I'm a big believer in bodywork as an occasional (or regular!) complement to body-mind practices (like yoga). If you are lucky enough to find a fabulous massage therapist who you trust and enjoy working with, that's a fabulous way to invest in yourself and your well-being. However, there are times when it's great to be able to help yourself!
To that end, may I recommend: self-massage with a tennis ball. A time-honoured trick and a good way to get yourself lying on the floor and breathing deeply (both really therapeutic things, in my opinion)!
Here's a good article that provides some detail and instruction. An excerpt, for quick reference:
Lie down on a tennis ball, placing it in approximately the right location. “Explore” by moving slowly and gently, until you’ve got just the right spot. Trust your intuition. If it feels like the right spot, it probably is.
The sensation should be clear and strong and satisfying; it should have a relieving, welcome quality — this is what we call “good pain.”
The key to successful tennis ball technique is to achieve a “release” by applying just the right amount of pressure: enough to do some good, but not enough to irritate the knot. The sensation should be clear and strong and satisfying; it should have a relieving, welcome quality. This is what we call “good pain.” If you are wincing or gritting your teeth, you need to be more gentle. You need to be able to relax.
Once you have adjusted yourself to achieve the right pressure, relax as much as possible and wait for the sensation to fade to at least eighty percent of the original intensity. This is the “release” — a change in the physiological state of the tissues, or a “melting” of the knot. This can take anywhere from ten seconds to several minutes.
The same therapist, Paul Ingraham of Vancouver, also offers (for $15) an article on Myofascial Pain Syndrome and how to begin to help yourself out of it. Perhaps this describes your experience?
If you have any problem with chronic muscle pain or pain that comes and goes and then always comes back, if you have an injury that seems like it should have been healed ages ago, if you have strange aches and pains that have never really had a good explanation … please keep reading! This tutorial is the most detailed and readable trigger point information for patients available anywhere online.
Since that above description describes me TO A TEE (that pain he describes is what led me to start Yoga for Geeks in the first place, actually), I may actually purchase his ebook and try out his recommendations. If I do, I'll report back with results...
