5 Self Massage Moves for Back and Neck Pain

Whether it be to work out sore muscles, help relax your tense body, or simply because it can clear your mind, a massage works wonders. While getting weekly, biweekly, or even monthly massages from a licensed massage therapist in New York City, or any city, might seem like the only option, in fact, you can actually practice self-massage therapy. It helps you along with a licensed massage therapist. Doing these self-massage techniques can help to complement the therapy you’re doing with a licensed therapist. Whether you are experiencing chronic neck pain or excruciating back pain, save yourself the time and money and learn different self-massage moves.

• Back of the Neck Pain

Neck pain can be one of the most irritating things to deal with because of the delicate area that it sits, between the back and head. Self massage can do wonders for this area to supplement a neck pain massage in New York. To help soothe this pain, take two to three scarves or towels and maneuver them into a braid-like shape. From this point you will place them behind your neck and move it up and down, helping to release tension.

• Upper Back Pain

Upper back pain can be caused by many different things, including

• Stress
• Lack of sleep
• Shoulder problems
• And many more issues.

To correct this yourself, stand against a wall and place a tennis ball between your justify shoulder blade and spine. Once this is set up, press your body against the ball and move up and down and side to side, keeping it relatively in the same area. After this is done, repeat it on the right side and your upper back pain should begin to lessen.

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How To Find a Chiropractor or Acupuncturist During The Holidays

David Weintraub, LMT & Owner at Bodyworks DW, writes about how to find effective pain management when you are traveling away from NYC. Read below!

What do you do when your back goes out and you are away from home?!

If you are reading this, odds are you are in New York City. And quite possibly already a happy massage therapy client at our studio. We think our blogs are relevant and important info. But we’d be fooling ourselves if we thought that Google would show them much outside of our home turf, NYC. For many of you, you already know what to do when you back (or other area) goes out of whack. Book a massage with our team of talented therapists for back pain massage in the New York area! When you are out of NYC, we recommend working with a chiropractor or acupuncturist instead. And we’ll show you how to find a good chiropractor or acupuncturist! Travel is tough on our bodies. And holidays with family can often add even more stress into the picture. It’s not at all uncommon for injuries to crop up while away from home. There are a lot of possible causes: 

• Different mattresses and pillows than you are used to
• Long plane flights crammed into uncomfortable seats
• Eating foods outside your normal diet
• Being thrown into other people’s schedule
• Your uncle/aunt/mother/grandfather asking you repeatedly why you haven’t gotten married/had kids/gotten a promotion/found a partner/insert existential dread here…..

Counterintuitively, we don’t recommend getting a massage if you are away from NYC and in real pain. Before we show you how to find a chiropractor or acupuncturist instead, we need to tell you why!

Why we recommend chiropractic care or acupuncture instead of massage while out of New York

If you are just feeling sore and tired from a long flight, by all means go ahead and book a massage at a spa nearby. Most massage therapists around the country, and frankly the world, have enough training to provide a decent relaxing full body massage. However, if you are in real pain, you need to make sure you find someone who has the training and experience to help you. New York State massage therapists have much higher education requirements that most other states. New York requires a minimum of 1000 hours of training to complete school and get a license. Most other states only require between 500-700 hours. That extra 300-500 hours of training makes a real difference. Between being able to provide medical massage vs a spa massage. Of course, it’s totally possible that you will end up with someone great and experienced, but it can be a gamble.

Massage Therapy does not have national standards. So don’t count on other states having therapists at the level you are used to in New York!

There is no national standard for massage therapy (yet). There are minimum national requirements for chiropractors and acupuncturists. Both disciplines routinely deal with pain management. If you find someone with a decent number of 5 star reviews on Google, you’ll likely walk away with less pain. While there is still no way to guarantee you’ll get what you need the odds are higher. And if you follow our guide on how to find a chiropractor or acupuncturist, you’ll have an even greater chance of walking out pain free. In states with lower requirements for massage therapy, you’ll have to rely solely on recommendations and reviews. And on their having taking advanced training courses. These courses often use language that is hard to decipher. If you aren’t up on the latest terms (pediatric oncology massage, traditional kinesiology, etc….anyone?) it will be hard to tell what you are getting.

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Bodyworks DW Medical Massage Midtown is Moving!

 

Your favorite NYC medical massage therapists are moving to a new, expanded studio in midtown West 🙂

We’ve had a good run in our 1 room midtown east studio, meeting new clients, and providing our top quality medical massage therapy to those of you who live uptown. However, along with the ups of our midtown location, there have been some downs. Noisy neighbors. Less than great lighting in the waiting area and hallways. A long walk from the waiting area to our treatment room. And from what we’ve been hearing from folks, “too far East.”

It was time to expand and find a space with the same chill vibe as our home in Fidi. After a couple of months of searching around near our current space, we just didn’t see anything we liked. So we started looking at other neighborhoods. Turns out midtown west is rather underserved for high quality massage therapy.

We searched around and finally found the Arts Building at 336 West 37th Street. It’s a really great loft building, with a variety of fun tenants. They’ve got high ceilings and hardwood floors throughout, and nice old architectural details like exposed brick in the hallways. We liked them, and they liked us. So we signed on for a new space to call our medical massage midtown home in suite 540!

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The Benefits of Sports Massage: NYC Client Experiences

Germain Phanord, LMT at Bodyworks DW, writes about the immense benefits of getting a medical sports massage at Bodyworks DW. Read below!

Benefits of Sports Massage: NYC Client Stories

New Yorkers are a special breed. We pound it out at the office, then pound it out at the gym. Or yoga studio, pool, court, field, etc. Sports massage in New York helps reduce your pain by improving circulation of blood and lymph throughout the body. And especially to sites of current or former injuries that have restricted blood flow (ischemia). This assists your body in removing metabolites and other toxins.

Your heavily exercised muscles lose their capacity to relax over time. Which requires more of your effort and energy when moving. The lack ability for muscles relax is linked to soreness, and predisposes you to injuries. Especially muscle pulls and tears!

 

A regular routine of sports massage therapy is very effective in combating these effects.

Sports massage frees your muscles to move your joints more openly and efficiently. It also introduces new sensory information into your system. A system that is normally locked into its own patterns.

There are many benefits of sports massage. It can help you recover from injury and prevent new injuries. It helps make your complex human machine perform optimally with less pain in any activities. Running faster, jumping higher, and hitting balls harder all with greater endurance are just some of the benefits of sports massage.

 

There is such a thing as “too deep”

At the studio we see lots of common injuries like stiff necks, rotator cuff injuries, runner’s knees, and Achilles tendinitis. During your massage, you may find some of the work uncomfortable. It may even have painful moments, depending on your threshold and how tight your muscles are. Keep in mind this discomfort should always be bearable.

If you have to tense up just to handle it, that’s not actually going to give you a better result. The best work is done at a level that is slightly uncomfortable and you can breathe through it and keep your muscles relaxed. It is not uncommon to find that your muscles ache for a day or two after a sports massage. Keeping well hydrated and mobile will help this pass quickly. You’ll feel more freedom of movement after and see better performance than before!

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How to Take the Benefits of Medical Massage Home with You

 

David Weintraub, LMT and owner of Bodyworks DW, writes

David Weintraub

about how you can take the benefits of your medical massage home with you. Stay ahead of your pain!

Medical massage in New York with a NYC licensed massage therapist should be a regular and valuable part of your self care routine. Let’s face it...New Yorkers are not known for doing things gently. We work long hours, slam weights at the gym, and then maybe hit back to back yoga classes. And while this additive approach to health does have it’s benefits, it’s not restorative and our bodies need time to heal. Here are some of our best at home and at work practices for taking the benefits your medical massage home with you!

A great medical massage helps to relax both your muscles and your nervous system. It gives your brain time to switch out of your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight!). And engages your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) in a way that has benefits for long after the massage.

In a perfect world we would all get massages every other day and feel fantastic 🙂 Given the reality of time and money this is simply not going to happen. However, there are plenty of practices you can take on to extend the great results of your massage between sessions. These will assist you in feeling great, allow you to go longer between massages, and help keep you from getting injured.

Restorative practices to take the benefits of medical massage home with you

Lying Down with Your Feet up on a Chair

This is the number 1 homework assignment we give to all of our stressed out massage clients! It’s super easy, and it’s a great excuse to chill out a bit every day. We spend so much time sitting, our muscles get locked up in a sitting position. Which helps us sit, but is terrible for just about everything else we try to do.

Lying down with you lower legs on a chair puts us in the same position as sitting but without needing to hold ourselves up in gravity. It passively shortens our psoas muscle (main hip flexor), quads, hamstrings, and calves. When you shorten a muscle but don’t make it do any work it gets to completely relax. It usually takes 4-5 minutes for your nervous system to chill enough to truly let go of your muscles. We recommend doing this for 5-8 minutes every night before bed to help you get a really good night's sleep!

All of our clients who have taken this practice on notice really huge results in about 2-3 weeks. Decreased low back pain or tension, better sleep, easier mood. Check out this video to see what it looks like and give it a try!

Contrast Hydrotherapy

Contrast hydrotherapy is a great way to take the benefits of medical massage home with you. It involves alternating applications of heat and cold to an area (or your whole body). The heat opens up blood vessels and tissues and relaxes the nervous system. The cold constricts the blood vessels and tissues and excites the nervous system. Alternating back and forth between them creates a pumping system for the area. This draws out damages such as bruising and brings in new blood with nutrients. The contrast creates a greater therapeutic result than either heat or cold alone.

Local contrast hydrotherapy for acute conditions anywhere on the body

1. Apply a heat pack to the area for 5 minutes
2. Apply an ice pack or rub an ice cube into the area for 1 minute
3. Repeat this 3 times, ending on ice

Local contrast hydrotherapy for carpal tunnel syndrome or ankle sprains

1. Get two washbasins large enough to be able to place your whole forearm or feet into
2. Fill one with hot water (as hot as you can stand)
3. Fill the other with cold water (as cold as you can stand)
4. Dunk you whole forearms into the hot basin so that the water is above the elbow (or your whole foot so that the water is above the ankle)
5. Hold for 5 minutes
6. Dunk area into the cold basin for 1 minute
7. Repeat 3 times, ending on cold

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