Companies bring in experts to pound the stress out of workers.

In a corner of the Santa Monica headquarters of dentist referral service "1-800-Dentist" there is a small, dimly lit room in which sits what appears to be a dental chair.

Once a week, each of the about 120 employees at the firm sits face forward in this padded, reclining chair so that his or her back is exposed for a 10-minute massage from one of the two massage therapists, Chris Mellon and Mary Hickey, the part-time employees the company keeps on staff.

While Mellon or Hickey kneads, rubs and pounds the employees' backs, necks and arms, they play cassettes of Mozart, Bach, country music or a ditty entitled "Music for Zen Meditation."

Futuredontics Inc., the company which operates the telephone referral service, pays for all its employees to get a 10-minute massage once a week, which costs the company about $15 a head, because it is a good business investment, says Gary Saint Denis, one of the referral firm's founders.

By providing employees with a massage, it shows them they are valued and prevents stress burnout, he says. Also, "it comes across to our callers that our operators are relaxed," Saint Denis says.

Workplace massage, also known as on-site massage, is typically a 10- to 15-minute workover of the neck and shoulders. It is done in offices all over the country. Unlike a full-body massage, which generally takes an hour, the workplace massage does not necessitate disrobing or lying down on a table.

Massage in the workplace started in the early 1980s in the Silicon Valley, says Ahmos Netanel, president and founder of West L.A.-based Massage Therapy Center Inc. Apple Computer was probably one of the first corporations to provide the service to employees, he said.

On-site massage grew strongly during the 1980s but it has since flattened out, Netanel says. "It is happening. It is not dead. But it's not growing," he says.

In the L.A. area, Netanel's center, which employs 40 massage therapists, is the only company providing the in-office service, he says. It provides massage therapists to five L.A. area companies on a regular basis, plus for movie and television shoots for many of the major studios, Netanel says.

Netanel estimates there are also about 20 individual massage therapists working in the Los Angeles area. The therapist who has been in the business the longest is Michael Neil, who Netanel says is one of the best around.

Neil, a former actor and trained massage therapist, began giving massages to other actors on productions he worked on. After three years as an actor earned him a total of $3,500, he says, he decided to give up acting to work full time as a massage therapist.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Neil, using his thumbs with cat-like quickness, strokes the shoulders of Stella Oshiro, legal secretary in the Century City office of lawyer Mark I. Rosenberg.

"It doesn't look like it but Michael's got really strong fingers," Oshiro says. "I get a feeling of well-being" after getting a massage from Neil.

Oshiro, who says she has had a lot of different massage therapists work on her over the years, says Neil "is the only one I know who doesn't favor one hand over the other."

A few times a year, Neil teaches a six-hour course at the Santa Monica School of Massage on how to give in-office massages. He says when he teaches young people, he can see their minds working: "Fifteen dollars for a 10-minute massage, there are six 10-minute periods in an hour, eight hours in a day ..."

But it doesn't work that way, he notes. "This is hard work." Neil says he does about two to four massages an hour, and usually a maximum of 20 a day.

Neil says he was hired once by a San Francisco company to give massages to all its accounting department employees who had worked all day the day before on a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

"They flew me to San Francisco and I did 30 massages and they flew me back," Neil says. "That was an arduous day."

Neil works three days a week at Walt Disney Co.'s Burbank headquarters giving massages to executives and freelances the other days. On Fridays he works on lawyers in Century City.

Both Neil and Netanel say the biggest users of in-office massage seem to be people in the entertainment industry, followed by lawyers.

There are three ways companies arrange for in-house massages, Neil says: The employer pays for a massage therapist to work on all the employees; the employer allows the massage therapist to come in the workplace but employees must pay for their own massages; or the employer splits the cost of the massage with the employee.

Lawyer Rosenberg pays for Oshiro's massage as well as his own. "I like to come to work and enjoy work," he says. "What's good for me should be good for everyone else."

Dr. Mark Goulston, an assistant clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, says he thinks workplace massages do "a lot of good" in reducing workplace stress.

"All stress management takes you out of one state of mind and puts you in another state of mind," he says. "It doesn't matter if what you do is relaxing. You can go out and kill a golf ball."

Massages can be particularly beneficial because they involved touch, a basic human need, Goulston adds.

"One of the things that causes stress is you feel alone and overwhelmed," he says, and a massage can relieve that feeling of being alone.

One danger in getting a massage -- or taking a vacation and getting some distance from the stress of the workplace -- is "you get a view of how crazy your life is and you don't want to go back," Goulston says.

In the short term, massage may not be a great thing for bosses to give their employees because it replaces adrenaline, which is produced when people experience fear, with endorphins, which is produced when people experience pleasure, Goulston says.

Adrenaline-driven work is "more focused work," he explains.

But in the long term, Goulston says, he thinks that workplace massages are beneficial to productivity because he believes they can prevent burnout and workers' compensation stress claims.

Neil says he loves his job because he feels he's doing good in the world.

"I go and have 10 minute visits with all my friends and come home with pockets full of money."