Every upper end massage chair nowadays has a scanning feature of some sort that checks out your spine prior to beginning your massage session. The feature is designed to get a feel for your height, weight, and muscle tight spots to figure out how intense the chair will decide to massage you. Very fascinating, actually.

What this means, is that each person that sits on a massage chair could have an entirely different massage than any other person that sits on the same chair. What is even more interesting, each person that sits on a massage chair will have a different massage each time he/she sits on the massage chair if the musculature of the user has changed from session to session.

For example, if I sit on a massage chair in the morning, after a good night’s sleep, the massage chair will scan me based on the relaxed musculature of a night’s rest. If I have a tough, stressful day, that very same day, or if I become injured playing basketball or get in a car accident, and my musculature changes accordingly, the reading of the massage chair scan could be completely different. Thus, my massage at the beginning of the day and my massage at the end of the day may be completely different.

This personalizes the massage that much more. I think this is a development in massage chair technology that just further adds to the effectiveness of massage chair recliners and further allows the chairs to compete with real therapists. Of course, nothing we have in the industry, right now, completely mimics the hands of a licensed and trained massage therapist or even a chiropractor, but I can tell you…they are working on it!

I will discuss individual manufacturer’s body scanning technologies in subsequent blog entries. Though most of the quality massage chair manufacturers have body scan technology in some shape and form, they are different and proprietary for each company.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com