Trigger Point Massage

Trigger Point Therapy with Rieko Oshima-Barclay

Have you ever had muscle stiffness, maybe tried wrenching your neck in an attempt to wiggle your way out of discomfort, or asked a friend or partner to dig into that annoying sore spot or “knot” in your back? If so, then you already have some experience with ‘Trigger Points’. Trigger points are a key component of many forms of chronic muscle tension including headaches, neck, shoulder and lower back pain, and they can become quite vicious if left untreated.

One of their characteristic features is to produce unusual symptoms in strange locations. This odd phenomenon of pain spreading from a trigger point to another site is called ‘referred pain’. Although their true nature is uncertain, the main theory is that a trigger point is a small patch of tightly contracted muscle, an isolated spasm affecting just a tiny patch of muscle tissue (as opposed to a whole muscle spasm).

Trigger Point Therapy covers a variety of different treatment methods that aim to breakdown and weaken these trigger points, thereby releasing the muscles that they are housed within. Massage Therapy is one such method in which pressure is typically applied to specific areas of tension or sensitivity. Other massage-based techniques may be offered such as Myofascial Release and may include the use of Western Medical Herbalism.

It is not unusual for people to experience a significant reduction in pain after just one treatment of massage with Trigger Point Therapy.

Trigger Point Therapy as part of Soft Tissue Therapy with Mary Brooking

Trigger Point Therapy is one of the techniques used, if appropriate, within both Sports Massage and Remedial Massage, together with a variety of other techniques, based on an assessment and evaluation of a client’s soft tissue condition and understanding their needs.