because the style is exotic, but because we need to know in advance so we can put you with someone who has the training and the experience.
Medical massage
Another bucket rather than a technique, and a loosely defined one.
Our working definition is results-based massage aimed at a specific problem. Pain management and issue-based work: neck pain, back pain, a torn rotator cuff, recovery from a knee or hip replacement, a lumbar or cervical disc herniation, plantar fasciitis, carpal tunnel symptoms.
It can draw on any of the techniques above — trigger point, myofascial release, deep Swedish, sports work. What makes it medical massage is not the technique but the intent: you came in with a problem and the session is built to change it.
Hot stone, and the rest of the spa menu
Hot stone massage feels lovely. Heated stones are placed on the body, and sometimes used as tools to work the tissue.
The honest view from this side of the table: it is a nice experience, and it is not something worth paying a skilled practitioner’s hourly rate for. You can heat a towel at home for nothing. Given an hour of someone’s professional time, we would rather spend it on something only they can do for you.
And if you see something on a menu with a name you have never encountered anywhere else — moon massage, or similar — that is a house brand for something ordinary, priced as though it is not.
How to actually choose
Here is the thing that all of the above builds toward: researching styles is the harder path, and it is not the one we would recommend.
Because the label does not reliably tell you what you will get. Two therapists offering “deep tissue” can give you completely different sessions. The variable that actually determines your outcome is the practitioner — their training, their experience, and whether they have worked with what you have.
So the better approach is to skip the menu and ask about the person:
- Call, or write, and describe your actual problem. Not “I’d like a deep tissue massage” — “I’m eight weeks out from a knee replacement” or “I have a disc herniation at L5.”
- Ask who on staff is comfortable working with that.
- Tell whoever you see, at the start of the session, what is going on and what you want out of it.
A well-trained therapist will build the session around that, drawing on whichever techniques the situation calls for. That is a far more reliable route to the thing you want than picking correctly from a list of names.
Why we don’t have a style menu at Bodyworks DW
Everything above is the reason.
We do not want you standing at a menu trying to work out whether your shoulder needs myofascial release or trigger point therapy or deep tissue. That is our job, not yours — and answering it properly requires looking at you, which a menu cannot do.
So our menu is: 60 minutes or 90 minutes. Plus which therapist, and which day. Prenatal is the one exception, for the reason above.
You tell us what is going on. We assess your posture, go through your history and your injuries, and build the session from that — using whatever mix of the approaches above the situation actually calls for. If a particular day needs more trigger point work to get something to move, that is what happens. If it needs slow myofascial work, that is what happens. And if you arrive wrung out and what you actually need is something more settling, we can do that too — just say so.
Our default is the opposite of most places. We assume you are here for results-based work, and you ask if you want relaxation. Everywhere else assumes relaxation, and you have to ask for focus.
60 or 90 minutes?
Both do real work. The difference is what the end of the session looks like.
In 60 minutes we can get a great deal done and bring your pain down — but it can feel a little like we took you apart and sent you home to put yourself back together. Which most people find they rather like, because the effect lasts well past the session.
In 90 minutes there is time to work for roughly seventy-five or eighty minutes and then spend the last ten or fifteen integrating — putting you back together before you leave. You walk out feeling more finished. It is also a good choice for a first visit, because it leaves room for a proper intake.
If it is a choice between the two, take 60 minutes more often. This is the single most useful piece of scheduling advice we give, and it is worth stating clearly: work layered close together does more than the same work spread thin. It is the same advice a personal trainer or a music teacher would give you — shorter sessions closer together beat one marathon.
Three to five 60-minute sessions, a week or two apart across a couple of months, will leave you in a substantially better place a year from now than 90-minute sessions every other month across that same year. That has been consistent across thousands of clients, and it is the advice we would give a friend.
Which therapist?
Our therapists are tiered by depth of experience rather than by style — nobody here is “the Swedish one” or “the sports one.”
Two rules cover almost every case.
If you are in acute pain, see whoever can get you in soonest. Being seen this week by an experienced therapist beats suffering an extra three weeks for a slightly more experienced one. We hire on demonstrated skill rather than years on paper — which cuts both ways. We turn down therapists with a decade behind them, and occasionally hire someone earlier than their résumé would suggest, because the work is obviously there.
Years in the field are a genuinely deceptive measure. Some therapists stay in a state of constant learning after school; others settle on a set of techniques and practice those for decades. The more useful questions are what additional training someone has taken and which kinds of problems they have actually worked with — and whether that matches what you are bringing in. No therapist can do it all. I probably have the broadest issue-based experience on the team, and there are still things my colleagues do better than I do.
If your case is complicated and you can wait, wait. Multiple simultaneous issues, a joint replacement with other things going on, a rarer structural or genetic condition — those are worth booking further out for someone who has seen a lot of them.
The current tiers and who sits in each are on the booking page. If you are unsure, call us at 917.740.2709 and we will be happy to point you at the right therapist.
Come and get it looked at
If you have read this far trying to work out what to book, here is the short version: don’t. Tell us the problem and let us choose the tools.
We are in Midtown West and the Financial District. Book 60 or 90 minutes at either, and when you come in, tell us what is going on rather than which style you think you need.
More on the work itself: deep tissue and myofascial release, medical massage, and sports massage and recovery.
David Weintraub, LMT – Owner, Bodyworks DW Massage Therapy
Common questions
Which type of massage is best for neck pain?
For most neck pain the useful work is a combination — usually myofascial release through the chest and front of the neck, often with trigger point work where symptoms are referring. But the honest answer is that it depends on what is causing yours, which is why we assess rather than assign a style. There is more detail in our guide to what causes neck pain and how massage helps.
Is deep tissue better than Swedish?
Neither is better. They are aimed at different things. Swedish is built for relaxation and general wellbeing; deep tissue is a broad category of firmer, more focused work. If you have a specific problem you want changed, the deep tissue family is the relevant one — but “firmer” is not the same as “more effective,” and past a certain point more pressure achieves nothing except more pain.
Does deep tissue massage have to hurt?
No. Some of it is uncomfortable, particularly slow fascial work, and most people describe that discomfort as feeling productive rather than painful. But work that has you bracing and holding your breath is counterproductive — you are generating more tension than the session is removing. Say so, and a good therapist will adjust.
What kind of massage should I book if I don’t know what’s wrong?
Book 60 or 90 minutes and describe the symptoms. That is genuinely what the intake is for.
