https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPSAgs-exfQ
Benefits of massage for infants, babies and children include the following:
• Provides a special time of communication that fosters love, compassion, and respect
• Improves general well-being
• Provides an intimate time for children to confide in parents
• Improves overall functioning of the gastrointestinal tract
• Promotes relaxation and helps babies self-regulate calm, which reduces crying
• Helps to normalize muscle tone
• Improves circulation
• Enhances immune system function
• Improves midline orientation
• Helps to improve sensory and body awareness
• Enhances neurological development
• Helps baby/child to sleep deeper and more soundly
• Helps to increase oxygen and nutrient flow to cells. Improves respiration
• Helps to improve pain managment; can relieve discomfort from teething,
• Helps with congestion, gas, and colic
• Enhances release of hormones in the body. The growth hormone can be stimulated which helps weight gain.
• Reduces levels of cortisol, the stress hormone
• Provides all of the essential indicators of intimate parent-infant bonding and attachment: eye-to-eye, touch, voice, smell, movement, and thermal regulation.
• Stimulates all of the physiological systems. Massage sparks the neurons in their brains to grow and branch out to encompass other neurons.