Swedish massage

This style utilizes long, flowing strokes, often but not necessarily in the direction of the heart. There are six basic strokes: effleurage from the French effleurer, 'to skim over', petrissage from the French pétrir, 'to knead', friction, tapotement, compression, and vibration. Swedish massage has shown to be helpful in reducing pain, joint stiffness, and improving function in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee over a period of eight weeks.

Traditional Chinese massage

Tui Na style focuses on pushing, stretching, and kneading the muscle. Zhi Ya  is similar to Tui Na massage except it focuses more on pinching and pressing at acupressure points. They are both based on principles from Traditional Chinese Medicine.

This can also be called pressure point massage. A trigger point is an area of a muscle (about 50 cells) that may refer pain sensations to other parts of the body. Manual pressure is applied to these points. This work can be incorporated into other styles of massage therapy such as neuromuscular therapy (NMT) or Swedish.

Soft tissue therapy

Treatment techniques include trigger point therapy, myofascial Release, friction for adhesions between fascial layers and muscles. Sustained finger pressure to alleviate hypertonic, or tight, areas within muscle and fascia, active Release therapies, and deep tissue massage are all derivatives of soft tissue therapy. Different types of stretching such as static stretching, dynamic stretching, and/or PNF stretching (proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation).
Another form of Soft tissue therapy is Muscle energy technique (MET) which uses reciprocal inhibition (RI) which is when the therapist uses a client’s muscle to stretch the opposing muscle. The therapist takes the muscle that they are wishing to stretch to its full range of motion. The therapist then gets the client to use the opposing muscle by moving away from the therapist. When the client relaxes the therapist then moves the muscle in an attempt to realign the muscle fibers.

Shiatsu

Shiatsu is a form of Japanese massage that uses thumb pressure and works along the same energy meridians as acupressure and incorporates stretching.