I was excited! My wife Sharmon came home and said “Honey, I bought us some new bed pillows…”. How could there be anything not cool about that? Well this example will show you just how little it takes to mismanage a muscle, and what the consequences could be. So I’ll cut to the chase. I went to bed with my new pillow, and my first thought was “Hhhmm, it feels a lil’…weird, but ok, it’s new, let’s try it out for a night…”. The next morning upon awakening I discovered my right trapezius, neck, and shoulder muscles were very unhappy about the new accessory. I stretched, got ready for work, massaged it some with my Theracane, and figured it would smooth out. Over the course of the next 2 months, I would massage it, my wife worked on it, other therapists worked on it, and to this day it still is not 100% resolved. Me, a licensed massage therapist with tons of education, many self-care tools at my disposal and other therapists to trade with, I still could not fix myself. Granted, it wasn’t a life threatening injury, but it was painful, just not to the point that I created a treatment plan and followed through on my own advice. I would put a bandaid temp lil’ treatment to it, feel a lil better, and figure it would resolve on it’s own, but it didn’t. If I really wanted it to heal sooner, I would have made a few half hour session appointments with a massage therapist, no more than 3 days apart, and got some consistent work done on it. I’ve had clients come to me with muscle and nerve pain from sleeping on their own arm, from their DOG falling asleep on their arm, and these seem like simple, funny stories but the repercussions of just one night of poor positioning can linger for a very long time, and even cause permanent damage. Don’t be a casualty. If your gut instinct says you’ve got some strange new pain, get some help right away, get consistent, and schedule some massage therapy sessions ideally with no more than 3 days between sessions. Muscles have memory; if they’ve been in a certain position for a long time they will not realign to perfection with an hour massage session. They can be retrained though, and for a specific area, like just your arm, 30 minute sessions are ideal, saving time and money. So learn from my mistake, take injuries seriously, and beware of new bedroom accessories!
