Just Lucky, I Guess

                       

 Sometimes during a massage a client will ask me how I got into the business of doing massages. I don’t really like to take that question seriously. I have a serious answer, but I don’t like to share it. I’d rather say that it just happened that I noticed one day that I had a knack for massage, or if the client is getting a deep tissue massage I’ll say that the Inquisition wasn’t hiring so massage seemed like the next best thing.

         

Flippancy isn’t really an answer, though, and I would like to say what happened, except it might just be a bit too much like real life, a bit bumpy and all the seams showing.

             

How did I get into massage? It was the only thing that helped me.

             

I was working at a large metropolitan newspaper, no not that one, and I was having more and more frequent migraines, shoulder pain and neck problems. After years of cradling the phone in my neck, running around on deadlines and parachuting into tense situations, I did not feel very good.

            

Mostly I was stiff, but I had trouble with weakness in my hands, pain running from my neck down to my hands, and a definite sense that the longer I stayed swirling in the news vortex the less good I would feel.

            

I tried different types of therapy, mostly physical therapy, and I would feel a little better for a while and then back to daily pain. Lucky for me, the symptoms were never bad enough to suggest surgery. At the time I didn’t know it, but that was dodging a big-caliber bullet.

             

One time at physical therapy I was assigned to a therapist who was doing trigger point therapy. I had no idea what she was doing, but after a few minutes of pushing on my neck, I felt a lot better. It seemed like it was the only thing that worked very well. At me next appointment I asked her to do the treatment again. She told me that once treated, trigger points were gone and did not need to be done again.

             

As I did my exercises in the common room, exercises which I knew would make everything hurt again, I felt motivated to investigate what worked for me.

             

Being a journalist helped a lot. I really knew how to look things up in a library. I spent a few hours at the medical library and emerged with an idea for a new career. Not only did I understand a lot more about trigger points, I also understood why they were not being treated properly. Trigger point therapy requires warm-up massage strokes, experienced treatment followed by soothing massage and repetition over several sessions to break the pattern. It was all very hands-on and required focus and dedication. The kind of service massages therapists provided.

 
After a while, I gave up on p.t. and went for massages. My insurance and health savings account did not cover massages, but since they worked, I was happy to pay for them. Feeling good was important to me. 

Which leads me back to my other flip answer. When asked how I got into massage, sometimes I’ll rub my neck and say: “Just lucky, I guess.”