(FORTUNE Magazine) – Sometimes the best antidote to corporate stress is hands-on management. So say people at Apple Computer, GE's NBC, Johnson & Johnson, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo Bank, and a host of other companies that have hired massage therapists to rejuvenate frazzled employees by kneading them. Insurance giant New York Life has three massage practitioners on staff. Lotus Development recently equipped a special massage room with soft lighting and a compact disc player. Even Uncle Sam is hooked: Twice a week Bahaa Karra, a Washington massage therapist, rubs down employees at the State Department. More than 4,000 therapists now deliver office massage on a regular basis. Patients include such top executives as H.J. Heinz CEO Anthony O'Reilly and Nathan Gantcher, president of Oppenheimer, an investment bank. Most companies favor ''chair massage,'' an upper-body rub performed while employees relax in a special seat, fully dressed. Printer R.R. Donnelley is among a small but growing number of firms at which employees can get a table massage, complete with oils like coconut or palm. Both types cost $1 a minute, sometimes paid by the employee, sometimes subsidized by the company. On-the-job rubdowns usually take place in spaces set aside for them. But masseur Russell Borner has massaged stockbrokers who never took their eyes off their Quotron screens.