Spinal Massage

When I first learned massage, touching the spine was a no-go. We were learning Swedish and body mechanics, using long sweeping effleurages with neural glide returns. Those bumps in the center of the back were a no-hand zone.

As we filled in the air spaces between our ears with practice and more practice, the “danger” zones were opened up. Miracle of miracles, we could actually touch the spine, rub it, knead it, run up and down its lamina grooves looking for knots and twisted vertebra. Not only would that not kill people, it made them much better faster.

I have here and there taken a good spine class, such as Erik Dalton’s Myoskeletal Alignment, and my respect and fascination for the spinal massage has grown. There is a tapping massage for the spine, a lymphatic spinal massage, a Thai yogic spinal massage, etc.

Admittedly, I have a secret. When I was clunking around in my overshoes as a newbie therapist, I could not shake the idea that the spine had a lot to do with energy and fatigue. My first few massages for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome clients, I felt the need to pump up my spine skills. A good bit of what seemed stuck in these people seemed to go on at the spine.

But I had a sectional knowledge of the spine. Segments, dermatomes, myotomes, etc, but not a full-length spinal massage that I felt integrated all of the areas and balanced them. Thus my secret.

Looking for a full-length spinal massage I could use for total integration, I found a little book about massage for serious systemic diseases – based on hypnotic readings by Edgar Cayce. Yes, the fellow who would sleep and read people’s illnesses, recommend treatments and predict the future.

Cayce had a lot to say about massage for serious disease. He did so many intuitive readings over several decades that the techniques were collected in a book, “Edgar Cayce’s Massage Hydrotherapy & Healing Oils.”

The massages described therein tend to be small, gentle circles either side of the spine in directions to increase or decrease energy to different organs and zones. One is a massage from the brain to spine to the plexuses, a massage I find very helpful for chronic pain. Another draws with circle massage from the plexuses up the spine.

The styles of massage are food for thought, and quite handy when I feel a spinal massage is in order. Another way to see and heal the body.

Authored by Sue Peterson

Boot Camp

Super workouts like boot camp or “insane” sessions are all the rage, and I must say they have been great for the massage therapy business. Not so great for some people taking the workouts, of course, but great for the schedule book.

           

I have seen more rotator problems in the past few weeks, as people’s dedicated workouts have borne fruit. The big problems: rotator cuffs and lateral rotators. These are the little muscles who are supposed to be helping with aim and alignment and have unfortunately become the front line muscles in the insane workouts.

These little Napoleon’s  like to do it all – and my personal theory is that for people who are bound and determined to do these camp sessions, they are the first muscles to go over the falls in a barrel, so to speak. Mangling metaphors!

One nice lady had lost 15 pounds and found her thumb and forefinger tingling and numb. On both hands. Her workout included dead lifts, not something a 50-something should do without an ambulance nearby.

I’ve never been one to automatically think it is C6, as my friend therapists like to tell me, so I went hunting for the muscles. Right in the middle of the sideline massage, there they were. Both tereses and the infraspinatus felt like granite. The lazy lats were clear. After a good bit of gentle massage that included the serrate, her tingles had cleared out.

My other client example is a fellow who came in looking like he had never missed lifting a heavy barbell, kind of like some of us folks never miss a meal. Until he came in my theory that the boot camps were only frying us couch potatoes. Oh heck no.

These scalenes were down and out in Orange County. Oh my. They eventually relaxed and started to feel like muscles again. Thank heaven for trigger point massage. His big beef, though, was a definite sciatic-like pain in the glutes. Not true sciatic (has anyone ever seen one?) but referral from the over-powered quadratus lumborums.

So are all these workouts bad for people? I don’t think they are bad for everyone, just the unprepared. Folks always want to go for a challenge. To make up with intensity what they have lacked in habit. Just like all of us, I suppose, they expect any bad stuff to peel off in one massage, too.

Plus, I don’t see everyone who has been to booty camp, just the wounded. For some people, the ever-faithful rotators will try to do all the work the lats and glutes should be doing.

Instead of boot camp, perhaps it should be called the Massage Therapists Full Employment Camp.

Crickets and Desert Breezes

I have been blessed with a nice quiet office for massage therapy. My building has lots of mature trees in the yard, pleasant birdies and a very quiet accountant on the other side of my treatment room wall.

           

It has made me forget the days when people chattered right outside my room, clanged the pool gate or held aerobics classes next door.

            

Yup, I got spoiled.

So I have a new neighbor, a very nice and very smart chiropractor. He works fairly quietly, but in my office building, like many small office settings, the entire building shares a drop ceiling with ambient space above. Noise-conducting ambient space.

            

His office contractor put up some sound board on the window sill between out two rooms, and added some heft to the ceiling tiles. Yet there is still some pretty audible chatter that seems to float down from the ceiling now and then.

            

And there’s my eclectic schedule of interesting people. Joy of joys, last week one of my clients made a breakthrough with her neck pain. Her breakthrough involved yelling at the person who hit her car and progressed to telling off her father.

           

I hoped the chiropractor was not in his office. In the middle of the day. In the middle of the week. Uh-huh.

            

Well, this is the age of research. About 10 years ago was the last time I dealt with ambient noise problems in the massage room. We used a little fountain that provided enough trickle noise to mask little annoying noises. For very sensitive clients, I added a little sound machine that had birdsongs, crickets or ocean waves.

We were thinking of moving from our poolside room into the hotel. Then I was looking at ways to reduce the sound of giant washing machines coming through the floor from the hotel’s laundry. These machines would start slow, and build up a good whine like jet engines.

            

The hotel’s manager suggested I look at some sound solutions. I found some folks who were selling a drywall embedded with a liquid membrane to stop sound. They also had an acoustic caulk, outlet putty and fabric covers for the ceilings. For about the price of the space shuttle. One way.

            

We stayed in our poolside building, where the noise amounted to racquets hitting tennis balls, the occasional splash and crickets or trickling water.

            

Sound science has changed. Now companies need people to focus and concentrate on their work in a quiet environment. No more noisy cubicles that allow the boss an easy way to watch the drones. I found several companies providing fabric-covered walls, wall sculptures, special tiles and more. One even has acoustical paint! A lot of these solutions required construction, so I nixed them off the list.

Then I found a sub-specialty called “speech privacy.” This, it turns out, is exactly what I needed. A lot of medical care these days is provided in small exam rooms in big clinics. People can hear people through the walls, and even though they may not be able to hear everything, ambient voices can keep people from telling the doctor what is going on. Add to that HIPAA, the patient privacy act, requires people not be exposed to situations where they might be overheard.

On the advice of one of these sound companies, I’m investing in a $50 “white” noise machine. No more crickets.

Therapist Notes from the Passenger Seat of a Low-Slung Sports Car

Sometimes when I am square in between someone’s shoulder blades, I find myself thinking about how some of these knots got there.

Most are whiplashes and hard work – a traffic encounter followed by running a lathe at the machine shop, or writing some intensely detailed thesis. No fun involved.

Once in a while somebody has a different combination.

This gentleman had back pain. He told me he had a brand new promotion and lots of extra stress with it.

 

As I worked on massaging his muscles, he told me the one fun thing about the promotion.

He celebrated by getting the dream car. Not that I know that much about cars, he was clearly having a ball driving his super-charged, T-topped Corvette.

“Have any trouble getting in and out of the car?” I asked.

There followed a long, ugly pause. His back stiffened.

“Some.”

Never mess with a dream.

“Tell you what, I bet you will love that car even more when I show you a couple of tricks

on getting in and out that will help your back.”

“Um. OK.” He started to relax.

Should this client be driving a roller skate with jet packs? Heck no.

But oh heck, later, when I stood looking at the Cherry-red (never maroon) super-finish of this slinky corvette I had to say: “Some people have all the toys!”

“Want a ride?

“You bet!”

Hair flying in the wind, I had to wonder: How am I going to get out of this car?   

What these Suds?

When busy, delegate, and that’s what I did. The book has been awfully busy in my therapeutic massage practice, so it was getting difficult to get all of the laundry done. Honey volunteered to help out by making sure the sheets were cleaned, dried and folded.

Excellent idea, delegation. Takes the load off your shoulders, eh?

           

So I was about to toss some of my favorite organic, no-dye cotton sheets on the table when I saw it. This little milky way of grey dots floating across the bottom sheet. Dust? Heck no, these were part of the fabric. Stains! And no way to turn the sheet over...I turned them top to bottom instead.

            

After my client left, I put on the bright lights and looked at my sheets. Every single one had trails of grey dots, some big, some small, looking like a mad painter had flicked a loaded brush onto my sheets.

            

Luckily, I had enough color and patterned sheets to get by for the day. Later that night, at the house, I asked Honey, nicely, how doing the laundry was going.

            

I was reminded of the scene in “Young Frankenstein” when the young Dr. Frankenstein decided to quiz Igor. Cue the sad violin music…

 --

“Tell me where you got the brain, it’s ok. Just tell me where you got the brain for my creation….”

            Igor: “Hmmmn. Let’s see. Ahhhhhh, no that wasn’t it. Ahh, yes, yes it was Abby. Abby something. Yes, that’s it. Abbynormal.”

            --

“So how is the sheet biz going, honey?”

            “Fine. Do you like the way I fold them?”

“Seems very tidy to me…. Hey, have you tried anything different?”

            “I was wondering if you would notice….I found some great detergent on sale at Big Lots. It’s that same fragrance-free stuff you like for half the price.”

            Uh-huh.

            Half-price, eh? I held up one of the suspect grey sheets.

            “Oh dear,” Honey said.

Hey, it was a good idea, to cut costs. And hey, it was a bad idea not to tell me an let me find out on my own. And hey, if I can charge people enough to do a massage, I would like to have sheets that do not appear to have been through a mud run at the Marine base.

            

And fudge crumpets, I need to be able to delegate some things around here. Harumph.  Cue the sad violin music….

Where Did the Energy Go?

I confess when I started massaging I didn’t believe in energy at all. I thought it was some kind of weird ESP-y woo-woo that some folks in my classes pretended to sense as a way of seeking attention. Piffle, poppycock and humbug.

No one is more surprised at me than I to be writing about energy in massages. Trust me when I say massage will teach you things you need to know, even if they are ridiculous, absurd, fuzzy and woo-woo.

A good teacher once warned me about taking on clients’ energies, and I have to say as best as I tried to ignore that advice, I found out in the field it was very important.

My first knock on the head happened with a patient referred by a doctor for chronic neck pain and stress. The lady was a single mother who also had a severe auto-immune disease. She came in for her massage, talked the whole time and left saying she felt better. I felt like the side of my head had been hit by a brick. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I couldn’t fall asleep either.

I called one of my woo-woo buddies from massage school who was delighted and amused that I had discovered energy. After she stopped laughing, she gave me pointers on how to keep from getting sucked.

Later, I actually recoiled when one of my associates volunteered that she routinely sucked energy out of her clients and found it wonderful. (!) So sidestepping another’s vortex, even though I didn’t really believe in them, is good. It keeps you from contaminating your energy with another person’s.

Oddly enough, giving massages can boost your energy. Lots of people think the process should make the therapist tired, but I often find it has the opposite effect, giving me a little extra get-go especially when the massage seems to have gone well.

I don’t know how that all works, but as a massage therapist, I have noticed that I can see one person and feel tired and work all day on several folks and feel energized.

Woo-Woo.

Creativity and Massage

We like to think of ourselves as creative, don’t we, doing massage therapy and adapting to the moment, to the mood and the mode.

I am fascinated by creativity is my hands (oh, old fascinating me) but it is outshone by the creativity I see in my clients. I have had two (count ‘em) two authors in my quiver and have been with them through the long grueling, exhilarating, exciting months of timeful tapping as they bring their manuscripts to life.

My first author, though, I can lay no claim to massage helping in the initial stages of the project.

He had written his life story already, and was being pestered by his children for the details, the many details, he left out. He had been a guest of the Third Reich in the waning days of the war, and had left out a lot of what went on for sensibility’s sake. Sensing the missing bits, the “kids” and I must say I, lobbied for the rest of the bits.

Like the proper way to hunt for frozen turnips or the proper way to position oneself in a barn so the fulminate diarrhea did not get on one’s own pants. Or the proper way to tease new German soldiers into the no-walk zone at the prison camp so they would get shot.

“Remember the Pilgrim fathers,” I said. “They landed and took over an Indian village that had been emptied by pestilence. Most of them, and all the women, died the first winter, and they stayed on despite the bitter cold and bad soil because they felt God had brought them to a better place.”

I remembered a snippet from a diary I had read of one of those long winter nights, included a line from a founding father “My Goode wife died today of fever…. I ate a breakfast of boiled milk.”

No one would know how bad those days were, or how people persevered, if not for simple farmers and their plain speech. If not written down by the people who were there, then it is lost to history, or somebody’s story. I hope my part gave him a little spur to get the book done. It is called “Before I Forget,’” by Robert D. Davis, is as good a rippin’ yarn as any Mark Twain tale twice-told.

My other client author is just as creatively productive and has something important to say about things we use everyday. Elizabeth Plourde has written “Sunscreens Biohazard” about what we need to know about toxic chemicals used in sunscreens. They not only affect children and adults, they have severe effects on marine life and coral.

I am happy to say, on the periphery at least, that I helped these folks get this important work done. Massage of me…….