Some would say I shouldn’t be telling you this, but…
I think it’s too important not to share.
When I first moved to San Diego, I interviewed for the position of massage therapist at the most well-known massage chain in America. Part of it was giving a session to the hiring manager. I began like I always do, by asking her if she wanted me to focus on any specific areas of pain or tension:
“Oh, you know, shoulders and upper back.” By far the most common request.
After flushing out her shoulders and rhomboids lying face down, I had her flip over so I could elongate her shortened pectorals and biceps.
”Nope, you’re not going to be able to do that here. We don’t do pecs here. It’s too close to the breast tissue. Corporate doesn’t want to get sued. We just fired someone the other day for spending too much time around the pecs.”
”But the pecs are not the breast tissue. Do YOU yourself believe they’re the same thing?” I asked in disbelief.
”Of course not. But that’s the way it is around here.”
To resolve shoulder or any kind of pain, It is clinically necessary to address both the afflicted area and the adjacent muscles that are indirectly at play. Most of us have pecs and biceps that are locked up from all the time we spend on computers and phones and in cars and causing peoples’ shoulders to spasm. Unsustainable body postures like this are a modern epidemic.
Needless to say, I did not go on to work at the most renown spa chain in America. I left thinking more people should be given this information because I speak to countless people who went to this spa chain hoping for clinical pain relief and left dissatisfied because they didn’t know anywhere else to go or weren’t informed as to how the spa approach is vastly incongruent with clinical massage therapy, much less True Bodywork.
Some spas even require their employees to follow set choreography. Literally, if a massage therapist notices a client has knots in their neck and movement restriction, they will not be able to spend more time there than the choreography allows.
“Why, though?” I asked another hiring manager at a different spa.
”We don’t want one client to complain that another client got something that they didn’t.”
Corporate spa massage will always be conservative. At worst, more focused on keeping people from being unhappy than making people truly happy. At best, able to reasonably meet the needs of a conservative crowd.
In contrast, clinical massage therapy is goal-oriented. Quite radically goal-oriented. As in, can keep a patient out of surgery level radical. That’s always been my intention. To push the envelope of what is possible by approaching the issue from every direction possible.
If you enjoyed this blog post, please sign up for my email list to receive future updates.
Yours Truly,
Norell
Creator of 4-Way Massage Therapy & Bodywork
