Medical Massage for chronic pain and tension

Physical demands, inactivity, and injury

Chronic pain and tension can be caused by physical demands and stresses to the body. When you engage in repetitive motions in sports or in work, you might place excess demand on specific structures of the body. If they don't get an adequate chance to rest and heal, they can become painful and uncomfortable. Especially if you have altered movement that doesn't allow the physical demands to be shared equally around the body, requiring certain muscles and structures to do more than their fair share of work. Injuries new and old can cause this kind of altered movement, or it can be the result of stress, fatigue, or other challenges.

This same process happens with inactivity too. Sitting, standing, or even laying in one place still requires the body to support itself and can result in similar over-working of specific muscles.
Many of my clients with chronic pain have been able to get complete relief from this kind of pain in just a few sessions. With attentive work and a little self-care on their part, they are often able to minimize or eliminate this kind of discomfort entirely. For those that continue to have issues, often a monthly massage resets them to a happy baseline.

Systemic Causes (Autoimmune, fatigue, stress...)

Chronic pain can have less obvious, less specific causes as well. Conditions that challenge the body's ability to create and use energy, process waste products, coordinate movement, and otherwise maintain homeostasis can cause all kinds of problems, including chronic discomfort. This can include conditions like fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndrome, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, system wide inflammation, among many others.

Massage can be a major part of managing discomfort with these conditions even though it generally won't cure or affect the underlying condition directly. In some cases it can help support the healing process and make it easier for people to pursue treatment for the underlying condition. Many of my own clients place a high value on massage as part of their health care regimen because it makes living with these conditions a little more bearable and can reduce reliance on pharmaceutical pain management.

Medical massage is perfect for:

When chronic pain and tension is the result of specific physical activity/inactivity, injury, or surgery where the discomfort is felt in the soft tissues (muscles, tendons, skin, fascia) then it is likely to be helped with massage. This includes upper back, neck, and shoulder tension; lower back and sacrum pain or tension; tight muscles like hamstrings or hip flexors; tendonitis like golfer/tennis elbow; and many more instances of myofascial pain and tension. It can also be pain and tightness felt in the area and structures surrounding a site of injury or surgery - new or old.

There are many reasons why these conditions of discomfort can arise in the body: overuse or lack of rest for muscles, fibrotic (scar) tissue, underuse of muscles, lack of blood supply to muscles, irritation of nerves, and sensitivity in the central nervous system from stress. Massage works so well for these conditions because it soothes and calms the irritated nerves and tissue, brings increased and specific awareness of target areas to your nervous system, interrupts patterns of pain and altered movement, and stimulates the healing process at sites of injury/irritation. All of this helps bring immediate relief and make changes that prevent or reduce the recurrence of your discomfort in the long term.

Medical massage won't fix (but might help):

When discomfort arises from serious damage to the body or permanent changes to structure, treatment is usually more complicated and massage alone likely won't correct the cause of your pain or tension. This is also true of chronic pain originating form systemic causes like fibromyalgia, other autoimmune disorders, and other diseases that stress the entire system.

However, for many of these conditions and situations, massage can still provide much needed relief. In some instances massage can even support other treatments and encourage the healing process. I have many clients with chronic pain resulting from systemic disease processes who find massage therapy incredibly helpful in getting relief and improving quality of life.

How can I tell if massage will help me specifically?

Signs that massage is likely to help you

If stretching and massaging yourself bring relief, even if it goes away immediately, then a medical massage session might help. In the context of a massage therapy session, we should be able to get that relief in a more targeted, systematic way. Likewise, if you find different movements and different positions will either aggravate or relieve your discomfort, then massage is probably worth a try. This often indicates that whatever is causing your discomfort is something that can be changed, and we can take various approaches to make a change that lasts.

This is not a guarantee, but a very good sign and starting point. If there is no concern of serious injury or disease that requires professional medical attention, then massage might be a good next step for you. It is always a good idea to seek evaluation and clearance from your physician before getting a massage if you suspect anything serious.

What to do if you're unsure

Give it a try, unless there is a clearly better alternative or risk of negative effects.
Sometimes it is less obvious wether or not you will benefit from massage. In these cases I suggest weighing your options, talking with a doctor, talking with me and discussing the possible benefits and risk to decide if you should give massage a try and see if it helps. My hope for you is to find something that helps, not to waste your time or distract you from doing more important things.

With massage it is usually easy to tell if it is going to be helpful after a single session. It might not solve the problem right away, but you will feel that your therapist connected with a solution in a meaningful way. There are very few risks of massage when performed by a properly trained professional. It also cost relatively little time and money compared to invasive surgeries, drug therapies, and other medical treatments. So, I recommend giving it a try if you can. I've had many clients surprised at how much massage was able to help when nothing else did.