Most people who think about getting a massage view it as a indulgence or as being pampered. They use it as a way to destress or often disengage from the world for an hour or so. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with that mindset, sometimes that is exactly what people need. But there is another way to think about massage therapy, a different take on the same type of massage you’ve been getting for years with little result other than a nap on a table.

There is another mindset in which very few massage therapists and those receiving massage go. That’s the world of bodywork, a world where in the not to distant past that was how chronic pain and poor physiology were treated. Most people today in chronic pain immediately think of going to the hospital or maybe surgery. The number one reason people visit the doctor is lower back pain. Often the result is the same across the board, muscle relaxers and ibuprofen for inflammation reduction. Which can work, until it doesn’t.

Learning how to treat chronic pain through the lens of therapeutic bodywork and acquiring the skills and knowledge to do so, is not an easy task for a massage therapist but know one said it’s an easy job. The truth is in my thirteen years of being a bodyworker and teacher to other massage therapists most are too fearful to enter into treating real underlying issues that result in chronic pain. They lack not only the skill to treat the pain but the understanding of why the underlying physiology can stay stuck in a negative feedback loop. Massage Therapy has been watered down over the years to be mostly about relaxation. But you’ll never get to a relaxed nervous system if your dealing with pain.

A massage therapists job is to take people out of pain and teach them how to manage their bodies so when pain flares up they have the knowledge to deal with it. If that isn’t the job of a massage therapist they should not be in practice doing massage, they should open a napping center because in effect that is what they are doing with clients. There is a fundamental need to bring real effective bodywork back into the fold, not only in clinics but in high end spas around the world. As a massage therapist you need to know how to do it all. You must be able to treat pain and then when all is well relax the body and maintain it.