How long before I feel better?
When a person has been having pain or discomfort for an extended period of time due to a shortened muscle, fascial restrictions, an old injury that just keeps hurting, “knots” or many other soft tissue troubles that have become chronic, going to a Licensed Massage Therapist can be a great solution over pain meds or suffering. However, depending on how long you have been dealing with this condition, your body may have accepted this state as normal. If this is the case, it’s possible that during your first treatment we may be able to lessen or eliminate the pain only to have it return within hours or days after treatment. When this happens it’s important to return to your therapist quite soon for follow-up in order to retrain your body it’s new, more desirable state of normal. The time between sessions will become longer until eventually you return only for maintenance.
Although chronic conditions are not commonly resolved in a single session, with regular care by a knowledgeable and licensed Therapist, most can be managed quite successfully.
Will therapeutic massage help strengthen my immune system?
How surprised would you be to find out that a simple swedish massage can trigger measurable changes in your immune system and help you stay healthier during cold and flu season? Interestingly, researchers working with patients with compromised immune systems found that massage therapy improves how the system functions. Those same benefits translate to people seeking to fight off the common cold, flu and other seasonal illnesses. Stimulating circulation, therapeutic massage triggers measurable changes in the body’s immune and endocrine systems as well as regulating our autonomic nervous system activity. And as if that wasn’t great enough, studies also show a cumulative health benefit to repeated massage. So there really is a reason why the Mayo Clinic and Cedars Sinai recommend massage to be part of our regular health maintenance.
** Please note, through experience I have found that if you are already sick or starting to feel like you’re coming down with something (particularly if you haven’t had a massage in a while), a massage is NOT recommended. You may walk in feeling a little under the weather and trudge out feeling like you have full blown flu with the effects lasting several days. Wait until you are feeling better for your sake and for the sake of the therapist working with you.
Is “Tech Neck” (or Text neck) really a thing?
Technology is an amazing thing. We can do a lot with our hand held devices, so much more than just making a phone call. We can order from Amazon, listen to music, search the internet for why our head, neck and shoulders hurt so often. If you have done searches for something similar to that last example you may have stumbled across the term “Tech Neck”. It was coined by a Chiropractor here in the US to describe the pain many of us are starting to feel due to using our smart phones and tablets so often during the course of a day. The position we’re forced to put our bodies in while using them seem like they’re comfortable enough but are actually putting a lot of stress on muscles that weren’t meant to be held in those positions for extended periods of time. They’re awkward angles that are forcing certain muscles to lengthen too much and other muscles to shorten too much, then they remain that way because our bodies learn it as “normal”. The problem is, it’s not normal. So when we have to sit up straight in a chair, stand up and walk or even lay down in bed, our bodies want to recoil back to it’s newly learned position. This can cause headaches and migraines, neck aches with limited range of motion, pain in the arms, shoulder and back pain, or pain into the low back and hips. Even if we’re not feeling a terrific amount of pain, if we look at ourselves in the mirror in side view many of us notice that our shoulders rotate forward and in and maybe our neck and head are more comfortable hanging forward a little more than they should. What can you do about all of this??
So often therapeutic massage can help. A therapist will do a verbal and physical assessment, check your posture and range of motion, find where the pain is felt and trace it back to its origin then find a treatment that works for YOU.
Can you fix my bad posture?
Maybe, but it depends on what’s causing it. Often times poor posture is caused by muscle imbalance and there are a few possible muscular culprits when we talk about poor posture. If this is the case then chances are good that therapeutic massage can help. If your poor posture is caused by a structural (bone) issue I can't fix that BUT I may be able to lessen the pain and discomfort it's causing.
Feel free to text me with any questions you have.
623-680-9466
More questions coming soon.