Release Pain With Pressure

Today, in this article you will learn how to release pain with pressure, but you must be careful! This kind of therapy massage must be done by professionals. You will continue to read and you will learn to do some kind of a massage, but my advice is to call a therapist, especially when it’s about the vertebral column or other nerves and bones. You are fully responsible for your actions, and this article is not intended as a cure or diagnosis for any disease! The owner of this website shall not be liable for any actions taken by whoever reads this article. IT’S PURE INFORMATIVE!

The practice of massage therapy lay dormant in the western world from the decline of Rome until the 18th century, when the Enlightenment fostered renewed interest in exploring the frontiers of medical knowledge. In the early 19th century, Per Henrik Ling developed a system of medical exercises and massage that his followers disseminated throughout the western world in subsequent years. This system profoundly influenced the birth and development of physical therapy, and the massage elements of his system became what is known today as Swedish massage. This type of massage has been continuously practiced in health clubs and spas over the past century, but was largely considered a luxury available only to the wealthy, and was not generally viewed as a health-related procedure until the gradual resurgence of massage therapy over the last 30 to 40 years.

Clinical massage therapists operate according to certain assumptions that are so self-evident that they might be considered axioms of the field. The individual is a whole organism: Everything is connected and related. Complex systems are more than the mere sum of their parts; that is, it is essential to see the forest and the trees. The therapist should remember that the part must also be seen in the context of the whole. For example, a client with a sprained ankle will favor the injured leg, causing muscles in the hip and low back to tighten. The resulting imbalance in the back can affect the neck muscles, causing a headache. Treating the neck muscles alone will not solve the problem.

Shortened muscle tissue can do no work. Muscle tissue does its work by contracting and, therefore, can do no further work if shortened.

A muscle may be shortened actively or passively. Examples of chronic passive shortening are the shortening of biceps brachii when the arm is kept in a sling for a period of healing, and the flexed position of the iliopsoas muscles (hip flexors) in a baby who is not yet standing and walking. Postural misalignment always involves habitual passive shortening of many postural muscles.

MUST READ: Lower Back Pain: 3 exercises to relieve it!

Active shortening, on the other hand, is muscular contraction, and may be either the intentional contraction that is the work of the muscle, or defensive contraction representing the muscle’s response to a threat such as overload, repetitive motion, or excessive stretch. When a portion of muscle tissue is contracted in this way, it cannot contract further and is unavailable to do the work of the muscle.

The soft tissues of the body respond to touch. One of the most persuasive theories of the many that seek to explain this is that myofascial pain is caused by a self-perpetuating neuromuscular feedback circuit in which the stimulation of touch interferes, thus restoring normal function.

Depending on the choice of technique, manual intervention in the dysfunctional tissues interrupts this feedback process, forcing some change in the neural response and, therefore, in the functioning of the affected tissue itself. The intervention may take the form of ischemic compression, passive stretching, passive shortening, or any simultaneous or sequential combination of these.

Although we treat muscles as distinct entities for anatomical convenience, we must remember that the neuromuscular system does not activate muscles in that way. The nervous system stimulates portions of contractile tissue to contract in patterns that will produce the desired effect, and this activation usually involves parts of several muscles acting in fine coordination. No action recruits all of a muscle, and no action recruits only one muscle. When we say, for example, that biceps brachii flexes the arm at the elbow, we are making a broad generalization. Depending on the position of the arm when we make the movement, certain portions of biceps brachii will be activated. In addition, portions of brachialis will also contract, as well as portions of certain muscles in the forearm. Portions of triceps brachii will be recruited to temper the movement and keep it smooth. As the movement occurs, a shift in weight occurs, and parts of muscles throughout the torso and legs respond to maintain balance.

Therefore, it is not so much individual muscles that do the work of the body as it is patterns of portions of muscle tissue. To gain an understanding of these broad patterns of muscular action over the whole body, we must first acquaint ourselves with the elemental parts of muscle tissue and how they work. (CONTINUE READING ON THE NEXT PAGES)