Massage Therapy Notes
(A note to my fellow massage therapist)
Recently, I read the articles in my latest monthly massage magazine with some excitement. The issue was focusing on pain and featured many of the leading authorities in the field of bodywork. I came away from the articles with a bit of frustration. Many of the people were talking about the complexity of the issue. The mysteriousness of why people get pain issues with their bodies. I have been working the last few years in the hotel industry where I don’t necessarily get to see people over and over but I do get to get my hands on a good number of new bodies.
I have come up with a simple approach to pain. First, I don’t think we should talk about it too much without a body in front of us. I like to keep things simple. When you talk about a fictional person and their pain manifestations, yes it can seem mysterious. But show me the person and very rarely can I not point to the area of their body which is contributing to the pain.
At the risk of over-simplyfying this subject I am going to try and make things a bit easier to see. When we work on people, go in and out of assessment mode. Try to focus your assessment on four categories.
1- overall resting muscle tone of the person
2- overall flexibility of the person
3- tight areas
4- structure
If you bring me someone who is having a pain manifestation that is not related to what I have found during my assessment you will really surprise me. Rarely is this the case. I think the reason so many therapists and clients are confused and fuzzy about pain is no one has really educated them about the power of assessment. Therapists are bombarded with these scientifically written articles that reference this study and this study, and in time, they come away more confused than they were to begin with. An inferiority complex develops within the therapist and instead of thinking of trying to solve the riddles of the universe themselves, they defer to these people who are writing these articles and doing this elaborate research.
We are coming out of the dark ages as far as pain is concerned. Many massage therapist will be making hands on discoveries that will be far more valuable than all of the studies, theories and research. I guess what I am trying to say is…..let’s not over-think this problem. I am for research, but let some of us with our hands on people come up with some of the research studies.
And keep it simple for now. Where are the studies that talk about average muscle tone of a person as it relates to pain. Where are the studies which talk about the flexibility of a person and how that influences pain. There are some really obvious things that I have been seeing on my table that are not being talked about by our so called pain experts.
The most obvious thing that no one is talking about is average resting muscle tone of a person.
Every person that shows up on a massage table will fall into a 1–5 category of resting muscle tone. The ones are the soft bodies, the twos are soft but not as soft as ones. The threes are in the middle. The fours are hard but not as hard as fives. The fives are the ones with the hardest bodies. I wish I knew how many massage therapist would agree with me on this. I’ve polled therapists I work with and no one is following me. Is it just me, or do you think that we should give clients a tone number if they would like one? First we have to agree on this that people do fall into 1 thru 5 of a scale.
Now once you begin to see that people do in fact fall into somewhere in our scale you have to ask yourself the following questions….. “Why are some people harder than others?” , and, “why does it matter if they are hard or soft?” The people who are on the hard end of the scale are holding stress in their bodies. If you talk with them during or after the massage and ask the right questions you will see these are the most stressed people…..working the most hours, a lot of responsibility, emotional stress perhaps. It matters that they are hard because…..and here is where some of the pain mystery goes away…..hard bodies usually have more pain issues related to them.
Once you have determined that the hard bodies do in fact generally have more aches and pains than our soft bodies you have to wonder how you can help the hard bodies become softer.
I’m still new to this but the obvious way to soften muscles is to do cardio workouts daily.
The soft bodies I see are usually runners, sometimes yoga people and almost always women.
That’s all I’m going to say for now. For more read my book, “Hard Body Pain and Massage Therapy Solutions.” I also encourage other massage therapist to write their books, do their research, and don’t be afraid to keep things simple.
Marty Kunsman is a Neuromuscular Massage Therapist
and graduate of the Academy of Somatic Healing Arts.
He is the author of two books, Hard Body Pain, Soft Body Bliss
and Hard Body Pain and Massage Therapy Solutions
Order his book at Amazon.com
