From Stuck to Unstuck

Massage therapists often meet people who are stuck – stuck shoulders, stuck vertebrae, stuck glutes.

And we see the pathology that stuck creates – abnormal gaits, painful bending, leaning torsos, migraines, etc. There’s nothing more satisfying for a massage therapist than to get the stuck out and restore normal function to muscles, joints and ultimately, the entire person.

The young mom who worked her way through college delivering the morning paper. She would start at 3 a.m. folding the papers and then drove around tossing newspapers out the window of her subcompact. Her right serratus anterior felt like half of a softball stuck to the ribcage.

            

The businessman who decided to play poker with a certain well-known and ruthless local developer. He won, but his middle scalenes lost. His symptoms: pain radiating from the neck and head down into the rib cage and shoulder.

            

This lady worked out a lot and enjoyed a wonderful Hawaiian vacation – cliff-diving for most of a day. It wasn’t the first dive that got her. Maybe the 50th? She had lost track, but her traps and levator scapula were holding onto that last dive. It was not a fun plane ride back to the mainland.

            

A woman who had good-sportingly gone on the company’s team-building retreat. Hey, that shoulder had not moved more than a few inches in years. Then two of her teammates grabbed her arms to help her over the wall on the obstacle course. Gung-ho! The next day, after sleeping in a tent, her subscapularis had cemented itself to her ribs.