Muscularskeletal Pain and Deep Tissue Massage

Muscularskeletal pain and myofascial pain are experienced locally in an affected area and sometimes distally from the source of your pain. This referred pain pattern can be experienced through the fascial network, trigger points or nerve impingement. The majority of these kinds of pain conditions throughout your body are the result of muscular imbalance due to poor posture, repetitive movements and compensatory patterns of movement from old injuries and scar tissue.
The aim of therapeutic deep tissue massage is to assess your posture and movements to determine your unique pattern of imbalances in your musculoskeletal-fascial system and to understand why this is the case. Treatment focuses on soft tissue release which frees and lengthens short and tight muscles and frees and shortens overstretched, painful, weak and inhibited muscles, as well as breaking down any scar tissue.
Once this is achieved, we focus on making you aware of your unique holding pattern and the reasons for it, like daily repetitive movements or old injuries and help you to rebalance your body. We demonstrate and recommend appropriate stretches and strength work and occasionally refer you to a movement educator to work more specifically on this area.
Repetitive movements and holding patterns build up over time. One we regularly see is hunched shoulders and a forward head posture from long hours at a computer. This often leads to upper back pain, neck and shoulder pain, headaches, thoracic outlet syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome, headaches and migraines. Sometimes it affects the alignment of cervical vertebra and puts undue pressure on disks, leading to move severe conditions.
Occasionally, holding patterns are a left over from a previous injury, when weight had to be distributed away from an injured area for example. If this was not corrected at the time, this compensation pattern can continue and cause problems for you further down the line, as undue pressure is put through your supporting body parts. Equally, if an injury is not allowed to heal properly and helped to return to normal function, it can leave you with a pattern of weakness and a susceptibility to future re-injury.
Scar tissue from surgery or injury causes a unique set of issues. After injury, with proper rehabilitation, scar tissue can help restore strength and function but your body prioritizes repair over function. This means, left to its own devises, your body lays scar tissue in a multi-directional organisation, leaving a weak spot especially in muscle/tendon/ligament tissues. When aligned with the muscle/tendon/ligament tissue, scar tissue can create a strong link in the injured area that is unlikely to be re-injured.
Scar tissue adheres to surrounding tissue in an attempt to stabilize the injured area. Often this starts to cause a local pull, especially noticeable after abdominal surgery. The local pull can spread and your overall posture can be affected. Breaking down and realignment of this scar tissue is needed to allow your posture to return to normal and so reduce musculoskeletal pain in your overstretched, weakened and inhibited muscle groups.
Hands on massage and body work goes a long way towards helping reduce musculoskeletal pain but it works best in conjunction with re-training of your postural and movement habits. Because of that, we spend a significant amount of your treatment time re-educating you on this and working closely with specialized movement educators.