The other day I was walking through the house and I felt something I’ve never felt before. It was a shot of electricity to the right of my spine, between my shoulder blades, so forceful that I doubled over in pain and could barely breathe. “Not good”, I kept repeating to myself, “not good at all”. The problem with being a massage therapist is that our bodies are our tools. We have to focus on having good posture (we tend to lean over our clients a lot), on using our core to move and control pressure and making sure we have proper body alignment and good stance when practicing. It’s a lot!

I felt like this might be a nerve impingement around the scapula of my shoulder so I decided (assuming it wasn’t disc/spine related) that my first plan of action was to rest. The next day I made an appointment with Brian and had him work specifically on my rhomboid muscles. Rhomboids help retract and rotate the scapula.  Compared to other back muscles [like the trapezius (traps) or latissimus dorsi (lats)], rhomboids are relatively small. Small muscles a lot of times mean very tight muscles and tend to cause a lot of discomfort when aggravated. Thankfully, my MT gently worked and manipulated my rhomboids, as well as other muscles that assist with keeping that floating scapula in place. After massaging and doing some range of motion (ROM) testing, I felt tremendous relief. I’m grateful I was able to control the pain with massage.