Sit On It: Air Compression

Hey! Welcome back to our 3rd installation of our series Sit On It, where we aim to look at a massage chair feature, and break down why it’s there for you. This week it’s all about air compression, and it’s use in massage sessions.

Air Compression Massage?

When it comes to massaging, air is used to inflate small air pockets, known as air bags or air cells, which press up against the body—located typically at the shoulders, back, arms, calves, and feet. But what makes it a massage? Most people ask us this question because it’s just plainly body parts being squeezed by the air pressure in the air cells. And well you’re right. They aren’t massaging your back quite like the rollers that go along the length of your upper body, but they play a key role in massages.

How Air Helps Your Massage

There are two main reasons air cells are used in conjunction with massages: position adjustment and blood circulation. Position adjustment refers to air cells that will adjust your body in order to produce an effective massage. When receiving a massage, the shoulder, back and hip air cells will adjust your body to give it an effective massage. In the case of shoulder air cells, they may inflate to help square your shoulders as the rollers move along the upper torso in conjunction, so that the rollers can massage deeper muscles—thus producing a more effective massage. The back and hip air cells will typically inflate to either adjust your body so that the rollers can hit different areas along the back more effectively, or stretch the muscles along the lower back and thigh that might otherwise have not been stretched out. These air cells are typically used to adjust the body to allow other functions of the chair to perform even better.

And of course, blood circulation is a key point in air massages.

Why is Blood Circulation so Important?

Blood circulation is an important part of the body itself. Blood circulation allows your vital organs to receive nutrients and oxygen. With poor blood circulation, it could potentially harm the body. Because of that, air compression has become a great aspect of massage chairs today. By compressing areas of the body with air pressure, it increases blood circulation which, in turn, helps the body’s needed functions like repairing muscles.

So it creates this cumulative effect on your body when you get an air compression massage. It has the ability to make other parts of the massage chair work more efficiently. It also increases blood flow, which helps the process of repairing muscles and other areas of the body, and gets you feeling re-energized. Air compression is just a small cog in the working machine of a massage chair, as it plays its own part. So just Sit On It.

Thanks for reading! This series is aimed at tackling popular massage chair features, and breaking down what they do for you during a massage session. In doing so, we hope we can bring some insight as to how a massage chair will utilize various features to produce an effective, powerful massage. We’ll be back again soon, so stay tuned!