Just popping in to add my example in Captain Dummy talk. I was getting extreme tightness and horrible spasms in my neck and upper back. You would think that those muscles were too tight, right? Well it turns out they were very loose and flabby, while the muscles in front, like my pecs, were really tight and short. Evidently they (along with my slouchy posture) pulled so much on the weak muscles in back, that they’d stretch to the failure point, and snap back in a spasm. So my therapy involves strengthening my back, while stretching my pecs. Never what I would have asked a massage therapist to do, in my ignorance.
A young lady I work with is learning to be a massage therapist; she takes her final exam next week. Yesterday she suddenly began to massage my shoulders, neck, back and arms. I was sitting at the time and I wasn’t expecting her attentions. After ten minutes or so, she stopped and said that was the end of the sample—she expects to have her license in two weeks and will begin doing out call work. I told her I wanted her business card as soon as she gets them.
It was the first time I’ve ever been under the hands of a professional massage therapist. I hope it won’t be the last.
I have to confess I had sexual feelings and I’m an old guy with ED.
Unauthorized Cinnamon I was learning about Trigger Points and Referral pain today. Not only are there structural concerns about how pain gets transferred around your body to other areas, but there are also neurological reasons too depending on where the nerves affected are routed. If the affected area goes back in through the cervical region it can have referral pain in something else that is innervated by the cervical reason. This is why you can have a feeling in your left arm if you are having a heart attack.
As part of my program I am also getting Shiatsu which is an Eastern Modality. It’s really interesting to study the meridians which from a point of ignorance since like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but then when you study neurology after hearing that the kidneys help control the heart, you find out that there is a neurological basis too because the kidneys help regulate Blood Pressure and control the Adrenal Gland which of course can speed up your heart rate. It’s all very fascinating how the body works as a whole system. I think after I finish my degree and get some work under my belt I am going to get my Masters in Eastern Medicine. It’s absolutely fascinating to me.
LouisB Well, I hope that it works out well for you. Massage Therapy is a great way to maintain health and is good for treating pathologies related to the muscles and joints. Since starting the program I have heard so many anecdotes about how someone couldn’t get relief from an Osteopath but a massage therapist solved their problem in a few sessions.
All of this information about one’s muscles being too short, too loose, too tight–does one get that from a massage therapist? Or from a chiropractor? Or what? This is the kind of information that one would really like to get from a doctor, but never does.
I got mine from my chiropractor, who explained carefully - in non-hippydippy engineering terms - how the muscular and skeletal system was all connected - something of which I was aware in general terms, of course, but had never really considered the preactical consequences - and so my stride and posture was putting stress on my lower back, which in turn caused my neck and shoulders to attempt to compensate by tensing up to take the strain, which in turn was tightening up my maxillary muscles and causing headaches.
I gotta admit, I was sceptical as all hell when I went, expecting mumbo-jumbo about “energy points”, but his explanation - and solution, involving stretching and relaxation exercises - was as rational as hell: I’d done the rounds of doctors for some crippling headaches, who couldn’t do much but advise me to cut out coffee, alcohol and cigarettes and give me painkillers, and I was on the verge of an MRI scan to see if I had a tumour, but the chiro, who was really a last resort, fixed me up in half a dozen sessions and a programme of exercises and stretches to counteract the problems. The headaches went away, and 20 minutes of stretches and breathing twice a day meant that the long term back problems, which I’d pretty much resigned myself to, have never really recurred.
It’s really not that difficult actually, it’s just knowing the muscles and their average range of motion. You move the limb so that you reach the end of it’s tissue end feel. The basic categories of end feels are ‘Bone to Bone’, Tissue Stretch and Soft Tissue Approximation. You know when you feel the end and you don’t need to push further really. A person trained in Swedish Massage is trained specifically in the muscles as a machine, it is an entirely western modality. I for instance have taken Anatomy and Physiology I - Skeletal System, Myology and Kinesiology, I am currently taking Neurology and will have another Anatomy and Physiology II - Organs and internal systems. Next semester I’ll be into Pathology and such. Also, we have multiple days of hands on classes where you are with an instructor guiding you through the process of moving the joints. Sure, a Doctor can do the same thing for you, but it’s really not terribly difficult to assess. You can even use a Goniometer to check degrees if you like. This is basically a Protractor devised specifically for the purpose of checking joints. One method is to use a plumb line to measure a straight posture also. It’s a lot of practical common sense stuff. A good personal trainer would know all this stuff too, or any Physical Therapist.
I got mine from my physical therapist, who is a bona fide medical professional with more specialized training in the subject than your average GP. IIRC, he said he did three semesters of gross anatomy.
IMHO, some chiropractors study reality-based medicine, and are kind of like lay physical therapists. However, some are total quacks who believe adjustment can fix everything from cancer to the common cold. The problem is that chiropractic is historically based on totally unscientific ideas. So if you get someone with actual medical knowledge, it’s pretty much coincidence.
Likewise, massage therapists have real training, but I’ve noticed an inordinate number practice Reiki, therapeutic touch, and other mumbo jumbo that makes their pronouncements suspect.
I went to a massage therapist monthly for a while. He was expensive but I had some bad neck and shoulder pain. I kind of stopped going because of the money but also because the extremely pleasant arousal was leading me to have a serious crush on the poor guy. I am very sensitive to touch and when someone’s doing it right, well…
I don’t quite see what he could have done in the situation. He never made me feel uncomfortable about the arousal per se, but he was just the slightest tiny bit flirty in his mannerisms and in general liked to chat and have a rapport, and I think I would have done way better without that. Plus he was extremely physically fit and attractive so… try not to be a friendly hottie? Or in other words, watch your boundaries? That’s kind of generic advice to a new massage therapist, I’d assume a sensible person would already know that/have learned that.
Quick edit to digress - as an experience it was actually pretty interesting and made me think of the novels of Collette, with fat pampered women and pretty young men. It was definitely a lot different dynamic from the rest of my life experiences. Just not a particularly smart one in the long term.
My massage training is the same as what a premed student would get for the same discipline. I get less pathology and cytology things like that, but there are like 5 semesters of Anatomy, plus hands on stuff like “Assessment” which is muscle lengths and doing the practical stretches and tests and things like that.
This is only partially true. Yes chiropractic was originally based off of energy work, but my old chiropractor and a really good friend of mine who is a chiropractor know the anatomy extremely well. I think you might be working with an outdated preconception, or it’s just more competitive here in the Northeast. My friend doesn’t at all think that Chiropractic solves everything.
I have my first level reiki, and while I don’t think it’s total quackery because I have experienced genuine help from receiving reiki as well as doing a lot of chi work from Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and Shiatsu. It’s completely unscientific and anyone can claim to practice reiki, but that bears no relevance to whether or not they were able to pass their neurology class or whatever. Using whether or not someone does energy work which you think is quackery as a judge is a mistake. My Swedish I teacher does Reiki, but when he was teaching Swedish he was talking about origins and insertions for muscles, and things like that. My neurology teacher relates the eastern modalities to the nervous system for us, shows us where correspondences are and such. One of the problems with the east/west divide is that the modalities are built on different foundations, but that doesn’t make the eastern ‘chi’ model less effective. Chinese acupuncture and herbalism is based totally off of chi balancing and yet a lot of it can be justified in western medical terminology by someone who knows what they are talking about.
That being said, check credentials, it’s very important. In some states such as Pennsylvania you need only a few days of training to become a massage therapist. My course in New York is 1200 hours. I am doing 20 hours a week for 15 weeks over 4 semesters. My friend is getting his masters in Chinese medicine, and he is getting real biology classes, real biochem, anatomy, etc… To get the accreditation the school has to pass a certain muster, they have to make sure to hit specific points to qualify as a real medical degree.
When I graduate I will have an associates in Massage Therapy, which is a medical degree, where I will be able to accept insurance and all that. New York has the most strenuous standards in the nation.
Idlewild That’s an interesting story. I tend to be a highly sexual person in general but have learned to be very reserved, sometimes to the point of being cold as an adjustment. I’m figuring out how to synthesize the boundaries. I just wanted to hear some lay opinions from a client’s perspective as to how they would want it handled, because I can imagine it would be pretty embarassing for your therapist to say something akin to:
“I see you’ve got a hardon, that’s a normal response of the sympathetic nervous system to certain stimuli.” - more tactfully than that obviously. I would be embarassed. I have certainly been aroused by massages, but not gotten a hardon thankfully, even with the totally unprofessional asian ladies who rub their crotches up against you.
mswas, I’m starting to wonder about you. You were getting a massage from a totally unprofessional Asian lady who is rubbing her crotch up against you, and you were glad you didn’t get a hard on?
You’re getting training as a massage therapist and you’d be embarrassed by a perfectly natural physical reaction? I think you need to get over it, that’s the kind of thinking that will telegraph to your clients and make them much more uncomfortable than they need to be.
I can’t read asian women for shit. It’s hard to tell how much intention there is versus how much random bumping there is, or whether it’s appropriate to acknowledge it.
Well, there is the fact that it’s not ONLY neurological, when you get aroused. There is the whole, “it’s not that I am attracted to you, it’s just a reaction of my sympathetic nervous system.” I’m relearning my boundaries in regards to these issues via the training as a massage therapist, getting more in tune with my body as a whole. It’s the main reason I went this route, to be honest. However, if I am giving someone a massage I’m not that concerned about getting a hardon, so it’s not that relevant within that context.
Considering how common this is, it might be less weird to warn guys before the massage that it happens to some guys and that it is nothing to be embarrassed about rather than drawing any attention to it AFTER it happens to the guy. I’m not a dude, but I think if I were and it happened, it would be less awkward for me if the massage therapist just pretended not to notice.
My thesis advisor had a similar problem: he’d been working his pecs and biceps a lot while not paying attention to triceps, trapezes etc; the gym monitors (students in Phys Ed, usually) had told him he was doing things wrong but he’d snarked at them and gone on. At one point his shoulders decided to file for divorce… the monitors told him he wasn’t allowed in the gym for at least three months and to go to the doctor yesterday.
Many of my mother’s headaches get solved by a lower-back-rub, and I’m not even a proper masseuse. Often when I give her a massage, the area she points to is very tense but the surrounding areas aren’t much better, so I extend the area until I can’t find anything remotely resembling tension knots. Neckrubs have ended becoming full-body.
I’ve never had a massage. Mostly because I am exceedingly touch responsive. I can’t even get pedicures. It is all I can do to get hair cuts and my nails done.
So I guess I’m the only one that reads the thread title as “Arousan in Professional Marraige”?