I had the extreme pleasure of enjoying my first massage
about 12 years ago. Since then, massage
has mostly been a sporadic gift to myself that I might use to celebrate a
special milestone, or to help myself recover after a very stressful time.
I took a different approach at the beginning of this year: I
began scheduling massage therapy sessions every other week, for a couple of
reasons. I have a chronic neck and shoulder problem that has been bothering me
since I was about 14 years old. I had become accustomed to a constant, low
level of pain in my right shoulder and neck. Sometimes the shoulder would flare
up so badly that I could actually hear the muscles in my neck squeaking when I
turned my head.
I also had a pretty severe back spasm around New Year’s.
That was the third time this particular muscle group had acted up on me. It
wasn’t the worst episode: the first time, it affected me for about six weeks,
even affecting my ability to work. This most recent time wasn’t nearly as bad, but it made
me realize that I was turning into a five-foot-five stress ball.
I exercise a lot, but I also spend a lot of time writing on
my laptop with generally poor posture. I juggle a few different jobs. I have
three kids, a dog, a cat and a husband. I am a perfectionist. I have a low
tolerance for disorder. I feel a compulsion to please everyone else around me.
In other words, I am very susceptible to stress.
It was the low-back flare-up and my neck that brought me in
for massage therapy at the beginning of this year. And although I had done
massage before, I never particularly cared which therapist I saw, or where. But
in this particular case, I happened to get matched up with a therapist who had
a background in fitness and personal training, and was very skilled at
interpreting the root causes of the muscle problems I was having. As with a
hair stylist, dentist, doctor or manicurist, feeling comfortable with your
massage therapist and respecting their level of expertise enhances the experience
and makes you want to come back.
For the first time, I started working with the same person
regularly, which produced many surprising benefits. For one thing, I began to
feel safe and comfortable. Without having to worry about what they were going
to do next, I could relax and allow my brain to unplug for a while.
The therapist also got familiar with some of my problem
areas, and was able to quickly hone in on trouble spots. For example, we
discovered that my piriformis muscle is a huge trouble-maker in my low back,
and that my lack of upper-body strength was contributing to my neck and
shoulder problems. Armed with that knowledge, the therapist suggested a series
of exercises and stretches to help strengthen the weak spots and counteract the
tight ones. I am working on those, but this is not a quick fix. It took several
decades of postural mistakes to cause these problems, and they won’t go away
overnight.
I have been working with the same therapist for about three
months now. For the first time in recent memory, my right shoulder feels generally
pain-free. It still flares up from time to time, but I haven’t heard the
muscles squeak for many weeks.
We had a couple of memorable breakthroughs, like the day my
right shoulder finally released and it seemed like a thousand pounds of
pressure dropped out of my jaw. I have always been a tooth-grinder, but I never
knew before that day that my tooth-grinding was connected to my shoulder pain.
Once the shoulder released, the tooth-grinding decreased. It’s been about a
month since I woke myself up with the sound of my upper and lower jaws
compressing together so tightly that you could mistake them for a glacier
moving across land.
We’ve done some excellent work on the right pirifomis as
well, and although it is still a bit of a nag, I cannot remember ever feeling
so good in my running stride as I do right now. I feel like a child when I
run—both legs feel loose and light. I have a longer stride, and it is rare for
me to feel the stinging burn in my hip and hamstring that used to be normal
after a mile or two.
All the physical benefits are wonderful, and well worth the
investment of time and money, but the psychological benefits are something else
entirely, and the subject of another blog.
This blog has been about my personal experience with massage
therapy, but if you are interested in reading more general information about
massage benefits, check out the following resources:
North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy: NAJSPT
The Sports Physical Therapy Section of the American Physical
Therapy Association
The Mayo Clinic. Massage: Get in touch with its many
benefits
USA Today, The Benefits of Massage Therapy
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