Feeling and Stretching the Muscles
Today, we’re just going to talk a little bit about how we use massage to help with neck pain, headaches, and stuff like that.
Usually, we’d start off with you face down, working a little bit of the shoulder and neck first, but I do a lot of my work with you face up. So, we’re going to start here today.
The whole idea behind this is just to give us an opportunity to feel those muscles, see what might be feeling tense in there, and follow those muscles to see what could potentially be causing that pain.
Right now, we’re just doing a little bit of light dragging, giving a gentle stretch to that neck. We’re coming from the very base of the neck all the way up. This is just stretching things out.
Working Into the Base of the Skull
Then, we’re going to slowly work into that base of the skull and feel some of that tension. I’m feeling a little bit of extra tension out here on the outer portion of her neck, so we’re going to follow that over.
We’re just going to come to the side and work into that side a little bit. This is going to help relax those muscles, decrease some of that tension, and hopefully get rid of a little bit of that pain.
We’re just pulling up gently, feeling and seeing if we have any knots or anything going on in here. We’ve got a little bit of knotting, but a lot of tension. We’re just working those out slowly but surely.
“Feel okay? Pressure okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
We’re just going to follow those muscles.
“Any tenderness from this at all?”
“No.”
“No? Okay.”
Using a Deeper Stretch
Then, we’re going to follow this with just a little bit of a deeper stretch. This is going to be all on that side of the neck, pushing that shoulder out a little bit. Good.
Then, we’ll do the same thing—just slow drags up.
Treating Both Sides to Create Balance
Now, we’re going to go ahead and switch sides and do the same thing. We always like to treat both sides because we want to create balance, making sure that one side isn’t doing more work than the other.
We’ll do some gentle stretching and then the same thing on the back.
Following Up With an Adjustment
That’s just a little bit of what we do around here. It’s also always so good to follow up—or even come in beforehand—and get an adjustment to help keep everything in balance and just feel good overall.
