Dr. Schechter's Blog Blog 6: Dangers of Massage... Silent Massage

Originally posted: December 22, 2014

What could be more relaxing than a massage? A lovely thirty or sixty minutes of having someone coax your muscles to relax and in so doing allowing the tension and stress of the day (week) to dissolve, to melt out of your body. If only that feeling would last longer, right?

But sometimes I advise people NOT to have massage, or at least to only have "silent massages". What can go wrong. Ironically, it is often what the massage therapist says, and not what they do, that can hurt you. I believe these are well-meaning people, otherwise they wouldn't devote their efforts to massage other human beings.

However, well meaning or not, massage therapists often say things to their clients that can be detrimental to mind-body healing. Examples: "you have the tightest blank I've every seen" or ""maybe you should be checked for a disc?" or "definitely get to a doctor about this issue". Here's the thing. Massage therapists have some training-- anatomy and the like. They are not diagnosticians and they are not physicians.

When I treat people for pain, they are under a physician's care. They do not need this kind of input from a para-professional individual. The input can affect their ability to re program their brain toward healing and toward accepting the benign nature of their pain.

So here's what I suggest. Wear ear plugs (indicate to the therapist that you prefer a quiet experience). Connect to some peaceful music on an ipod/phone with ear buds (occlude outside noise). Alternative: politely ask the massage person not to speak to you (after you say hello). Say that you need the quiet to really relax. Say thanks at the end and avoid medical related discussion.

This seems strict but it can save a lot of work later in undoing negative ideas imprinted by the massage therapist. So try a "silent" massage, or skip it all together and go for a jog and a hot shower afterwards.

 

For a while, a few years ago, an "energy healer" worked on me to relieve my anxiety. He didn't say a word, he just played very relaxing computer
generated music while he moved his hands over my head and body. He was mentally telling me to be calm and it worked. It was a kind of massage.

An editor boss at the Chicago Tribune I worked with said he spent his lunch hour every day getting a massage. It drove away the morning's tension
and he returned to work refreshed so he was able to handle the afternoon.

A women I worked with on an assembly line of a factory when I was in high school said she took a week of her two-week annual vacation in a
hospital where she got a daily massage.

We can give ourselves mental and physical massages. I gently massage my head when I'm stressed. There are yoga massages we can give ourselves.