Tapotement is a specific technique used in
Swedish massage
Massage is the manipulation of the body's soft tissues. Massage techniques are commonly applied with hands, fingers, elbows, knees, forearms, feet or a device. The purpose of massage is generally for the treatment of body stress or pain. In Eu ...
.
It is a rhythmic
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
, most frequently administered with the edge of the hand, a cupped hand or the tips of the fingers. There are five types of tapotement including Beating (closed fist lightly hitting area), Slapping (use of fingers to gently slap), Hacking (use the edge of hand on pinky finger side), Tapping (use just fingertips) and Cupping (make your hand look like a cup and gently tap area). It is primarily used to "wake up" the
nervous system
In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes th ...
and also as a stimulating stroke which can release
lymphatic
Lymph (from Latin, , meaning "water") is the fluid that flows through the lymphatic system, a system composed of lymph vessels (channels) and intervening lymph nodes whose function, like the venous system, is to return fluid from the tissues to ...
build up in the back.
The name of the stroke is taken from the French word "Tapoter", meaning to tap or to
drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...
.
See also
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Swedish massage
Massage is the manipulation of the body's soft tissues. Massage techniques are commonly applied with hands, fingers, elbows, knees, forearms, feet or a device. The purpose of massage is generally for the treatment of body stress or pain. In Eu ...
*
Effleurage
Effleurage, a French word meaning "to skim" or "to touch lightly on", is a series of massage strokes used in Swedish massage to warm up the muscle before deep tissue work using petrissage.
This is a soothing, stroking movement used at the begin ...
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Petrissage
Petrissage () is a massage technique that applies deep pressure to the underlying muscles. Kneading, wringing, skin rolling and pick-up-and-squeeze are the petrissage movements. They are all performed with the padded palmar surface of the hand, ...
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Gua sha
''Gua sha'' (), or ''kerokan'' (in Indonesia), is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practice in which a tool is used to scrape people's skin in order to produce light petechiae. Practitioners believe that ''gua sha'' releases unhealthy bodily ...
References
External links
Glossary of Massage Terms - American Massage Therapy AssociationWhat is Tapotement?
Manual therapy
Massage
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