Isn’t the Pain the Problem?

When you feel the pain that comes into your neck and shoulders from sitting all day at the computer, or the sharp discomfort in the low back when you’ve been working in garden, you might want nothing more than someone to deeply massage that painful spot. That makes sense. The back or shoulders are shouting out at you and massage can help with pain relief, to make them quiet again.

However, sometimes there are chronic issues—you get a shoulder rub but the pain comes back the next day, or no matter what you do that low back pain just won’t go away.

There is a reason for this…the pain is not where the problem is.

A Shift in Perspective

Imagine for a moment, someone pulling on your arm. After time your arm would become sore because of the over stretching. Is your arm—where you feel the pain—the problem? No. The problem is the person pulling your arm. If they let go of your arm, eventually the discomfort will go away.

So it is, in our bodies.

Often the soreness that we feel is coming from those muscles being overstretched by other tighter muscles. We don’t feel the pain in the tight muscle, we feel it in the overstretched muscles, just like our arm being pulled. The way to fix the problem is to give the appropriate massage work to the tight, or shortened muscles and surrounding tissue.

When the shortened muscles are lengthened and released, it actually brings about lasting change and relief from pain. So if you have been having chronic pain issues that heat packs and Advil only provide temporary relief from, consider finding a local massage therapist that understands the dynamics of the body and knows how to release the actual cause of the pain—the shortened muscles.