Massage Last Friday, A Recommendation

Like so many people, I have lower back problems, mostly because humans are underdesigned for this whole Walking Upright business. They went away for a long time here in the UK, but gaining some muscle weight has shifted the balance of my spine, and they are back.

commonpeople posted recently that a FOAF is a massage therapist, properly trained, and formerly employed at spa in NYC with celebrity customers, and now in London wanting to work again, and doing a ridiculously cheap special. I am always up for trying bodywork from highly experienced people at bargain prices. And yes do I need the work done.

I took the Tube out to Ealing Common, which is quite the trip from Central London, and ended up in a beautiful large room in a big house talking to Jenne about my diagnosis of lifelong mild spondylosis, my physical therapy, and the following years of just making the back stronger as a way to deal with the fact that the nerves, as my PT put it, lie to me and tell me the back is way more fragile than it actually is, that cleaning last week that had me bend forward a lot which just did not help. And oh yes, I did straight-legged deadlifts that morning, just so it would be in an extra special state for her.

I didn't ask for a nice relaxing massage, although I am sure she could do them with her work history. I asked for deep work, and didn't offer much other guidance, see what she would find or fix. From the first touch of her elbow on my back -- I recognized what was touching me as an elbow because I could also feel where her hands were -- I realized Something Was Going To Happen. Her very methodical work showed us that the problems start way higher than I ever realized in the last 30 years, and that this week they were pretty solidly baked in. She did think she had found some interesting lateralization of the issues, but I had to disappoint her: the pains happily change sides, and this week it was simply on the left. She diagnosed some very specific muscles as being confused into being in an always-on state when they shouldn't be, and I just looked it up on Wiki that indeed, it is the QLs which she mentioned along which, on various points, the pain always happens. Which solves the mystery for me why the discomfort is always the same kind of sensation but always in subtly different places: it's just a different part of the same big muscle that is unable to cope this week. I never would have known without her, and she easily got to them even though they are buried below other tissue.

This was the most intense deep bodywork I have ever had. Jenne was completely unrelenting in the daunting face of buffed-up and now overworking cramped-up core supporters, she would not stop or lay off -- I swear she held one point without any fluctutaion in pressure for over a minute till the goddam muscle gave up and flowed already. When I came off the table my body was very unsure how to do that whole standing upright, as she had effectively pushed muscles into states of normalcy they were not used to. I moved as if I was a stiff 80 year old (pinkfish knows exactly what that looks like) because I had no idea what the new limits were and was protecting as much as I could: everything along the base of my spine was alive going WTF PEOPLE WHAT THE HELL IS THIS MOMMY! I could feel something was going to be worked out.

During the Tube ride back just sitting upright had made my back feel familiar enough to itself for me to feel secure again. I came home and sat behind the computer and soon felt I needed a brief nap. I woke up 2.5 hours later, forced myself to be awake so as to not completely screw up my rhythm, and then slept 10 hours more as if in a coma. Something was being worked out. Last night I slept 11 hours again. Today I walked all day around the cohoclate festival in Southwark and noticed it was my legs that were getting tired. This is novel.

There's gonna be more of this. We need to find out more about what is going on here. Yeah, I want to have her work on me again, you bet.