The following is a guest article written by Kelly Kilpatrick.

I agree completely with William Congreve – Music does indeed have charms to soothe the savage beast. It’s my favorite form of relaxation; it’s my chosen way to relieve the boredom of monotonous tasks; and it’s my closest companion on long drives across the country. Yes, there’s nothing to beat the relaxing power of music. Or so I thought until a friend introduced me to the wonder of a massage. Now I’m torn between an old and comfortable spouse and a new and exciting lover – I can’t give one up for the other or choose between the two of them, so I decided to do the next best thing – combine them to add up to a pleasurable and relaxing experience.

Massages have been proven to stimulate blood flow and remove stress from your body. They’re therapeutic and relaxing, and at the same time, rejuvenate you and make you full of energy. A good massage works on both your body and mind – it energizes one while relaxing the other, and when you add soothing music to this combination, you’re going to think you died and went to heaven for a while.

A massage works when the atmosphere is conducive to relaxation, and no matter how calm and serene your massage room is, adding music serves to spice up the benefits of your massage. You find yourself drifting to a land that’s between slumber and wakefulness, floating on a cloud that’s drifting across a clear blue sky.

There are numerous options for massage music, with instrumentalists recording albums solely for this purpose. But you don’t have to stick to the traditional kind of music to be able to enhance your massage experience – choose the kind of music you think relaxes you best and give yourself up to the magical fingers working on your body and the soothing melody working on your mind.

Stress is a condition that brings on all kinds of diseases and ailments; it ruins both your body and your mind. People have been known to die because of stress-induced heart attacks and strokes. It’s up to us to keep ourselves healthy by reducing stress from our lives, and if we are constantly subjected to it, by doing the next best thing and finding ways to relax. Massages and music work for people of all ages and all temperaments. So if you’re looking for a way to beat the blues, get a massage, to the accompaniment of your favorite tunes. The difference you feel will tell the whole story!

This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of massage schools online. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com