How does losing $300 a day because you can't work due to back pain sound to you? Or not being able to attend your son's baseball game because of headaches and aching shoulders and tired legs? Pretty horrible huh? You have the choice to change all that. You can take pain medicine to mask the pain, get relief for a few hours, but it will always come back.

Here is what massage can do for you. As Neuromuscular therapists we can locate pain nodules in your muscles that are causing your headaches or backaches. These nodules, sometimes referred to as "knots" refer pain to areas. Muscles lacking necessary oxygen are tired and weak and more suspectible to pain and inflammation. Chronic inflammation can cause scar tissue. This all means that you will have less flexibility, limited degree in which you can move your body and pain. Reaching over to grab that salt shaker can hurt, turning your neck to check for traffic while driving becomes impossible or even standing for long periods of time at a meeting can cause gut-wrenching pain. Massage can help relieve the pain for good.

Your body is as healthy as what you put in it and how well you care for all the units that make you whole. Without your muscles functioning properly, daily activities become difficult and painful. How much do you value your body?

I get asked this question often. Why do I get these knots and what causes them? The answer is not simple. Many factors can cause the knots to form. Simply put, Stress.

Stress is defined as a specific response by the body to a stimulus, as fear or pain, that disturbs or interferes with the normal physiological equilibrium of an organism, according to dictionary.com. I'm sure we can all relate to that statement.

In the environment, our bodies are inheritly designed so that we can respond to a threat in our environment. Our defenses goes up to respond to that immediate threat and when the threat is gone the body relaxes.

How Stress can damage is the fact that the threat never goes away and thus the body is always in defense mode. Your shoulders are always tense, you don't eat well and you don't sleep well and you need sleep to let your body repair itself. These knots forms because your muscles lack enough food, rest, and are constantly contracting because it perceives a threat in the environment.