The most common reason that past clients gave when dropping out of care was “My pain has gone”. It is tempting to give up on a course of remedial massage treatment when pain turns to ache by cancelling the next appointment.

As your healthcare practitioners we respect your decision on how far you want to take your massage care. However, we love it when you choose to remedy and correct underlying causes rather than patch the symptom. We’d much prefer you to have a longer lasting outcome!

Pain is hard to live with, and wow does it motivate us to act. In some ways it is a friendly force that causes us to intervene when something is wrong. Massage is great at relieving pain, but unfortunately the reduction in pain can kill your motivation to complete the corrective task if you’re not careful.

Scheduling a follow-up appointment would indicate that you had the intention of resolving the painful symptom at the time of booking. You were motivated to solve the issue and see the treatment plan through. You were corrective focused and not relief focused, at that time.

The statement that ‘good is the enemy of great’ is as true in healthcare as it is in any aspect of life we want to master. Unfortunately, ache is way too tolerable. We live with it all the time, and it makes it easy to decide to skip the next appointment when work is busy, or a friend meetup is arranged. We give up before the cause is addressed.

The Massage Centre in Chiswick is a remedial massage clinic. People choose to attend our care to remedy the muscular issues that they experience. They want help releasing muscle ‘knots’ but are more interested in using sports massage to teach better muscle function and behaviour rather than mild spa relief outcomes. Our treatments aim to fix rather than patch and it normally takes a course to resolve the cause of a symptom.

Sometimes muscles can become sore overnight. However, unless the cause of pain is extreme physical exercise it usually indicates an underlying reason. Most of our clients present with a lot of muscular tension. Muscles that remain contracted when you are lying down in a relaxed state are called hypertonic muscles. That is, they have disassociated from the brain and thus no longer follow instructions – they remain contracted. Specific massage applications stimulate sensation which is acknowledged by the brain in the form of neural messages to and from the muscle. Reawakening the neural pathways to send and receive signals without requiring pressure stimulation takes a repetition of treatment over a few sessions, within an adequate timeframe.

We normally notice a significant improvement in muscle function after 3 treatments. That’s usually the pivot point where muscle memory starts working for you rather than against you. Tense muscles that have been chronically switched on are programmed to be tight and thus have a destructive cellular memory. Once your remedial massage therapist manually relaxes the muscles over a few sessions, the brain reassociates and learns to relax them naturally. You should then experience the momentum shift and the benefits of having a constructive muscle memory.

That’s enough of the science. We will respect your decision in choosing:

• Mild pain relief,
• To fully resolve the symptom cause,
• To correct postural bio-mechanical inhibitions,
• OR to teach your muscles to work better and function as designed in a pain free manner.

Naturally we advocate for whatever course of treatment that gets you feeling, performing, and being your best.

But… if you do choose relief and aren’t able to continue treatment to a higher proactive phase of care the good news is you’re not going to die! Repeating what we said earlier, ache is something that we live with. Absolutely, the muscle can spasm or a new pain cycle can trigger again but you can always choose to sort out the underlying cause when getting treatment then. Yeah, dysfunctional tissue is more at risk of injury, and it is easier to overexert a tight muscle, but the human body is a resilient piece of equipment.

If you are in doubt as to what course of action to take and would like request to speak with a qualified sports massage therapist or clinic director, then please reach out to our reception team to facilitate.

Thank you for your trust in our remedial massage services.

Fran and team.