Is Neuromuscular Therapy What You Need?
It’s late in the day and your shoulder is acting up again. You’ve had nagging pain there for awhile and it tends to get worse when you sit at your computer for hours, or when stress is wearing you down. You could take a pain reliever for a temporary fix, but you yearn for a better solution. That answer may come in the form of neuromuscular therapy.
Neuromuscular therapy focuses on the body’s network of soft tissues, with the goal of maintaining harmony between the muscular and nervous systems. It incorporates massage techniques that relax and loosen tight muscles to ease pain, often working on trigger points. This helps rid the muscles of toxins while also easing pressure the muscle may be putting on surrounding tissues or nerves.
I’ve had clients call me after driving home from their massage and tell me that they could turn their head so much better while driving because of the neuromuscular therapy, or trigger point work that I did on their neck during their session.
Neuromuscular therapy may be beneficial if you have:
- Myofascial trigger points where the muscle feels weak or painful.
- Constricted blood flow in the muscle, which is called ischemia.
- Pain from nerve compression.
- Chronic pain from repetitive movement
- Pain stemming from poor posture.
- Certain disorders such as carpal tunnel, plantar fasciitis, or temporomandibular joint pain (TMJ).
- Persistent, ongoing pain in the back, knees, hip, or other areas that isn’t relieved through other methods.
Neuromuscular therapy brings pain relief, but you really reap the benefits when it’s part of a long-term massage therapy plan. Increased flexibility and mobility, enhanced blood flow, mood boosts, and a decrease of toxins in the body have all been attributed to this particular form of massage therapy. Plus, because neuromuscular therapy realigns the skeletal system while restoring proper function to the muscular and nervous systems, it can be a valuable tool for whole-body balancing.
If you’re interested in neuromuscular therapy, we encourage you to contact us and see how we can help you. At Firefly, our massage therapists are trained in a variety of techniques, which allows them to customize massages for each client, depending on their specific needs. Prior to the massage, you can discuss your issues and health history with our therapist and talk about whether neuromuscular therapy might be beneficial.
For anyone getting neuromuscular therapy, it’s important to note that the technique is different from the typical Swedish massage. Instead of deploying rhythmic strokes all over the body, the therapist instead uses regular, consistent pressure on trigger points or other troublesome spots in short bursts of less than 30 seconds each. Pressure is applied with the hands or knuckles, or sometimes even the elbows, in varying degrees of intensity. There may be some initial soreness after the massage is over, but then a freeing, relaxed loosening of the muscles should take over. Long-term benefits will depend on your particular condition as well as the frequency of your neuromuscular therapy massage sessions.
And right now, you don’t have to worry about COVID-19 rules and regulations interrupting your course of treatment with massage therapy. Firefly offers outdoor massage at your home; for safety, both you and the therapist wear face coverings, and the massage must take place under a sun shelter with open air flow. To learn more about integrating neuromuscular therapy into your next massage, or to book an at-home appointment, call 619-693-8568.
