When you need a doctor first, not a massage therapist
An honest conversation matters more than a booking. There are situations where massage is not merely useless but can do harm, and where a doctor comes first:
- the pain started after a serious injury, a fall or an accident;
- weakness in a leg or arm is increasing and the limb does not obey properly;
- numbness around the groin, or changes in bladder or bowel control — this is an emergency;
- the pain comes with fever, sudden weight loss, or does not settle at night in any position;
- you have a cancer diagnosis, a thrombosis, or you take anticoagulants.
If any of this describes you, message me by all means — but see a doctor first. I will say exactly the same thing in the room, and you will have lost time and money to hear it.
Why the pain keeps coming back
The most common story in my practice sounds like this: "it helped, but not for long." The reason is almost always the same.
Pain rarely lives where it hurts. A muscle that stopped working quietly hands its load to its neighbour. The neighbour pulls for two for months, then goes into spasm — and that is what hurts, even though it is not what broke. Massage releases the spasm and the person feels better, but the switched-off link is still switched off. A week or two later the overload puts everything back where it was.
That is why the logic in every section below is the same: first find what is not working, then clear the consequence, then give the work back to what went offline. You can skip the first step — but then you will be coming back.