No Pain, No Gain?

Dentists offices used to consist of a chair, extractor pliers and a bucket full of teeth.  Today would you choose this kind of dentist?  If you had to have a operation would you have it done orthoscopically or do you want them to open you up so that they can get both hands into the incision?

I tell people that I do not want to insult the tissues that I am working on. I work smart rather than with force.  This gives me more precision and I can correct more detail problems.  Besides I find that while occasionally you may feel the work the next day you do not have to recover from trauma that may be worse than the original problem. Today people are learning to work smart.  Unfortunately there are still dinosaurs out there who just don’t know better.  [ via Carl of http://www.ablebodyworks.com ]

No Pain. No Gain.... Oh really?

As Carl points out, we’ve come a long way in certain aspects of medicine when it comes to viewing pain as unncessary and even unhelpful. I remember after my back surgery five years ago that my surgeon was one of these doctors that didn’t want to “over medicate” so the afternoon and night when I had just had my back opened up and stapled shut, I received one Vicodin to ease the pain. I could not move, I could not shift my weight, I could not sleep, I could not take that walk they want you to take without tears.

The morning nurse asked me whether I was in a lot of pain. I was. She arranged to double my dose, and the relief allowed me to move, breath, and even sleep a bit. It made the drive home possible, whereas before the extra dose people would have cleared our path from the shrieking siren screams coming from within.

Did you know some massage therapists take the no pain, no gain approach? Some clients do, too. “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not going deep enough!” I am here to tell you that such an approach is not optimal. Going to deep too fast insults the tissue. It resists. Injured fibers feel assaulted and must fight back, further damaging tissue that we’re trying to heal.

Imagine you have a hose that is in terrible knots. Do you just yank and pull and aggressively dig in? You can… I just see another way. Why not use softer hands, look at how the hose is changing as you unwind part after part?

Massage therapy can be painful if you work with someone who uses brute force rather than sensitive and listening hands. I had a half hour session on a cruise ship with Helga the Horrible, and I really, really should have gotten off the table. The only relief I got was feeling like I was glad to be alive after it was all over! It need not be that way, and part of the screening you should do with a therapist before making an appointment is to find out how he or she approaches the body. And, if you feel pain, let your therapist know immediately. If the pressure is not adjusted to your satisfaction and benefit, end the session. That is my professional advice.

(Oh, and you might be thinking, “I don’t want to hurt the therapist’s feelings.” That is what we therapists hear most often when clients share their massage horror stories with us. Just say, “I’m sorry, I need to stop this session right now. Please give me a chance to get dressed, and we can discuss it.” Maybe all the rest of this therapist’s clients are masochists. If you are not, it’s okay to make that clear. In professional terms, you are setting good boundaries by speaking up. If the therapist doesn’t understand this, it is the therapist that needs an adjustment.) --Rick