Rebar. These scalenes felt like rebar. You know, that metal stuff they put in concrete to stabilize it. Rusty rebar.
My neck always hurts there, my client said. Would you like to get rid of it? I replied.
Yes!
That’s a pretty good go-ahead in the course of a massage. Not to make light of the purpose, but a good resounding yes makes the transition from rebar to flesh much more likely, in my experience.
How long has it been there? I asked.
Seems like forever. At least 25 years, she said.
Did you have an accident or injury before this started hurting?
My amazement has not waned whenever I ask this question. Clients who report never being hurt, the model of health, etc. will suddenly remember an accident in which they were scared good but emerged completely unscathed. One client told me she was a passenger in a car that rolled six times - but she was fine. Another told me about a drunken teen escapade in which the car flew off an overpass and landed upside down on a freeway ramp. The responding officer asked him and his buddies if they were witnesses, assuming whoever was in the car was dead.
No injuries, huh? The pain, migraines, stiffness whatever didn’t start until a few months or a year after the accident in which they were not hurt.
I’ll take a lightbulb moment wherever I get it. In my massage therapy experience, epiphanies are a blast, even if there is not lightening bolt or burning bush. Besides, that’s been done.
This client with the rusty-rebar scalenes had a tale to tell.
She was driving down a busy street in Los Angeles in a new SUV. Suddenly, as she entered an intersection on a green light a car T-boned her vehicle and sent it crashing into the corner sidewalk. A nimble pedestrian jumped up the crossing light pole, narrowly missing becoming roadkill. She was sitting in the car, dazed, when she saw one of the occupants of the car that hit her take off.
It turned out that the two occupants of the car had been fighting, and drinking, for most of the day. They were sitting second in line, stopped at a red light in the left turn lane when the driver decided to end the argument right there. She pulled out from behind the car in front and gunned the car into the intersection. That’s when she T-boned my client’s car and sent it spinning into the pedestrian.
The police were called. She told the officer the occupants had been drinking. No police report, no drunk driving test, no citation. File a claim with your insurance, she was told.
Soft tissue injuries aren’t just bumps and bruises. When someone has been hit, the sudden cascade of hormones and chemicals unleashed by terror, anger and frustration is compounded when that other driver was not only negligent, but intent on harming themselves and others.
I was willing to be a witness to the accident that happened 25 years ago. I felt the dense armor in her scalenes soften.
Intense, sure. I had a nice lie-down when I got home. I felt a bit of satisfaction that I was able to assist the client in processing the horrors of that day. Now it is a memory, not a cage.
3 comments:
Thanks for your insights here. The body is so fascinating especially when we see the long-term effects of what seemed minor at the time of the incident in the mind of the client. Glad you had a satisfying experience softening these particular scalenes. I also think it's intriguing what permission and a willingness to let go of old stuff in the body will allow for someone in the context of the potential benefits massage offers.
A great last line--and an incredible truth.
Folks are cool, aren't they?
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