For years I have had a knot under my right shoulder-blade and I’ve tried everything: deep tissue massage, heat treatment, even those orange knobbly balls you can use to “self massage” against a wall. Result, temporary relief but nothing that ever lasted.
Last week I decided to try something different. A colleague had recommended a local masseuse who uses the Ancient Thai Massage technique. So I trotted along.
At first, it seemed like the usual stuff. Find the knot, put pressure on it using the point of her elbow, render me incapable of moving, find the next point, repeat… (who needs torture implements when an elbow in the right place will do the trick…?)
Then she started to work on my neck and that’s where things became interesting. There is a point in my, and your, neck that when pressed sends an electric shock-like feeling down the arm. It hurts, big time. But when it was over, the knot behind my shoulder-blade was gone, as was the pain I had been enduring in my right arm and wrist – a bit of RSI, I thought. To be put up with…
After I had scrapped myself off the table and was able to mutter coherently again, I asked her what she had done. Her response? “We have to go to the cause. You can massage the symptom and it will feel good for a while but if you want to fix the problem, you have to find the cause. In this case, in the neck.”
Using consultants is the same. If you tell them the symptom, they can massage where it hurts and make it feel good for a while. But one thing is guaranteed, you will need them back again.
Better, find a consultant who will help you identify the cause. It might hurt a bit more in the short term but the problem you thought you had will disappear, along with several others you were quietly enduring…
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