Mary Ann had a painful upper back with muscles spasming between her shoulder blade and spine. It came on gradually and just kept getting worse.
Finally Mary Ann called me and said the pain in her upper back was bad. She had been to a chiropractor three times and it didn’t help.
She called me because I’ve been a neuromuscular massage therapist for a very long time.
My specialty is treating the causes of muscle pain. And that’s what I like to share with you. Why?
Because when you can get rid of the cause, your pain will go away. (And sometimes there is more than one cause.)
Massage therapy can help get rid of the cause (BUT depending on the therapist’s training.)
When Mary Ann got on the massage treatment table and placed her face in the face cradle I could actually see that one side of her back was enlarged. Usually you cannot see a spasm although you may be able to feel it but this one was a doozy. A lot of muscles were involved!
There was a lot of tenderness under the muscle swelling. The tight muscles felt like banjo strings under my fingers.
I started assessing her back and neck with my hands. I asked Mary Ann to let me know what areas hurt. I decided to “surround the dragon.”
The dragon is the pain.
She told me she had tried a new twisting motion during a certain activity that she enjoys. The muscles on either side of your waist are the twisting-tilting muscles so I checked them.
On the same side as her upper back spasm, those waist muscles were tight and tender so I released them with finger pressure.
You see, everything on your body is attached. Tight muscles somewhere else can pull on another area and cause pain or spasm.
I treated the muscles on both sides of her spine and the upper shoulders. I also addressed the shoulder blade muscles on the opposite side of her pain (under the arm pit.) I worked on the knotty area (the muscle spasm) and I wrapped up treatment with the muscles on the front, upper chest, arm and breastbone.
I showed Mary Ann some simple movements to strengthen the muscles of her back and how to improve her posture.
She felt much better an hour after she arrived.
If someone just blasts away on your knot there is a really good chance that it won’t help at all.
But by “surrounding the dragon” and also treating the probable causes you have a good chance of taming that “dragon.”
And if you haven’t been there yet, I’d like to invite you to visit Knots In Your Back (<– click here) to learn more about the simple program I’ve created to help you get rid of the miserable muscle knots and pain in your upper back–naturally and forever.
