Massage
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40 free Massage trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Massage is one of the oldest treatments people have recorded, and it has picked up a remarkable vocabulary along the way. Ancient doctors prescribed it, royal courts kept specialists on staff, and a nineteenth-century physician gave the classic strokes the names that students still memorise today. This quiz covers the whole table: the basic strokes and what each one does, traditional styles from Asia, the Pacific and Europe, the pioneers and oddballs who shaped modern bodywork, the muscles and tissues a therapist works on, and the safety rules that decide when a session should not go ahead. It is pitched for curious spa-goers as much as for massage therapy students revising before an exam. The early questions are the ones most people can reason out, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing why as well as what.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which everyday hair-care word comes from a Hindi term for pressing the muscles, and first meant to massage?
Shampoo
Shampoo entered English in 1762 as a word for a vigorous body rub. It took about another century to mean washing the hair.
Q 02Janet Travell, a pioneer of treating muscle pain, was the first female personal physician to which US president?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy appointed her after her treatments eased the severe back pain left by his wartime injuries and surgeries.
Q 03Which breakfast-cereal pioneer of the Battle Creek Sanitarium wrote The Art of Massage and patented a massage apparatus?
John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey Kellogg filled his Michigan health resort with mechanical slapping and vibrating machines, prescribing them for anaemia and weak nerves.
Q 04Which country's traditional massage, mixing acupressure with assisted yoga poses, joined UNESCO's heritage list in 2019?
Thailand
Thailand teaches the art at Bangkok's Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, where scholars had its techniques inscribed on stone tablets in the 1830s.
Q 05Petrissage and tapotement, two of the five basic strokes of classic Western massage, are named in which language?
French
French terms were attached to the strokes in 1868 by physician Johann Georg Mezger, who also coined the phrase Swedish massage system.
Q 06Which Japanese bodywork style, popularised by Tokujiro Namikoshi, has a name that means finger pressure?
Shiatsu
Shiatsu grew out of the older anma tradition, and its practitioners lean their body weight in through thumbs and palms rather than using any instrument.
Q 07Which therapy left the round purple marks seen on swimmer Michael Phelps at the 2016 Rio Olympics?
Cupping
Cupping pulls the skin up into a vacuum inside each cup, and the bruises it left across his back made headlines during the Games.
Q 08Which ancient Greek physician wrote that a doctor must be experienced in many things, but assuredly in rubbing?
Hippocrates
Hippocrates was describing the treatment his countrymen called anatripsis, which the Romans later knew as frictio.
Q 09Reflexology, once called zone therapy, presses mainly on which part of the body, said to mirror every organ?
The feet
The feet were mapped into reflex areas by nurse Eunice Ingham in the 1930s and 1940s, though no convincing evidence shows the method treats any condition.
Q 10Lomilomi, a flowing massage that often uses the forearms and elbows, is the traditional massage of which islands?
Hawaii
Hawaii handed lomilomi down within families, which is why the style still varies from one island to the next.
Q 11Saqqara's so-called Tomb of the Physician, carved with a possible early massage scene, stands in which country?
Egypt
Egypt's carving dates to about 2330 BC and shows two men having their hands worked on, making it one of the oldest images linked to the practice.
Q 12Abhyanga, a head-to-toe massage with warm herb-infused oil, belongs to which traditional Indian system of medicine?
Ayurveda
Ayurveda counts abhyanga among its daily health practices, and sesame is the base oil it traditionally calls for.
Q 13Long gliding massage strokes on an arm or leg are traditionally pushed toward which organ?
The heart
The heart is the target because the stroke acts as a mechanical pump, starting at the bottom of the limb and nudging venous blood back up.
Q 21Petrissage, a deep Swedish massage stroke done with the palms and thumbs, means doing what to the muscles?
Kneading
Kneading is what the name literally means, and the same family of strokes takes in wringing, skin rolling and a pick-up-and-squeeze.
Q 22Which biochemist created Structural Integration, a deep bodywork course of ten sessions now sold under her surname?
Ida Rolf
Ida Rolf held a doctorate in biological chemistry from Columbia, and Rolfers nickname her fixed sequence of sessions the recipe.
Q 23Which sheet-like connective tissue, wrapped around every muscle, is the target of foam rolling and structural bodywork?
Fascia
Fascia is built mainly from type I collagen fibres, and its deep layer divides groups of muscles into separate compartments.
Q 14Which compound, long blamed for the muscle soreness that peaks days after exercise, actually clears within an hour?
Lactic acid
Lactic acid is back to normal levels far too soon to cause the delayed ache, which is now put down to tiny tears in the muscle fibres.
Q 15Acupressure works along the same energy channels as acupuncture, known in Chinese medicine by which name?
Meridians
Meridians are said to carry a life energy called qi, and pressing on them is meant to clear blockages, though neither has been observed by science.
Q 16Danish couple Emil and Estrid Vodder devised a gentle 1930s massage technique to drain which body system?
Lymphatic
Lymphatic swelling set the Vodders thinking, after patients with chronic colds kept arriving with enlarged lymph nodes.
Q 17Hot stone massage usually relies on smooth, flat stones made of which dark volcanic rock?
Basalt
Basalt retains heat, so the warmed stones can be rested along the spine or held in the therapist's hands during the strokes.
Q 18Which practice of adding plant essences to massage oil is named after a 1937 book by chemist René-Maurice Gattefossé?
Aromatherapy
Aromatherapy oils are too concentrated to use neat, so they are diluted in a carrier such as jojoba or sweet almond before they touch the skin.
Q 19Johann Georg Mezger, the physician who named the strokes of Swedish massage, was born and trained in which country?
Netherlands
Netherlands-born Mezger studied medicine at Leiden, and his patients later included Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Otto von Bismarck.
Q 20Which light, skimming stroke, used to warm up the muscles, traditionally opens and closes a Swedish massage?
Effleurage
Effleurage takes its name from a verb meaning to skim, and therapists also use it as the link between every other stroke in the routine.
Q 24Which Chinese massage therapy takes its name from the words for push and for lift and squeeze?
Tui na
Tui na reached Japan during the Nara period, more than twelve centuries ago, and grew there into a home-grown tradition of its own.
Q 25Which Chinese practice scrapes oiled skin with a smooth-edged tool until reddish, bruise-like marks appear?
Gua sha
Gua sha tools range from ceramic spoons and coins to jade stones, which is why English speakers have also called it spooning or coining.
Q 26Which blind swordsman, played by Shintaro Katsu in 26 Japanese films, earns his living as a travelling masseur?
Zatoichi
Zatoichi wanders the countryside of the 1830s and 1840s giving massages and gambling at dice, a harmless front for his skill with a blade.
Q 27In a Russian banya, bathers are massaged with a venik, a leafy bundle cut from oak or which pale-barked tree?
Birch
Birch branches are dried in bunches and swished over the skin, which also drives hot air from the steam room onto the body.
Q 28Which bathhouse tradition follows its steam with a scrub from a coarse kese mitten and a joint-cracking massage?
Hammam
Hammam attendants were traditionally young men called tellaks, who soaped and scrubbed their clients before the massage began.
Q 29Which name is given to tender knots in taut muscle that send pain to distant parts of the body when pressed?
Trigger points
Trigger points fill a two-volume manual by Janet Travell and David Simons, who argued that the referred pain is often misdiagnosed.
Q 30Which condition rules out massaging the affected limb, because a dislodged clot could travel to the lungs?
Deep vein thrombosis
Deep vein thrombosis is treated as an absolute bar to working on that limb, whereas a fever only postpones a session until it has passed.