Massage

I have a bad shoulder which I think I injured playing football in high school in my sophomore year. A guy landed on my right shoulder and I was kinda crushed between that guy and the ground. My left shoulder definitely took the brunt of the impact. For a couple of years I didn't really have any pain but there must have been some lingering damage as there is definitely pain there now, and there has been for almost a decade.

I take a couple Tylenol once in a while if the pain gets too bad, which doesn't happen much, but occasionally, and actually sitting here writing now is one of those times, the pain builds and builds and even when it gets better, it doesn't get all the way better, and the next time the pain is worse because it starts with pain that's already there and I have an amazing amount of pain for days on end that I don't get relief from even when I'm asleep, and the only thing that relieves any of it at all is a massage. Wow, a 102 word sentence to express that my shoulder bothers me sometimes. To be honest, I noticed the length of that sentence about 1/3 of the way through and decided to just let it go to see where it ended up. Pretty proud of that myself, but let's get back on topic.

So now for me I don't just like massage, I actually need a massage from time to time. Now as a connoisseur let me say that not all massage is created equal. A good massage is more than just rubbing a muscle or flexing a tired joint, the whole point of it is relief. If you don't feel better after a massage, it wasn't. I've had a few people people rub my shoulders who should honestly be deprived of the use of their hands for the rest of their lives for what they did to me in the name of massage.

I've got a shiatsu machine that only does one motion, but if my shoulder gets really bound up, nothing works it out like an hour on the machine. I think my record is about 3 hours loosening, and I felt better for the better part of a year. Shiatsu is actually a form of reflexology, which I've heard of but don't really know too much about other than it does work and makes me feel good.