What is Therapeutic Bodywork

What bodywork is, how Lola Carrasco practices it and what a session looks like in Barcelona. Osteopathy, manual massage and movement in one approach.

THERAPEUTIC BODYWORK

Lola Carrasco y Carlos Ruiz

11/10/2026

⟵ Back

It’s a word that comes from the English-speaking world and is turning up more and more in Spain. If you’ve been wondering what it means, here’s the simplest way I know to explain it.

A massage is a form of bodywork, but bodywork is not a massage

Bodywork means just what it says: work with the body. For decades it has been used as an umbrella term for the therapies that work with the body through touch and movement.

A massage is one form of bodywork, but bodywork doesn’t stop at massage. What ties these therapies together is that they look at more than the muscle that hurts: how you move, how you hold yourself, how you feel inside your own body.

Here, almost everything gets called massage, and the word still sounds unfamiliar. Even so, giving a name to this way of working helps you understand what to expect.

How I see it

My bodywork brings together what I’ve learned over the years: osteopathy, manual massage therapy, myofascial release and ancestral techniques such as Thai and Lomi Lomi. I don’t apply them separately or in a fixed order. I observe, I listen and I adapt the work to what I find, so there is no standard session and no closed protocols.

I work with massage, compressions, mobilizations, stretches and assisted movements. The assisted movements I do myself, moving your body while you let go, so you can regain range of motion without having to force anything. I start from a simple idea: the body works as a whole, and what happens in one area is usually felt in another. If you come in for your neck, I may end up looking at your shoulders, back or hips as well.

All of this comes together in the philosophy of The Art of Touch, a way of understanding massage based on touch, listening and movement. I go into it in more detail on that page.

How a session begins

Before I touch anything, I listen. What you’re feeling, where, since when, what your day looks like. With that, and with what I find as I work, I decide where to start. A session can last 30, 60 or 90 minutes and it adapts to your pace: it’s your body that leads the way.

Who it’s for

It might be for you if you spend long hours sitting and your neck reminds you of it every afternoon, if you train and show up to your next workout with a body that still feels heavy, or if it takes you a while to get moving in the morning. Also if you’ve tried massages before and you’re looking for something more personal than a sequence that repeats the same way for everybody.

What I can tell you

I see many people use it to ease tension and move more comfortably. And along the way they pay attention to their body, through a professional’s eyes, something we almost never do until it starts to bother us.

If the pain started after a knock, if there’s tingling or fever, or if it keeps getting worse, the first step is to see a doctor. And if you’re in treatment or rehabilitation, bodywork can go alongside it, never in its place.

If you’d like to try it

On your first session, I’ll give you an extra 30 minutes: book 30 and you get 60, book 60 and you get 90. I work in the Sant Antoni, Eixample Esquerra and Poble-Sec area of Barcelona. Here are the details and how to book.