Many people will have a massage sometime in their life because they are feeling stressed.  People often say to me that they carry their tension in their “neck and shoulders”.  They often aren’t even aware of the implications of this simple statement.

What do I hear when someone comes into my massage studio and says “I carry stress in my neck and shoulders”? I hear “My stress is causing me to feel physical pain.  What can you do to help me?”.

Not only does stress translate into physical distress on the body, the stress causes your body to exaggerate your pain experience.  All of those aches and pains are amplified because you are under stress!  A study published in 2008 applied stress and pain tests on children suffering from abdominal pain to see if there was any correlation. The “children who underwent stress tasks before the pain task exhibited lower levels of pain tolerance than those who received the pain task first”. (Dufton LM et al., Pain. 2008 May; 136 (1-2): 38-43. Epub 2007 Aug 22.)

This is an interesting idea… Stress causes you to feel more pain…

What happens when the pain you feel causes you to feel more stressed?

This is a feedback loop that massage therapy is truly designed to combat; for example, one study “shows that integration of massage therapy into the acute care setting creates overall positive results in the patient’s ability to deal with the challenging physical and psychological aspects of their health condition.  The study demonstrated not only significant reduction in pain levels, but also the interrelatedness of pain, relaxation, sleep, emotion, recovery, and finally, the healing process.” (Adams et al., Int J Ther Massage Bodywork. 2010; 3(1): 4-11).  It is this interrelatedness that intrigues me and keeps massage therapy an exciting and relevant health care profession.

Stress – Pain – Perception

When you are getting a massage for the stress you carry in your back, neck, and shoulders there are myriad benefits and techniques needed to achieve desirable results. Your therapist is considering these possibilities so you won’t have to!