I thought I knew it all when I was in massage school. I’d been studying anatomy, physiology, and anything else I needed to know to work as a massage therapist. I was going to help people. I was going to make a difference. One day, I met a guy who claimed it was possible to eliminate back pain by pressing a different area on the body. That experience changed everything I knew about using massage to relieve pain. That was the day I learned that where we feel pain and where the pain originates are actually two different places! Don’t believe me? Let me explain!
No more rubbing where it hurts. I will help you find the source of your pain and work on eliminating it.
An Experience to Remember
In 2005, while I was in massage school, we took a field trip to a conference here in Florida. There were a ton of booths set up all around. However, my classmates and I were all drawn to a single booth with a group of people around it. The booth owner, a guy with long hair and a goofy-looking stick, claimed he could eliminate back pain by pressing somewhere else in the body. So naturally, when he asked for a volunteer, I, who had chronic lower back pain, didn’t pass up the opportunity. I was knee-deep in massage classes and knew that, obviously, there was no way that you could press somewhere else on the body and relieve pain. It made no sense.
So the guy asked me where I was in pain. I pinpointed where it hurt – the left side of my low back – and he instructed me to lay down on the floor. He advised me that he would press in different spots along the front of my right leg. I remember thinking it was impossible that this could work, and this guy must have been crazy. As he started pressing up and down my leg, he hit a spot that caused so much pain I was ready to jump through the roof. He kept the pressure on that spot and gave me a series of movements to make. Afterward, the guy I’d expected to be crazy told me to get up and walk around for a few minutes and let him know how I felt before moving on to his next volunteer. I was out of breath from the pain and stunned that he didn’t even check on me after.
I learned early on that the source of pain is not usually where we feel it. So I committed my work to finding the source of pain – not treating symptoms.
The Results
My classmates rushed over, questioning how I felt as I walked around and caught my breath. Honestly, I couldn’t understand it. I had had this spot on my back worked on at least twice a week in school, and yet here came this random guy, who took my pain away in 10 seconds by pressing somewhere that didn’t even correlate to where I felt the pain. It was then that I knew I needed to learn more about this so I could help other people how he had just helped me. Since that day, I’ve devoted my work to using back pain relief techniques that don’t just mask the pain but eliminate it from the source.
Why A Massage to Relieve Pain Doesn’t Work
How often have you had pain in your back, your neck – or virtually anywhere in your body – and the first thing you do is rub the spot that hurts? Unfortunately, no matter what you do, the pain doesn’t seem to go away – even if you get a massage. Why? Because if you’re getting a regular massage to relieve pain, you’re still rubbing where it hurts instead of finding the source.
If pain isn’t relieved at its source, it’ll keep coming back – resulting in you trying multiple different therapies to get relief.
Most times when we have back pain, we feel it along the lower back. And I think we can all agree that lower back pain and sciatic pain can be crippling. But, where we’re feeling the pain isn’t where it starts. I like to compare the body to a hose. When the water stops flowing from a hose, 9 out of 10 times, the spout isn’t the problem. The problem lies further down the hose, where you’ll inevitably find a kink. It’s the same in your body. You feel the problem in one spot, but it originates somewhere else.
Finding the place of origin is what we focus on here at The Back WoRX. The Back WoRX System focuses on where the pain starts. Time and time again, I’ve shown my clients that where they’re feeling the pain isn’t its source and rubbing the spot that hurts just doesn’t do the trick. Instead, we figure out your pain pattern and reverse engineer it to find its source. If you’re ready to get actual relief from your back pain, visit us at thebackworx.com! You won’t regret it!
