How To Give A Medical Massage

What we need to do is we need to diagnose a problem. As it's a medical massage, we need to work with a specific problem, so I'll need a volunteer. Okay, we have our client here, Teri.

Could you please tell us what the problem is?
Teri: I've got pains on my left shoulder if I stand for a long time, if I carry a heavy bag, but this is the shoulder I naturally carry my bag on.
Tim: Right, so it's a postural pain.
Teri: And I do have postural as well.


Tim: Okay, so it keeps on being reinforced by standing up and the weight of the shoulder.
Teri: Yeah.
Tim: Is there any weather condition that makes it worse? Is it worse in cold weather, damp weather?
Teri: No, I haven't noticed that it's bad.


Tim: And how long have you had it for?
Teri: About eight years, seven years.
Tim: Eight years. Okay.

And what's the nature of the pain?
Teri: It's like a dull ache. If you touch it, it can feel numb, sometimes.
Tim: Okay.

So it's a dull ache, roughly around here. And does it spread anywhere?
Teri: No, not really. Usually it's like a hand, like the size of a hand print.


Tim: The size of a hand print. Okay. Alright, so we've got enough information to form a basic diagnosis.

So what we're going to do is we're going to do some Chinese medical massage techniques for working with this particular problem. So, do you want to turn around? We've changed seats so that we can get you a better look at what's going on in this area. So we're going to palpate the area first, and we're going to try and feel any difference between the left and the right side.

And we can feel, indeed, there's a hard, tight area just in this area here. So what we want to do is we want to work with a nice technique that's going to break up any tightness and fullness. So we're going to start off with a little bit of nafa.

And nafa is a technique where we pinch and we release. We pinch and we release. And this should have a very nice dispersing effect on this fullness here.

It's been here for eight years so it's quite chronic, so we suspect that either it's reinforced with constant use of her handbag covering over one shoulder or there's another underlying cause that we need to investigate later. But this is - it's very summary; we're just going to give a brief introduction to medical massage. So once we feel it's starting to respond, starting to warm up, we can start using a host of other techniques and it's starting to shift now.

We can feel that fullness releasing. And I can feel that it's just a little bit intense here, so we'll just disperse that with a little bit more of a big area, using rofa circling techniques. And what we're doing with rofa is we're just moving the surface of the skin.

So with the palm of our hand, working, and we can also use other techniques. There's another technique which is extremely useful in this situation called gunfa, which takes a little bit of practice. So I just need to change position to get the right height to work with the next technique which is called gunfa.

And with that, it should feel like I'm rolling a ball on the surface of her neck. And again, we want to focus on the area where the major problem is, which is this big knot just between the shoulder blade and the spine, just a little bit above. And as we've got a blockage to this local area, we're very often going to have blockages further down, so we need to explore what's happening down the arm, down into the hand, and ideally down the back and down the legs, but in this case, as we're short on time, we're just going to work down the arm.

So I'm just going to come round to the front. Okay, now I've got the arm and we're just going to explore down the arm. So if you'd like to relax your arm? Very good.

And we're going to explore the major articulations, so we're going to explore all the area of the shoulder girdle and we can feel there's a lot of tension in spots just in front and behind the shoulder blade. And as