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A typical experience

I had a new client the other day for an 80 minute massage. I asked him if there is anything that he wanted me to know.  He told me that he suffers from a herniated disc that he has had for a few years. He has constant low back and right hip pain that at times radiates down the back of his leg to his knee. He told me that he has had two injections in his low back and has to stay on anit- inflamtory medication.  Anything to avoid surgery. The pain is always there. I asked him if he ever saw a chiropractor for his pain.  He said yes.  But the adjustments hurt his hip so bad that he could not continiue.  So here is a guy that thinks he is on the verge of surgery. I knew that there was a very strong probubllity that was not the case. The vast majority of pain people experience is nocioceptive pain( soft tissue- muscle, tendon, ligament, facia).  MDs and Chiropractors see pain as neuropathic pain( nerve pain).  With that asumption they give the wrong treatments and therapies.  Now there is no denying that at times injections and surgery is needed. Not denying that.   But most of the time - NOT.  70% to 85% of all pain comes directly from trigger points.  Anyway I showed my client a testimonial from a client that I was able to help out of a very painful condition that she had delt with for a couple of years. I showed him that testimonial because all pain has a psychological eliment too it. I wanted him to start thinking maybe he is not on the edge of surgery.  I palpated his entire back upper torso, both hips, and right leg. I found a very painful spot on his right L5 erectors.  Another very painful spot on his right greater trochantor.  A painful spot in the middle part of his lower right hamstrings.  And also a tender spot on the right spinous of L3.  I knew that if Iwas able to eliminate all those painful palaptory spots that I would most likely eliminate his pain problem.  Because a healthy body had no painful spots even with deep massage.  Ive been hunting and eliminateing trigger points for thirty years now.  He walked out of the massage room pain free. He was pain free for the first time in years. All those other professional people misdiagnosed him because they assume neuropathic pain over nocioceptive pain.  I assume the other way around.  I'm a Massage Therapist.  

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Permalink Reply by Morgan Arnold on March 17, 2017 at 10:50pm

Massage therapy is really boon for lower back pain. If massage therapist are experienced enough to find the right spot ,where to apply massage to remove pain it can be totally cured by massage therapy. One most important therapy to remove pain at particular point of a body is Acupuncture. Acupuncture Yonge & Eglinton are the best therapy to remove body pain. Since i am in this field from past four year ,i always suggest people to take massage therapy if they have problem like you have mentioned above.

Permalink Reply by Gary W Addis, LMT on March 17, 2017 at 11:02pm

Good comment, Morgan.  So true.  Acupressure serves as a worthwhile substitute for dry needling when it is not available or prohibited to LMTs.

Morgan Arnold said:

Massage therapy is really boon for lower back pain. If massage therapist are experienced enough to find the right spot ,where to apply massage to remove pain it can be totally cured by massage therapy. One most important therapy to remove pain at particular point of a body is Acupuncture. Acupuncture Yonge & Eglinton are the best therapy to remove body pain. Since i am in this field from past four year ,i always suggest people to take massage therapy if they have problem like you have mentioned above.

Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on March 18, 2017 at 1:26pm
A new client came in the other day just to unwind and relax. When I asked her if she had any aches and pains she said ,"No, not really." She then said,"Well, when I wake up in the morning I always have low back pain. But after walking around for a couple minutes, making coffee, it's gone. And never bothers me the rest of the day or night."
So I mean really. She just needs a relaxation massage. Not some kind of medical massage. But, me being a trigger point guy... I wanted to find that two minutes of low back pain she has every morning. I asked her if I could take a couple minutes out of her massage in order to find that annoying mysterious morning low back pain. She said sure.
And I found it. A trigger point on the left paraspinals at about the T11 area.
Usually I dont massage over areas of trigger points I've released, but in her case I did. Because it was a relatively none serious problem. But before the end of the massage I did recheck to make sure the massage didn't reactive the trigger point. And it didn't.
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Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on March 18, 2017 at 11:03pm
I had a new client today, as usual, just to relax and unwind. She didn't expect anything to be done about her long term pain problem. She had just finished up a prescription of physical therapy sessions that didn't help. And she has been dealing with this pain thing, in her words, for years.
After I talked to her a bit, she became interested in my therapy, and gave me permission to check her back out. Her complaint was pain in the left shoulder blade, the Rhomboid area. As well as pain in the middle of her back on the right side. I asked her what the physical therapist had her doing for therapy. She said back exercises. I don't know why I asked, I new the answer already. And I also knew why it didn't help. Had to be trigger points. You can't exercise a trigger pointed muscle and expect it to get any better. Of course no one checked for trigger points. She also told me that in the past she had seen different doctors that gave her different diagnoses for her problem.
Anyway, I palpated her entire back and found two very noticeable trigger points. When I say noticible, I mean her whole body flinched when they were palpated with medium pressure. The left shoulder one, which was the most bothersome and oldest of her pain complaints was located at about the T6 level right in the middle of the Paraspinals. The right middle back trigger point was located in the most inner Paraspinal area, closest to the spinous, at about the T9 level. I deactivated both of them. On re palpation I had to deactivate the upper left one again. A total of 60 seconds work. She was very happy and surprised to feel absolutely no pain after the session, which was all massage, after I deactivated the trigger points. She is going to come back for a few follow ups to make sure they stay gone. I reminded her to not do any more of the back exercises and to not test the two areas. Just let them be, until we check them next time. I see stuff like this all the time. The muscle chart in the attachment might not be the same muscles involved, but close enough. She never heard of trigger points before. She wants me to email her information on trigger points this evening. Her follow up session will only take a couple of minutes, assuming the trigger points are back and need to be deactivated again. The shortest appointment in the spa is for 25 minuets. I told her I'd bill her $20.00 for her next session. She will be in and out within a few minutes. I guess I could give her a foot massage for a while.
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Permalink Reply by Morgan Arnold on March 19, 2017 at 10:11pm



Gary W Addis, LMT said:

Good comment, Morgan.  So true.  Acupressure serves as a worthwhile substitute for dry needling when it is not available or prohibited to LMTs.

Morgan Arnold said:

Massage therapy is really boon for lower back pain. If massage therapist are experienced enough to find the right spot ,where to apply massage to remove pain it can be totally cured by massage therapy. One most important therapy to remove pain at particular point of a body is Acupuncture. Acupuncture Yonge & Eglinton are the best therapy to remove body pain. Since i am in this field from past four year ,i always suggest people to take massage therapy if they have problem like you have mentioned above.

Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on March 19, 2017 at 11:03pm
I think I did some of my best work ever today. Most rewarding for sure. The client was a referral from another client that I helped out of some minor aches and pains that she had. She sent me a client that was very depressed and scared, because of pain. She was told that she may need surgery because nothing has helped so far. She came in with back pain, and in her words,"A pounding headache." She told me that she has a slipped disc in her low back. And because of that has constant back pain. She has had this pain for two and a half years. She recently went through physical therapy where they dry needled some trigger points in her low back. She said it don't work and was excruciatingly painful. She said that she cried during the therapy, and hated it. I've always considered dry needling primate and medieval. But that's only my opinion. Although I know she agrees with me.
Anyway, there is no way this young women needs surgery. I won't list all the trigger points, of which she had many. I erased at least 30, if not more. Jaw, neck, T spine, lumbar, hips , abdominals. Mostly on the right side. She normally can't lay on her back because of low back Pain. After I eliminate those posterior trigger points she could lay on her back. And after more neck and head work. Her pounding headache was gone. If you have over 30 active trigger points, you're gonna be hurting. And there are more I didn't get a chance to eliminate. In the follow up sessions we will get those. The physical therapists new she had trigger points.
Anyway, she was smiling and happy afterwards. She told me, the session was life changing. I used my entire skill set from psychology to hands on procedures I recently developed in order to help her. Ten years ago, I don't think I could of. I got a hug from the client that referred her, and another one from the client herself.
Now before someone says I'm full of myself and bragging. I'm not. I had another client recently that is in pain. But I'm not so sure I can help her? It's possible, but I don't feel as confident about her outcome , as I am with the lady I'm talking about now. I guess high consciousness people feel happy all the time regardless of outcomes. But I'm happier when I help someone, especially when they think there is no hope.
The attachment is not about anyone I know. It just points out trigger point pain, in one of its many guises.
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Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on March 19, 2017 at 11:33pm
The above attachment is very significant, if you really read between the lines. The lady that had the chest pain for over a month was a medical doctor. The doctors that examined her were not sure. Luckily, there was enough doubt and hesitation that she went to a physical therapist that new something about trigger points. We are probably talking one Pectoralis trigger point.
If she would have been a spa client that came in on a gift certificate and accidentally got me. Her chest pain would have been over within 20 seconds.
So how many people do you think, are walking around with needless pain, because of trigger points?
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Permalink Reply by Gary W Addis, LMT on March 20, 2017 at 10:18pm

Yes, extremely fortunate that she had a true caregiver for her doctor. 

Just here in the US, millions of people from a year old to 100 needlessly are suffering pain that can be treated by skilled trigger point therapy.  And in the rest of the world?  hundreds of millions, certainly.  Probably less in China and other Eastern nations than in the US.  Because they don't have access to "modern" medicine, those essentially penniless people are forced to rely on the "home remedies" of TCM and wild-grown medicinals.  

It is morally reprehensible that most of our schools-- MD, DC, MT, PT-- decline to teach the recognition of and elimination of movement-restricting, painful myofascial trigger points.     

Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on March 20, 2017 at 11:25pm
Yea, I recently had a new client come in with the complaint of back and shoulder pain. Both shoulders hurt on abdication. And his very low back ached pretty much all the time. When I asked him if he would be happy if all that pain was gone, he chuckled and said. " That's not gonna happen, I've had this pain for years." Well he left the spa without it. Now I'm not saying his problem is over. I'm sure some of those TPs will come back. He would need some follow ups to see if that's the case. But the fact that he left the spa pain free, is clinically significant. Cause all I did was make trigger points go away.
His shoulder pain mostly involved a Deltoid TP on the right and a Biceps TP on the left. He had an Upper Trapezius TP on the right as well. He had L5 TPs right next to the spine on both sides. A QL TP on the right, near the Illiac crest and a really bad Paraspinal TP around L2 level on the left, as well as a very painful TP on the lateral spinous of L1. He also had a left Latissimus Doris TP near the lateral shoulder blade. He felt very good after the session. He couldn't reschedule because he lives too far away, but wants to look me up next month. Oh, almost forgot. He had very painful trigger points in his calves, one on each side.
Another guy came in recently with pain he thought he had to live with. Again, years of dealing with it. He left pain free as well, and he did rescheduled. Now I don't always fix all of these people, even if they come back for several sessions, only most of them.
I do my fair share of relaxation massages as well. And even during those sessions, I often find a trigger point. Like today. I had a totally healthy women come in to unwind and relax at the spa. An 80 minute massage. When I was working on her left foot, she gave a yelp and a flinch when I touched a sore spot on her foot, just below the Calcaneus. The same spot on the other foot was not tender at all. She had gone on a long hike over the weekend. Anyway, that deactivated.
There is rarely a non trigger point Day.
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Permalink Reply by Gary W Addis, LMT on March 21, 2017 at 12:48pm

great job.

Permalink Reply by Gordon J. Wallis on March 21, 2017 at 8:26pm
A new client came in with an interesting story. She had been suffering with left neck and shoulder pain that was so debilitating she couldn't abduct her arm more then 45 degrees. This went on for two years until she met a Naturalpathic physician that did Myofascial Release on her. And in one session, although it was excruciatingly painful, her two years of debilitating pain was gone. And she can now lift her arm with no problem. All that's left is some sore left shoulder and neck discomfort. But no where's near the debilitating pain she had before. I told her that that today, we were going to wipe out what was left of her neck and shoulder pain once and for all. She said Awesome!
She had three noticeable trigger points between her left shoulder and spine. Along with three left posterior neck trigger points located on the lateral spinouses. She also had a very sore ( it made her flinch ) left Upper Trapezius trigger point. Because of the upper T spine and neck trigger points I wanted to also check out her low back, do to the spinal relationships between the lumbar and cervical vertebrae. And sure enough I found a very painful left L3 lateral spinous Trigger point. All those trigger points deactivated, and she felt pretty good after her massage session.
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Permalink Reply by Morgan Arnold on March 22, 2017 at 6:46am

Thank you  Gary for your compliment. In Acupressure  manual pressure is used to stimulate specific points on the body along what are considered to be lines of energy. Many people  prefer Acupressure rather than Acupuncture . I Think Both are equally helpful to reduce body pain.

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