It seems the world has recently discovered what Chinese medicine has known for millennia: gua sha massage—using hydrating serum, healthy oil and a specially carved stone to “scrape” your baby’s body—helps heal, comfort, and relax.
Gua sha helps lower our fight-or-flight response (sympathetic nervous response) and ups our rest-and-digest response to life (parasympathetic response).
This ancient technique is increasingly researched and applied in many modern circumstances because it works not just on the site where you use it, but even areas far from that. It works not only for new pain but for old ones, for musculoskeletal issues or digestive ones, and almost anything.
But first, let’s make sure everyone understands how this massage for tiny people is different from what adults have come to know and love: the “gua” in gua sha means “scraping,” but you will not scrape your baby!
Instead, you use a light, steady, smooth pressure that soothes.
Adult gua sha for the body and baby gua sha for the body are very different from each other. Baby gua sha is much more like facial gua sha.
If your acupuncturist has given you a gua sha treatment, the goal was to create the redness that indicates they have loosened adhesions and stimulated both circulation and relaxation. Research shows that this technique helps adults in so many ways:
But babies are tender and need a light touch with steady pressure.
Unlike the stroking type of massage or an adult gua sha treatment, the goal for your baby isn’t to apply pressure and evoke redness, it’s all about soothing and connecting.
Gua sha is a wonderful health-promoting technique that babies can benefit from, even if they’re feeling sick.
Whether they’re born through an easy homebirth or a surprise cesarean section, babies can carry stress, muscle tension, or injuries.
The light pressure you give helps relax—not challenge—your baby.
Gua sha massage for babies provides the same physical and psychological benefits15 it does for adults:
- reduces stress
- increased sleep
- lower blood pressure
- slower breathing16
- increased circulation
- calms anxiety
- alleviates coughs and colds
- decreases inflammation
- releases tension
- supports immune system
Your baby’s skin is their first defense against the impacts of temperature, toxins, and bacteria.
Gua sha helps support the skin’s immune function17, so it can work best as the mighty protective barrier it’s designed to be.
Our BEB Organic Soothing & Nurturing Gua Sha Set gives you both the best oil and a perfectly shaped stone.
Our stone is a heart-shaped rose quartz (the “love” stone that builds trust, harmony, and self-worth18) that fits comfortably in your hand and mimics the curves of your breasts and body.
Each of the stone’s curves and gullies are designed to fit different parts of little bodies. And because the stone can be warm or cool, it helps soothe tension and fever.
When you use nutritious, toxin-free serum and oil like our BEB Organic Soothing Serum (formerly named Healing Gel) or Nurturing Oil, you are also feeding your baby with every loving stroke.
Soothing Serum is pH balancing for the skin and provides healthy microflora for a thriving and protective microbiome.
Nurturing Oil combines over 6,000 bioactive compounds to help strengthen your baby’s skin and support healthy development of every part of their growing body.
Gua sha baby massage helps relieve discomfort and boosts relaxation, allowing your baby to use all their energy to grow well.
And let’s remember that every time you massage your little one, that bonding, relaxation, and health become part of you, too—your stress lowers, your immune system is boosted, and your connection with your baby is deepened.
