Often times when clients come to me they are in dire straits.
Their pain is so debilitating that they are unable to work, sleep, or function normally. This tends to stem from long-term chronic holding patterns and neglect. Usually, when you are at this degree of dysfunction multiple subsequent sessions are required to retrain the body out of this cycle of chronic pain.
In my experience, retraining the body is like retraining a toddler. It gets worse before it gets better. One of the keys in this retraining is appropriate repetition inside an optimal window.
“Massage is most effective if you receive a second session in the window between days 3 and 5.
This helps to reinforce the new habits of muscle release from the first session.”
After the initial session of unwinding and retraining the muscles, it is my experience that the client will feel significant or noticeable relief for the first one to two days. In between days 3 to 5 the symptoms will begin to return as the body reverts back to its old habits. It is most effective to receive a second session in this window between days 3 and 5 to reinforce the new habits of muscle release from the first session.
Depending on the severity of the client’s pain, repetitive pair treatments may be required until the body embraces the new pain-free habits over the old chronically painful ones. We schedule these sessions one at a time based on the individual progress of each client.
There is no way to know how quickly each person will respond because everybody is different. As always, I encourage my clients to listen to their body and book an additional massage session when they feel like they need it.
Occasionally I encounter a skeptic. They may question why I recommend that they come in so often or why they are not getting results as quickly as they hoped.
My response to them is usually this: give me as many months of regular massage treatments as you did years of neglecting your body and THEN tell me that what we’re doing is not working. All things considered, that is a relatively quick reversal of habitually chronic pain.
