12/29/2025
A few months into working as a massage therapist, I started sleeping on a terrible mattress and waking up with debilitating back pain. I started working out on a regular basis, thinking it was simply pain from being out of shape and starting a labor-intensive job. I worked out regularly and consistently for 6 months with no results. I was under the supervision of a personal trainer and my doctor. We were measuring weight, muscle mass, fat—all the metrics. Nothing was moving. I want progressing. I couldn’t lift more weight or do more reps.
Then I met another massage therapist who was interested in trading services, and we started trading weekly. 90 minutes. Around the same time, I attended a workshop on weightlifting given by my personal trainer, and during the workshop he mentioned rehab level routines for when you are recovering from injury. Something clicked in my brain, and I discussed creating a rehab style workout to ease the load on my body as I was transitioning from a sedentary lifestyle to a more active one. I was also beginning to understand that my body was struggling with widespread inflammation.
It was about 6 weeks later that I really started to notice a difference. I was able to move from the lightest resistance band to the heaviest in my workouts. While on the massage table, I heard my stomach growl for the first time in literally years, which is a sign of “rest and digest” or the body in parasympathetic nervous system activation. My body had been stuck in “fight-or-flight” for who knows how long. When we finally measured my metrics again (we had stopped because it was so frustrating to see no progress), I had lost 14 lbs, almost all of it being fat loss.
I also noticed a difference in pain. I was still walking up incredibly stiff (I was still sleeping on the crappy mattress), but as soon as I started moving, the stiffness melted away. My hip pain was not nearly as present, and I was having more and more pain free days.
Massage changed my life, and I know there are people out there in similar situations to mine that could be helped by adding massage to their wellness plan.
