Great Results with Integrated Massage Modalities

I wanted to share the great results of some work I did with a client last week. I have been incorporating a few basic craniosacral techniques into my sessions lately, and the improvement both my clients are I are seeing is very exciting. As I continue to perfect more techniques, I will add more into my sessions to provide more long lasting effects from the bodywork.

Now, onto my client story. This client has been scrubbing floors, cleaning out underneath bathroom counters (who doesn't need to do this??), and hauling boxed items up multiple flights of stairs. My body begins to hurt just listening to all the fun this client has been having lately!

My client complained of pain on the inside of the knee on her right leg, and very tight hamstrings. Her shoulders and upper back were also tight, but her main concern for the session were her legs and knee pain.

Initially, I spent a few minutes assessing her hamstrings. With the client lying flat on her back, I was able to raise her left leg to about an 80 degree angle before her knee starting buckling. Not great flexibility in her left hamstring, but her real problem was the right leg. When I raised the right leg, the knee started buckling at just under a 30 degree. Wow...was that possible? Lifting the leg just this little distance caused considerable pain in the inside of the clients' knee. I knew I had my work cut out for me.

Before I left the room and when the client was still fully clothed, we did a muscle energy technique (MET) for the hamstrings. In this procedure I asked my client to contract her hamstring against the light resistance I applied to her hamstring. This was repeated 3 times with the goal being to stretch the muscle further each time. We made a little progress with the MET, but there was a lot more work to do. I then left the room and the client got herself ready under the sheet and blanket.

We began the session with some very gentle and relaxing decompression techniques for the cranial bones (bones of the head) with the client facing up towards the ceiling. These techniques are used to help inner ear dysfunction, balance problems, headaches, distortion in the shoulder girdle, and pelvic distortions, just to name a few! I wanted to make sure the shoulder and back areas were addressed, as I wasn't sure how long the legs/knee work would take. By including the cranial decompression, I was hoping the muscles around the shoulder joint and upper back would start releasing before I got around to working on those areas.

After about 20 - 30 minutes working on the cranial bones, I spent a few minutes releasing the shoulder joint and elbow joint (the client's forearms were SO tight and she didn't even mention this during our pre-session interview). The forearms loosened nicely with these moves and a few minutes of additional bodywork.

Next, I asked the client to turn over so she was laying on her stomach. It was now time to relax the hamstrings. I performed some friction on the ischial tuberosity (the "sitting" bones) and the lower attachments of the hamstrings around the knee. After I felt the attachments of the hamstrings release or soften, I performed some light gliding strokes up the bellies of the hamstrings. How odd...the bellies felt pretty good without the taut bands of muscle I was expecting. The client also noted there was only minimal discomfort over most of the hamstring. We did spend some time on a few trigger points in the hammies and also in the gluteals that released pretty easily.

At about 1 hour 10 minutes into our session, I finally reached the shoulders and back of my client. I felt we had made great progress on the hamstrings and knee since there was no longer any client discomfort during the massage. Once again, I was amazed with how good the shoulder and back muscles felt before even starting to work in the area. The cranial decompression and shoulder joint mobilization performed at the onset of our session released the muscles before I even touched the bellies of the muscles. I was able to finish up the session performing more of a relaxing session as our real work was done.

After the 90 minute session was complete, we re-assessed the hamstrings. Now the left leg reached just under a 90 degree angle...not bad as it moved from around 80 degrees to 90. What amazed both of us was that the right leg (remember, it was under a 30 degree angle when first assessed), was now at 90 degrees also! The hamstring had lengthened considerably in the 90 minute session.

I'm really excited about continuing to include more craniosacral techniques into my sessions, especially if they're going to give my clients these kind of results. Not only did my client have no pain in her knee immediately following her session, her hamstrings didn't feel tight to her, her shoulder and back pain diminished and her forearms were ready to do some more cleaning! I followed up with my client the next day. She said she took an epsom salt bath that night and woke up feeling great...still no knee pain!

In addition to the craniosacral work I did on this client, I included sports massage (MET's), neuromuscular therapy and swedish massage for a fully integrated session.