Holistic, Swedish or deep tissue: which one to ask for

You arrive, someone asks which massage you want, and the menu has twenty names on it. Holistic, Swedish, deep tissue, sports, chiromassage, champi. The first five cost exactly the same. So most people do one of two things: pick the one that sounds most serious, or say “whatever you think”.

Both work. But you can choose better in thirty seconds, and it shows. Here's what each technique actually does, with no mysticism attached.

The price won't help you decide

Holistic, Swedish, deep tissue, sports and custom all cost the same: $650 for 30 minutes, $1,100 for the hour, $1,500 for 90 minutes. There's no premium option. What changes is pressure, pace, and how long the therapist stays in one place.

What each one does

Holistic. Light, steady pressure, long strokes, slow pace. It works on the nervous system more than on the muscle: your pulse drops, your breathing settles, and you end up half asleep. This is the one for tiredness and a racing head, not for a specific knot.

Swedish. The classic tension-release massage. Long, deeper strokes over large muscle groups —back, legs, shoulders— with kneading and friction. For the general accumulated tension that has no exact address but sits across your whole back.

Deep tissue. Sustained, slow pressure into deeper layers. It is not “Swedish but pressing harder”. The therapist works slowly on one specific knot, sometimes with forearm or elbow, and stays there for several minutes. This is the one for the trapezius knot you've been carrying since March. It's also the one most likely to leave you a bit sore the next day.

Sports. Built around muscle recovery. Before an event it's fast and stimulating; after effort it's slower and more draining, to help with stiffness and heaviness. It isn't stronger than deep tissue — it's more specific to the groups you trained.

Custom or mixed. This exists precisely for when you turn up with two things at once: a stiff neck and a need to sleep. The therapist splits the session. If you're torn between two options, this is the honest shortcut.

And two that aren't full-body massage but solve a lot: champi (40 min, $850) works head, neck and shoulders, and is what people who live in front of a screen ask for; chiromassage (90 min, $1,500) combines lymphatic drainage with tension release, for heavy legs and a loaded back at the same time.

How to choose in ten seconds

• Stress, poor sleep, a head that won't stop: holistic.
• Your whole back is loaded, no clear spot: Swedish.
• One old, well-located knot: deep tissue.
• You trained hard this week: sports.
• Two of the above at once: custom.
• It only hurts from the neck up: champi.
• Swollen, heavy legs: chiromassage or lymphatic drainage.

More pressure is not a better massage

There's a stubborn idea that if it didn't hurt, it didn't work. It isn't true. A muscle that defends itself contracts, and you can't work on a contracted muscle: the therapist pushes and the body pushes back.

The useful reference is your breathing. The right pressure feels intense and you can still breathe normally. If you're clenching your teeth, holding your breath or lifting your shoulder, it's too much. And you say so then, not afterwards.

Saying “a little lighter there” halfway through doesn't ruin the massage. It's what makes it work.

Thirty, sixty or ninety minutes

Thirty minutes covers one area: back and neck, or legs. Not the whole body. Ask for full body in half an hour and the therapist gives three minutes per region and gets nowhere in any of them.

Sixty is a sensible full body, or one area worked properly. Ninety is full body with real time to spare where it hurts. If you're coming in for an old knot, one 90-minute session does more than two 30-minute ones.

The part that actually changes the outcome

It isn't the name of the technique — it's what you say in the first two minutes. Where it hurts, since when, whether there was an injury, whether you're pregnant, whether you take blood thinners, whether you've had recent surgery, and which areas you'd rather were left alone. Given that, a good therapist adjusts the session even if you booked the “wrong” massage.

When a massage isn't the answer

Some pain doesn't get fixed on a table. Check with your doctor first if the pain runs down your arm or leg with tingling or loss of strength, if it started after a hard blow or a fall, if it comes with fever, or if one leg is swollen, hot and red on that side only.

It's also not massage day if you have a fever, an active infection, an injury less than 48 hours old that's still inflamed, or open wounds in the area. If you're pregnant, the right one is the prenatal massage — side-lying, with bolsters — not deep tissue.

One session doesn't undo three years

A knot you've had since you changed chairs won't disappear in an hour. It loosens, and it comes back, because the cause is still there eight hours a day. That's what the three-session packages are for: $2,970 for three 60-minute sessions instead of $3,300.

The pattern that works: three sessions one or two weeks apart to bring the problem down, then one maintenance session a month. And in between, the boring part —standing up every hour, raising your screen to eye level— which is what keeps you from rebuilding the same knot.

If you get here and still don't know

Say what hurts and since when, and let the therapist choose. That's what the custom massage is for. At OMLAM we'd much rather you arrive undecided than book ninety minutes of deep tissue because it sounded like the most complete option.