Russian massage is a system of therapeutic and sports massage developed in the former Soviet Union. It uses a variety of manipulations of the body's soft tissues to achieve benefits, including stress reduction and relief from muscle aches.
Many cultures around the world developed forms of massage therapy , including the ancient peoples of China, India, and Greece. One early advocate was Hippocrates, the Greek physician widely considered to be the father of medicine. Per Henrik Ling, a nineteenth-century Swedish physician who employed vigorous massage to stimulate circulation of the blood and lymph, is usually considered the founder of modern European massage. Massage was not studied or used scientifically in Russia until 1860. Treatment methods were developed further after World War II when pharmaceuticals were in short supply.
The Soviet Union employed physiatrists—medical doctors with Ph.D. degrees in physical therapy—to research the benefits of using natural healing modalities. They developed a form of petrissage to reverse atrophy in muscles and help stimulate new growth. Russian physiologists found all movements of massage function on the basis of neurohormone and neuroendocrine reflexes. Un-like other massage therapies, Russian massage is based on the physiology of a dysfunction rather than on anatomy as the principal guideline for treatment.