Healing "Accupressure" Massage for Soft Tissue Injuries

by Craig Carmichael, April 12th 2006

Warning: this is a self-freatment technique which has been of great assistance to me personally, but for which the practitioner must take full personal responsibility. I will accept no liability for anything that happens to anyone who trys or uses it. It is intended to apply to long-term injuries to muscles, ligaments and tendons that aren't healing by themselves such as "bad backs", not such injuries as superficial cuts and bruises, for which it would be harmful. Be careful, take it slowly and gently and don't risk further aggravation or injury. If the treatment isn't helping in a reasonable trial period, stop.

There's probably nothing in this little write-up that isn't well known. But "well known" in selected circles, and known in general, by the afflicted or even the afflicted's doctor, aren't necessarily the same thing. So, since I've done a couple of other self-treatment writeups (on migraines and skin tags) and I've had good results with this treatment where nothing else has helped, I thought I'd add it. It's taken me about three or four hours to write after years of suffering, so if it helps one other person similarly improve the quality of his life through healing, it was an evening better spent than doing a crossword puzzle or watching TV.

Soft tissue injury #1: In about 1981, I was splitting firewood. It was tough wood. The back side of the axe handle was digging in between my right thumb and hand. When I went into the house, I discovered I could hardly move my right thumb. It was virtually paralyzed. It could push one direction okay, but not the other. It recovered to some extent, but it was always weak afterwards and I couldn't, for example, hold up a woodwind instrument by the thumbrest for a length of time without it being very weak and sore for quite a while afterwards. If I touched the area between the bone going from my wrist to my thumb and the rest of my hand, it was always very tender and sore, so I always avoided putting pressure on that area.

Injury #2: In 2000, I fell and lay unconscious for some time, and when I awoke, my back hurt so badly I could hardly move. Over some months it got better to a very limited degree. Ever since, if I treated it with great respect and avoided all stress, it would gradually improve. But the moment I did anything strenuous or repetitive over a period of time, it would be hurt again and would take weeks, even months, to "recover" and be more or less pain free again. "Repetitive" motions that would send it off included things like vacuuming, sweeping, wiping or mopping, leaning over the sink and doing dishes, playing violin, standing too long, and virtually anything that involved leaning or moving my arms much.

I was in the hospital after my accident, but no one suggested any effective treatment for my back. Later I went to my doctor, and he suggested I go swimming! This at a time I was paying someone to wash my dishes! He didn't even touch my back. I didn't go back to him. I went to a physiotherapist, and they put on a cold pack, and attached electrodes that made my back twitch, and I discovered when I got home that it had made it worse. Again, they did no exploration of my back to find where it hurt, and no manipulation or massage. I didn't go back there either. I went to a chiropractor. He said my back was out of alignment and did adjustments over several sessions. Then he said there was nothing more of interest about my back, everything was in place. That lasted until I had to do something physical. He could manipulate it back into place, however, anything I did would put it out again, just as before. It was still injured, so seeing the chiropractor was of very limited value.

Finally around the start of this year (2006) I started poking around my back with my thumb. It was hard reaching back there, but I found some very sore and tender spots, not right at the spine, but out a little to the left among my ribs, just inside of the left shoulder blade. Instead of staying away from the sore spots, I decided to press firmly yet gently on them and move my thumb back and forth a bit across them. The worst spots were very painful when pressed and took my breath away. I kept the pressure on them for about five to ten seconds. I just pressed, a little harder, a little softer - a small amount of back and forth rubbing came later. I expect this is what is meant by the term "accupressure": pressing in right on the spot that hurts with a fairly strong amount of pressure.

I repeated the process early the next day and was puzzled that I couldn't find the worst of the sore spots. A few hours later I tried again and there was less pain again! Every treatment was noticably progressively healing the sore spots, and they really just took 2, 3 or 4 pressings a day and in a few days or a week I was wondering whether they needed any more. Soon I was sure they didn't.

That wasn't the end of the story as I'd hoped. Too simple! A couple of weeks later I found another area of very sore spots at the lower end of the ribs. This was seemingly a fresh area; at least, I didn't remember it being sore in my first exploration when I found the upper sore spots.

Someone once told me that the back was like a tee shirt: tug the bottom left corner and everything moves and there's pressure on the top right shoulder - everything is connected to everything else, and every area affects every other. I guess the second area had got used to having extra slack, or tension, over the years since the original injury was leaving the first area loose, or tense, and which I had now been healing, But this is just theory. Whatever the cause, the lower sore spots responded to the massage treatment as had the upper.

After I had that feeling pretty good, I explored again, and found that now there were extremely sore areas to the right of the spine at the lower end of the ribs - right across from where I'd just been massaging. This time I knew they hadn't been there before, because I'd done a diagram of all the spots that hurt on my whole back, and there was nothing on the right side on the diagram. The moral of this story (if the problem is your back) is to check out the entire back more than once.

Whatever their cause, these spots also responded rapidly to the massages. Overall, over a couple of months, my back had been, not without skips and bumps, progressively improving.

A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly realized I was not only about to shampoo a carpet instead of just tolerating the dirt, but I was carrying the carpet cleaner up the stairs instead of dragging it, and had been carrying the vacuum cleaner instead of just pulling it by the hose as well, all without pain and with no thought or expectation of having any. My back was, essentially, fully functioning after six years of much misery.

As usual, the realization of such a major victory lead to overconfidence. I started doing heavier jobs like carrying quite heavy objects in the yard that I've wanted to move for a long time now, and trimming a large portion of the hedge in one session instead of doing just ten minutes worth and then quitting for the day. That's much more than I've ever attempted before during this century! Well, my back hurts again and the original sore spot is sore again. But this time, a little massage was already improving it again within a day, and I keep checking the other now-known areas, and I expect to be fine again quite soon, not in many weeks or months. If I don't keep injuring it, maybe in a few months, it will be if not 100%, at least 90%.

I recently attended an event where a company happened to be promoting "chair massages" for office workers, where they would come around periodically and give massages to office workers stiff from sitting around doing desk work. I talked to the company's manager about my massage "discoveries", and he said that was the right thing to do, but that most people never realize it, and instead are careful to avoid touching the tender spots. He said pressing and massaging them (as best I can recall) increases the blood flow, loosens up spasmed muscles, and breaks up scar tissue, so proper healing can take place.

There are probably good massage therapists out there who know all this, who take the trouble to explore a patient's back and find out where the problems are and to massage somewhat appropriately. Nobody referred me or suggested I should see a massage therapist, nor did I get the idea on my own to see one. I think medical practitioners are only human and there is a lot of ignorance about the function of various specialists by others who don't have that specialty.

However, without intending to impugne the undoubted benefits of professional massage therapy, the self massage has many benefits, if one can reach the affected area. If one goes for a massage therapy even once a week, which probably would be too often to be covered by most medical plans, there's still six days between visits when the back is being stressed by daily life and the healing from the massage is being undone. And the massage therapist has many patients and it must be difficult to keep track of what hurts where and how on whom. You can feel your own hurt spots directly, and you can massage them at any time, daily or even more often at the beginning when it's of the most value.

A note of caution: Be gentle with yourself. I'm sure it's possible to make an injury worse by overzealous treatment, so it's better to take it gently even at the risk of slower healing. At the other extreme, I'm also sure it's possible to be too timid and any slight healing that is done is soon eradicated by normal activity - you do need to break up any scar tissue and relieve any spasmed muscles. The best example of this would be not touching the sore spots at all. Finally I should say: if it isn't helping in a few days, stop. Try something else. Perhaps the problem is a different one than is aided by accupressure or massage.

A month or so after the enlightening talk with the massage expert, I thought of my sore right thumb, which was getting more stress than ever from working on my back. Gosh, it had been weak for, um, how many years? I went into the soft tissue area where thumb joins the hand with my left thumb and pressed. Wow! It was sore all over in there, from the bottom of the thumb to where the bones meet near the wrist! (BTW, I checked the same area below my left thumb - there was no similar pain anywhere.) After pressing/massaging this area rather frequently for just over a week, all the sore spots were gone. After twenty five years, my thumb is healed!