But, no more. Why you might ask? Well, what happens when a person comes in who has been traumatized in the past during their childhood or from someone close to them? Do you really want to cause any pain for that client and stir up memories from the past? Our focus should be to relieve pain, not to cause it. What percentage of your clientele have suffered from abuse? Relatively few patients disclose abuse incidents from their past on client intake forms or initial interviews. I am not suggesting we pry into patient’s emotional pasts; after all, we are not counselors. Point being, since you likely do not know such details, why would you apply a therapy that might cause them pain - physical or emotional? Since learning a new way to work with the nervous system, I’ve realized there is never a need to do that.

What do you do when a person comes in with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia? Many of them cannot tolerate any deep pressure and even if they can endure it, the post treatment soreness often turns them off to massage.

What about the millions of people on blood thinners? Do you really want to press into their tissues with your thumbs and elbows, or perhaps even a tool? Do you do enough of an intake to know if they are on blood thinning medications? If you do not know, and you do the “Deep Work,” you could easily damage tissue more than you help it. Further, a bad experience after a massage, from post treatment soreness or worse, bruising (bleeding), can turn a patient off to receiving massage in the future and they will likely share such a negative experience with their friends and colleagues, turning them off to massage as well. Many people on blood thinners know they bruise easily but do not associate massage as potentially problematic, so they do not advise the therapist until it is too late, if they share the much needed information at all. Likely, you just won’t see that patient again, ever, and maybe no other therapists will get to either. Why take the chance of endangering a patient.

How many of you have damaged your thumbs and wrists by doing “deep tissue” work? Many therapists are unable to continue the career they love because they have injured themselves helping others. Noble, but not a good trade off. Wouldn’t you like to work at the deepest levels, reaching layers of tissue you cannot physically touch without causing pain or enduring strain? Most pain is ischemic in nature. Most ischemia is due to hypertonic muscles. The nervous system holds them in that dysfunctional state. You can try to beat them into submission or you can learn to apply a gentle stimulus and the patient’s nervous system will relax them in seconds.

There is now a new way to get the same results, or better, that we get with the invasive (thumbs, elbows, tools) hard pressure therapy systems without ever causing pain to your client or to yourself!  Like everything else, massage techniques are evolving and now have evolved beyond the need to cause even the “mild discomfort (or worse)” often experienced with NMT, Deep Tissue, Medical Massage, Trigger Point Therapy, etc. A better way has been developed. It is ideal for working with compromised clients. Even when we are not aware of their compromising conditions.

The nervous system controls how tight a muscle is held. It can increase or decrease the tonus of muscles. It inhibits (relaxes) muscles every time we move using its reciprocal inhibition system (Sherrington’s Second Law). The nervous system is a stimulus–response mechanism, and the results of all massage treatment is a response to our tactile stimulus. There are massage stimuli that cause the nervous system’s reciprocal-inhibition system to “reset” the tonus (tension) of a muscle to a “normal” state, reducing trigger points and ischemia in seconds – and leave it - at least until some other stimulus causes a dysfunctional state again.  There have been attempts at accomplishing this for decades, but until recently no one had figured out how to get consistent, predictable, lasting results.

The Arndt-Schultz Law tells us that the nervous system responds the most positively to weak to moderate stimuli. It is much easier to get a muscle to relax if the stimulus is not causing pain. Gentle, effective stimuli should create deeper relaxation than painful, deep pressures and of course would be much easier on the therapist’s body as well.

A system of soft tissue therapy has recently been developed that is painless to the patient and not damaging to the therapist. It is called Neural Reset Therapy® (NRT). It is being taught internationally and studied by a variety of disciplines such as PT’s, OT’s, MD’s, DC’s and of course LMT’s. Precise, yet gentle, stimuli are applied to a specific muscle or muscle group and in seconds the tonus of that tissue is reset, predictably and consistently. The system addresses muscles, tendons, ligaments, scar tissue, and periosteum. It is so efficient and fast to perform that 321 muscles (virtually the entire body) can be done specifically in an hour session. A trained 90 lb. therapist can easily and effectively treat a 400 lb. football player with no strain whatsoever. If this would be of interest to you, then check it out at http://www.neuralreset.net/. You will be glad you did. So will your patients. With Neural Reset Therapy® (NRT), less can now accomplish more, safely and painlessly.

I’ll be back in the December issue. Have a great rest of the year. Help many and BE Well!