Should Bodywork Be Painful?

No bodywork should be painful.

In a healthy, properly hydrated, balanced, mobile and flexibly body none of these therapies are painful or even uncomfortable.

It has become a mostly American affectation that health care, injury care and treatment of any of a number of disorders will be pleasant and even enjoyable. This simply is not the case. The root cause or many problems are long standing patterns deeply established within the unconscious. In order to effectively enact change these patterns must be disrupted.

The basis of all trigger therapies follows this premise. This includes the energy trigger systems. They aim to disrupt an energetic imbalance. In essence this is the same thing as disrupting an unconscious neurological pattern of pain spasm pain.

It has been my experience that to effectively disrupt these patterns requires a heavier hand then most therapists are willing to apply.

We are all taught in school that massage should not be painful. We are taught to continuously ask the client if they are comfortable. We instruct our clients to let us know immediately if we cause any discomfort. If a client notes any bruising from a previous session we are to back off and work lighter. I encourage most therapists to follow these guidelines.

Those of us seeking to enact change ignore these guidelines.

To do the work that only a handful of us do requires a depth of understanding and a sense of touch that few therapist possess. One must be able to discern not only a muscle in spasm, but must be able to feel/palpate/determine the depth, and specific fibers of the muscles in spasm and the correlation to other synergistic and antagonistic muscles and the specific fibers of those muscles and the spasm that exist therein.

The people who followed that through the first reading are among the handful that are able to do this work on this level. My fellow providers understand phrases like “therapeutic inflammation,” “good hurt,” and “bruised up real nice.”

I have 15 + years of experience and a client book full of people willing to back me up.