You don't want pain to steal away the enjoyment of playing music.
You certainly don't want to allow pain to try to threaten your music career!
Let massage therapy help restore the joy of comfort to your favorite activity, and all aspects of your life.
On a recent trip to see family on the east coast I was horrified to learn that a dear friend who lived to play music can no longer play even a single song due to severe hand and arm pain. Geography keeps me from helping him, but I can help you! Experience first hand the benefits of massage to relieve existing pain, or to help avoid future injury.
Massage Therapy can help!
- Identify and release tightness in muscles and tendons
- Increase comfortable range of motion
- Reduce stress and improve focus and concentration
How the physical activities involved in playing music can be related to pain:
Repetitive stress injuries (RSI) are pervasive among musicians. Hours and hours of practice over many years take a serious toll on the body and can lead to a wide variety of soft-tissue pain and injury conditions. However, the intense physical demands associated with musical performance are often overlooked.
A large number of musicians’ injuries occur to the upper extremities because this is the region of the body primarily used to play instruments. However, many also experience low-back and lower extremity issues as well, due to long hours sitting or standing.
Repetitive motion disorders occur as a result of performing a particular movement again and again. Consider the number of individual finger flexor motions involved for a pianist or guitarist to play a single piece of music, then consider how often that piece of music was practiced. Likewise, percussionists experience a large number of rapid elbow flexion and extension movements.
Chronic muscle tightness is another practice and performance-related type of injury. Numerous pathological disorders result from long periods of constant isometric muscle contraction. Flute players who must hold the instrument out to the side, violinists who grip the instrument between the chin and shoulder, drummers who’s hand muscles must stay in continuous contraction to hold the sticks can all suffer due to these constant muscle contractions that are way more than the body was designed for.
Guitar players who use a guitar strap can experience problems due to the weight of the instrument laying across their shoulder. This constant pressure on the thoracic nerve can lead to dysfunction and motor impairment of muscles involved with shoulder function, which can then effect hand function.
Musculoskeletal injury in musicians can be career ending, but it doesn’t have to be. Massage therapy has a great deal to offer to professional and non-professional musicians to help resolve existing issues as well as help avoid these potential issues from becoming a serious problem.*
Learn for yourself how therapeutic massage can help relieve pain and improve your quality of life:
Tightness, tension, adhesions and restrictions are released in muscle, tendon and fascia, relieving pressure on joints and nerves. This allows all structures in your body to relax and re-balance, restoring comfortable movement and encouraging the healthy healing response of your body to rebuild injured tissues.
* These statements are excerpted in part from “Fretting Over Musicians’ Injuries?” by Whitney Lowe in Massage & Bodywork, January/February 2012. To see full article: http://massagebodywork.idigitaledition.com/issues/22/100
