03/04/2025
Well, for the last few years I have mostly ignored my FB business page. Upon log in, the page seems to have become overwhelmed by the bog of spam and hundreds of followers from India (um, hello, randommm, WTF?).
Anyway, I wrote this ditty to my clients not too long ago in case anyone cares. It's entitled, "Elbow Grease Has Saved My Life"
Here I am living and breathing massage therapy. If I’m not giving it, I am receiving it. Day in and day out, I grease these elbows with the perfect amount of Shea butter and attempt to divide the abnormal unions between membranous surfaces in people’s meat sacks. It’s safe to say that I know more than almost anyone just exactly how laborious and how time consuming breaking up serious fascial adhesions can be. Some of you may already be aware because I am quite open about it: but almost two years ago now I was diagnosed with chronic late stage Lyme disease.
For those of you who don’t know, Lyme is a vector borne disease caused by borrelia spirochetes that are commonly hosted by ticks. You can also be born harboring these parasitic bacteria depending on if your mother has been exposed. But when it comes to my bag of disease, I am not exactly sure when or where I got it, but it was sometime beyond 15 years ago. I have always been curious about bugs though, I can tell you that.
What I have come to learn is that spirochetes can bury into almost any tissue into the body. Which means that nearly all tissues and fascia can be infected, even the brain. Because we all have our different terrains, Lyme disease can look quite different from person to person and can range from completely disabling to high functioning but there are usually common symptoms between individuals such as: severe fatigue and pain.
Pain is a silent epidemic and very few in the medical community know how to effectively treat it. I often have to get 4 hours of bodywork a week for regular relief from pain and it works, even if I have to get it often. It does seem like a lot, and believe me, sometimes I say that the amount of bodywork I need isn’t humanly possible as very little area gets covered per session. Breaking up adhesions caused by overuse and longstanding inflammation is quite time consuming. Fascia is somewhat of a crystalline plastic structure, meaning that it can be manipulated, but breaking up the glue that binds adhesions together means that a lot of heat and friction has to be deployed to be effective. If you have spirochetes degrading your collagen while causing inflammation simultaneously, that makes for some ugly, disorganized fascia.
I have had to invent ways to come at my tissue because certain areas can be so difficult to hack. It’s also one of the reasons why I have had such a hard time finding bodyworkers to help me. They are really not in the business of truly helping others, or they lack the skills to actually do so. It has been a rather harrowing and difficult experience to discover how hard it is to actually get good help in this world. But for those out there to have been able to be there for me and help me through this tough sack of flesh, they have literally saved my life. I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I did not get regular bodywork and there’s a chance that I would have lost the will to live a long time ago if I didn’t have an avenue of relief. I have at times felt like my own neck was choking me from the inside because of such severe adhesions. I have had terrible debilitating headaches caused by reactions and food sensitivities that only elbows were able to dig me out of. There are times when I have been hardly able to be on my feet without pain or have found myself struggling in the knees to go up and down stairs. Extreme tightness in my back has impeded my ability to breathe fully or to stand up straight. Adhesions in my pectoralis muscles have given me anxiety, as well as the sensation of a fat baby sitting on my chest.
Miraculously, massage has been able to alleviate all forms of my pain and discomfort. Some of it might seem temporary, but progress does build over time as therapy is often meant to be ongoing at least for a period. 20+ years of adhesions don’t resolve in one session, and a sound movement practice is also necessary to keep the pain at bay. Of course, if it isn’t already apparent, certain medical conditions require that massage therapy be ongoing.
So, at this point you can ask yourself, would you rather receive bodywork from someone who intimately knows pain or from someone who does not? The LMT’s that I have met that did not experience chronic pain often have not done good work (I am sure there are exceptions!). Of course, I specifically cater to those who already know for themselves that deep myofascial massage works best for their needs. While it is foreign to me, I’m sure there are those out there who benefit from other forms of gentle manipulation but unfortunately that will never be me. All I know is hard work! Which makes me the embodiment of a needle in a haystack. I truly have a niche here, which is why it is rewarding when I come across a client who no one else has been able to help because they were unable to listen to what they truly needed. I was reminded of why I do this work very recently after someone sought help from me because everyone else was afraid of breaking up adhesions in their sternocleidomastoid for the last decade. Through my own experience, I knew just how much pressure and specificity is necessary to tackle the neck fascia. You’d be surprised at how much intensity the neck needs to truly be released.
Pain is a fact of life, but it doesn’t have to be forever. It can be remedied. Through grit, determination and discipline, we can significantly lessen pain by regularly getting bodywork and practicing movement modalities. Sometimes what is simple and natural is what offers the cure, as I am discovering through my journey in healing Lyme disease. Whenever I have sought the easy, or quick way out, or the expensive and technological, it has failed. I have been brought down back to earth recently by listening to all of those who have cured Lyme and their co-infections through bee venom therapy, and for the last couple of months, I have hopped on the bee train myself. Just a year ago, I was completely closed off to the idea of willingly stinging myself bees—that is, until I ran out of affordable options to treat the beast. Our minds have to be open to the strange and unfamiliar if we are to advance in life at all. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Sincerely,
Your massage witch
