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Tag Archive for: chronic pain

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Healthy Living, Massage, Natural Remedies, Pain Relief

Need to focus on self care?

Massage therapist providing massage to shoulder of client

This year is a great year to start: partner with your bodywork therapist to achieve results.

Do you need to focus on self care more this year? Most of us do.

I meet a fair amount of people who think of massage and bodywork as a luxury, something to treat oneself to on special occasions. While it is certainly true that massage feels wonderful and is a great way to celebrate, it seems these people are missing out on a huge opportunity to improve their overall daily health. When people like this come into our practice, we can usually see lots of benefits to regular bodywork that they would experience if they allowed themselves to take care of their bodies. And even if they agree it’s a good idea to do it more regularly, we often won’t see them again for months.

Self-care is important — it is not a luxury at all! We all know to put on our own oxygen mask first in the very unlikely event that our airplane loses cabin pressure, but not all of us know how to take care of our own body, mind and soul. Massage and bodywork address all three of those, and it feels good too! Granted, sometimes bodywork doesn’t feel great if we have super tight or knotted areas, or areas that have been causing pain in the body for some time. Sometimes it does need to feel worse before it feels better. But that doesn’t mean that when massage feels wonderful that it has no benefits; it absolutely does.

We depend on and expect our bodies to carry us from one activity to the next, and we often have such expectations without giving it the appropriate care. It’s no wonder so many people have aches and pains, since bodies are contracting during exercise and fast-paced living, yet not very often getting stretched, soothed, or returned to their elongated state filled with wonderful oxygen. So even an average person who has no complaints can absolutely benefit from massage. How many things in life do we only realize how much we need after we experience it? That seems to be the human condition. 

Some physical issues can be resolved quickly and efficiently with bodywork, but others are more complex and deeper within. Those in this category often know they need bodywork to address an issue, and they expect if they just keep showing up to regular massage appointments then their issues will magically be resolved without any effort on their part. While massage or other bodywork is a great and appropriate thing to do for a great many chronic conditions, it is only part of the equation and only goes so far.

The massage recipient bears the responsibility to fill that gap and to partner with the therapist to really see some fantastic results. Filling the gap can be done with emotional or spiritual healing in addition to bodywork, or even by changing some regular habits that are creating the very pattern we are trying to change. The bodyworker gets an hour with someone every few weeks, and those habits get a significant more amount of time.

Personally, I have found that true healing is multilayered. Pain in the body can be as simple as surface level, but chronic issues usually have an emotional, energetic and spiritual component. Each person on the journey of healing needs to seek healing on all these layers. And very importantly, to communicate with the therapist before, during and after sessions about what is working and not working, what is being felt and experienced, or anything else that feels relevant.

Your therapist wants your feedback! Many people feel too shy to say that something isn’t working, but this is the exact type of thing we need to know to do our job properly. A therapist can often read signals the body gives, but a therapist can never know what a client is thinking, feeling or wanting without being told. The more input a therapist receives, the more efficient your therapy session will be.

Whether you are looking to massage and bodywork for relaxation, to heal an old injury or provide relief from chronic pain that affects your daily activities, it is vital that you see your relationship with your therapist as a partnership. Your therapist needs your input to get to the core of the issues that you want to resolve. Together, you can journey through the path of healing to the other side.

Will 2025 be the year you focus on self care and take better care of yourself? We certainly hope so, and that you’ll make massage part of that journey.

January 20, 2025/by Heidi
/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/renu-logo-print-high-res-1.png 0 0 Heidi /wp-content/uploads/2020/11/renu-logo-print-high-res-1.png Heidi2025-01-20 15:40:412025-01-20 15:39:45Need to focus on self care?
Massage

How Massage Relieves Chronic Pain

manual medical massage - releasing the fascia

manual medical massage – releasing the fascia

Chronic pain seems to be so prevalent these days. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, about 80 percent of adults experience low back pain at some point in their lives. Sometimes the pain goes away on its own, other times it lingers and becomes a chronic condition (defined as persisting for 12 weeks or longer), and many people have to deal with chronic pain for years (myself included!).

While there are many potential causes of the initial pain, it often can become a chronic condition because of the fascial restrictions that result from an injury. What is fascia? Fascia is the connective tissue in your body beneath the skin that attaches and stabilizes muscles and internal organs. There are several layers of fascia, which include your muscular and visceral tissues. It looks like a spider’s web or a sweater, and it is a continuous structure throughout your body, so everything is connected! 

Restrictions can occur in fascia from every day activities and the regular stressors we all experience, which usually are easily worked out with exercise, stretching, yoga and regular bodywork. All of these provide a very healthy maintenance system for your musculoskeletal system, and we all probably need to take better care of our bodies.

Restrictions will absolutely occur after any kind of trauma or injury, and these are the kinds of protections that your fascial system tends to hold on to in an effort to guard against repeated injury. This is especially common with low back pain — there could be nothing structurally wrong in a low back, but tightness in the surrounding muscles or fascia will result in chronic pain anyway. Massage is a great way to alleviate that pain. How?

It takes time to retrain the fascial system to not behave defensively and let the body return to its normal activities; it’s as if your fascia has a memory of the injuring trauma and goes into protective mode. Then it likes to stay in that mode. Protective mode tends to mean tightness and being “on guard,” which then promotes more adhesions or other restrictions in the tissue, which limits blood flow and oxygen, which results in pain.  Massage retrains that system over time, because our muscles and most of our fascia are retrainable, which is great news!  

For chronic pain, it is important to work through the muscles and other fascia to release the adhesions and retrain those tissues. Exercises and stretching can be very helpful too, if you consult with a physical therapist or a personal trainer with experience in the issues you are experiencing. And of course if anything structural is a problem, then a chiropractor visit would be in order.

But before seeing all kinds of specialists, often it’s enough to just get some regular massage and bodywork from a licensed massage or bodyworker therapist. This can be enough to alleviate the restrictions and let the muscles both get to know and also embrace a new normal. Sometimes the fascial restrictions can also contribute to a structural misalignment because the muscles are so used to being in an incorrect position, and they prefer to stay how they are.

Your massage therapist is also able to detect when massage alone isn’t doing the job and will recommend other avenues to explore. So before you see that chiropractor, do your body a favor and get a massage first! 

September 3, 2024/by Heidi
/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/renu-logo-print-high-res-1.png 0 0 Heidi /wp-content/uploads/2020/11/renu-logo-print-high-res-1.png Heidi2024-09-03 14:45:162024-09-03 14:43:45How Massage Relieves Chronic Pain
Healthy Living, Natural Remedies, Reiki

How Reiki is helping my chronic pain

Reiki Acupressure CranialAs a bodyworker and certified cupping therapist, I am familiar with chronic pain. I’ve also experienced a significant amount of chronic pain personally over the years, which has led me to the work I do. Since becoming a therapist, I’ve been slowly unraveling what has built up in me all these years, including injuries, internalized stress, and the resulting emotional connections to those things. I learned in studying the body that emotions stay in our tissues, associated with the originating event that caused trauma or stress, until it is released through various forms of bodywork that I have been trained in. What I didn’t fully realize was how helpful Reiki can be in moving that process along and clearing up energetic blockages that keep the body in its same patterns of chronic pain.

I’ve worked with multiple chiropractors and physical therapists over the years, and I’ve had regular massage for the last decade both to keep my back pain in check and also because I can see the positive changes it has made for the rest of my body. After a herniated disc and all the melodrama associated with that for a good portion of a year, I have worked diligently and consistently to get my movement back so I can do the activities I so enjoy. Yet that chronic stiffness and pain still linger — even after my sacrum is back where it’s supposed to be, and the surrounding low back tissue feels soft and movable like it’s supposed to. There doesn’t seem to be any physical cause for the pain and stiffness that lingers and resurfaces from time to time. My current chiropractor suggested Reiki or another type of energy work as the next step. I had not considered this! I have two Reiki practitioners at my business, and my acupuncturist also does Reiki along with other energetic and spiritual work. It was high time I gave it a try.

I’ve been seeing one of the practitioners who works with me, and I was amazed how much I felt during the first session. Reiki works with your chakras and your energetic forces to help bring balance and healing on an energetic and spiritual level. I could literally feel energy move through my body, and my practitioner could see and feel various things happening on an energetic level as well. (Some practitioners are gifted with that, and I am fortunate to be working with one!) I have felt like I am purging deep emotions that have been buried a long time, and I am feeling lighter, more energetic, and yes, my back pain and stiffness are improving. I am going to stick with this a while. Stay tuned for another article after I feel the journey is complete! I knew several of my chakras needed work, but I am pleasantly surprised to find yet another layer of healing that can happen with the types of chronic pain issues I see so frequently with massage clients.

The body is a wondrous and complex system; we truly need to heal not just the body, but also the mind and the spirit if we want to experience complete and full healing. If there has been any physical or emotional trauma that has resulted in any kind of chronic pain over the years and you are ready to let it go, perhaps Reiki is something that can help. I’ve been very much enjoying the beginning of my journey and am so happy I was directed that way.

May 14, 2015/by Heidi
/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/renu-logo-print-high-res-1.png 0 0 Heidi /wp-content/uploads/2020/11/renu-logo-print-high-res-1.png Heidi2015-05-14 15:57:022015-11-20 17:28:46How Reiki is helping my chronic pain

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