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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