Accelerating Healing, and reducing pain. Get away from the body pulling the brakes. The causes of frustration and discomfort as our shoulder, arm, back or neck limits our function and enjoyment of life.
Maybe you want to enjoy playing with the kids, dog, do that hike you want to enjoy or just want to sit at the desk longer to finish a project. And you can’t, scared to, or it’s being limited and it’s causing the extra issue of having to manage your physical limitation.
Skip to the stages of injury and recovery
Here’s what you need to know to understand the nitty gritty of it.
Throughout this article I will be writing about how Remedial Massage can accelerate Healing process, Reduce pain, and set the road you take to recover. We need to understand how our body, this vehicle we have, functions and the systems in use for that.
Remedial means to remediate or find remedy and in this article we’ll get into what we’re looking to resolve, what causes it within our body and how to use our body to restore itself.
You’ll also have some ideas about how to manage injuries and pain yourself including how to manage the anxiety injury associated with it.
Understanding Pain: What is an injury and what causes pain?
Injury is a breakdown of tissue which requires time to recover from that as structurally, your body is not the same as it was before. This is why reinjuries are very common as the healing process can be disrupted by the physical requirements we put on ourselves in our day to day.
Physical stress
These physical stresses can be as simple as pulling the cupboard drawer without thinking, how you put on your shirt or getting in and out of the car. They can be perceived as stiffness, general soreness, dull ache or sensation
It’s much more often the case that it’s a series of incidents or there is an overuse of soft tissue rather than one traumatic event. Even if you think it’s a once off event that caused it, our bodies are extremely resilient and there’s often underlying factors at play.
Inflammation, cellular stress – General
Over using one area of our body causes an excess of metabolic byproducts to build up in that spot. Now combine that with other factors such as a lack of circulation, additional biochemical stress of going for a couple of drinks 3 nights before with friends or sleeping with a full stomach the night before because you went for late night shopping,
Those 2 things have our cortisol and insulin levels rise while we sleep, disrupting it.
Now this is where the skill and experience of the therapist is super important. Combined with their care factor, a good remedial massage therapist will be able to address your main concern, as they address or touch on the additional factors to make you stronger, better, more functional and more equipped for life, health and fitness.
Blockages – Chemical
There could be a blockage in our circulation system which includes our lymphatic system (one of our 2 drains for our blood) causing excess inflammation (metabolic/cellular byproduct) in one spot in our body.
The excess muscle tension can also cause a lack a optimum blood flow causing small areas of deficiencies in your muscles or joints
Blockages – Physical
Now say we combine this with scar tissue from a previous injury or fascia adhesions from small mini injuries, making optimal function of a spot in our body impossible as it’s being physically pulled out of how it’s trying to move causing additional inflammation as our body is making tissue adaptations to strengthen this malalignment.
That’s why it’s better to get a massage here and there. So you don’t have to worry about it, and live life focusing on what you need to, without worrying about the complexity of it. My Recovery Lounge offers a range of alternative methods to help you.
Stages if injury and it’s recovery.
The 3 Injury Phases in Paul Massey’s 2004 book “Sports Pilates”. Provides great perspective on this stages of injuries.
ACUTE PHASE HOUR 0-72.
The body tries to make you stop using the affected area, and quickly patches it up by blood clotting so it doesn’t fall apart on its own.
This is the most painful period of any injury and is when the most swelling occurs.
SUB-ACUTE PHASE WEEK 1-6.
This is when the blood clot and fascial adhesions are replaced by the appropriate soft tissue. Muscle recovers in 1-4 weeks, tendons and ligaments take 8 weeks and require much more rehab throughout those weeks
Harsh re-agitations in this phase can put the injury back into the acute phase with a now worse injury.
REMODELLING PHASE WEEK 3-14.
Further strength is develop from the affected tissue until it matches and potentially surpasses the strength and endurance it previously had.
If the healing has been facilitated this stage will start sooner rather than later.
With athletes, this is when they can return to full training and sporting activities
Remedial Treatment: Here’s how we do it.
After a brief general consultation to give us a general indication, IN THE PRESENT MOMENT, the state of your body, what stage of recovery it’s at and how the pain is.
The assessment may be 10 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on a variety of factors and as we treat, a good therapist will continue to assess through the feedback of touch and movement from our strokes and movements while we massage.
Like different tools in our tool belt, we combine a different range of techniques to fix things as best we can to the best of your liking, for that current moment while outlining to you what to expect from your body.
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Deep tissue to cause tissue adaptation of scar tissue and fascial adhesions. All the while giving an eviction notice to the knots and gremlins caused by deep inflammation lurking around causing the muscle to tighten.
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Soft tissue Clearing out the blocked lymphatic system, hydrating muscles, tendons and ligaments, allowing our body to naturally process the inflammation.
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MLD (Manual Lymphatic Release) Gentle clearing of the channels and nodes. This can be painful if the system is extremely backed up, common in people with diabetes or post surgery recovery.
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Ischemic pressure The most gentle form of deep tissue therapy, pressing and holding soft tissue until the inflammation is cleared out, pain signals gone and creating a vacuum for new nutrition to enter the tissue to allow for recovery.
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Other tools include Cupping, Dry needling, joint mobilization, Electric stimulation (EMS, TENS), Light therapy (LED, moxa, infrared patches), herbal ointments.
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Mind-Body Connection Another benefit of treatment is you develop a better connection and understanding with your body. It’s like having a barista know your name and coffee order. It makes life easier and better.
With that greater understanding, every time we get injured or we are experiencing stiffness or soreness, our body is telling us something. It’s up to you to decide what is being communicated. A great therapist will naturally provide you the space and knowledge to explore that.
Finding The Right Therapist
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Books a consultation and get treatment You will be able to discuss your specific concerns and treatment goals with how that weaves into your life
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Trust your Intuition Choose a therapist that you feel comfortable with and who’s approach resonates with you
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Location and scheduling Choose a conveniently located clinic with a schedule that matches yours to make your recovery journey as smooth as possible.
Remedial massage in Port Melbourne a treat having the other services of recovery at hand while giving you the slice of holiday with bali or thailand retreat vibes at My Recovery Lounge
Being located and easy to get to with plenty of street parking and open 10am-8pm weekdays and earlier on the weekend makes the process simple.
Remedial massage near me (shameless plug to help the search engines), will make your life better with a good high standard of local experienced remedial massage therapists.
