While massage therapy can benefit people from all walks of life, those suffering from chronic pain usually require a more individualized and unique therapeutic approach. Sometimes your pain problems may be too chronic for swedish massage therapy or too centralized for deep tissue massage. If your pain is too severe for traditional forms of therapeutic massage, then you might benefit greatly from t-bar massage.

What is T-Bar Massage and How Can it Benefit Me?

It’s estimated that nearly 20 million Americans suffer from high-impact chronic pain issues on a daily basis. This can greatly limit your daily activities and operations. Highly targeted neuromuscular massage therapy (NMT) can effectively treat those chronic pain issues. Since neuromuscular therapy is so extremely focused, massage therapists will often call upon an NMT tool called a “t-bar.”

The t-bar is used to isolate trigger points and effectively treat those painful areas. Your massage therapist leverages the t-bar to hone in on your pain points and apply greater pressure to specific areas for greater pain relief. To put it more frankly: a t-bar massage allows your massage therapist to reach the root of your pain and treat it right at the source.

How Does T-Bar Massage Work?

The very simple t-bar tool has three central pieces: the handle, the shank, and the tip. This straightforward design helps the massage therapist easily apply concentrated pressure to trigger points. Trigger points are hypersensitive pea-sized knots that usually develop in injured muscles.

Once the trigger point is found, the massage therapist will apply alternating levels of concentrated pressure directly on the trigger point for anywhere between 10-30 seconds. Some patients may experience some discomfort when a massage therapist is using t-bar massage to release tension in the fascia. This is necessary to properly alleviate your points of chronic pain. We recommend working with a licensed NMT therapist that you can openly communicate with to reap the most benefit from t-bar massage.

Those who struggle with chronic pain know that it is a highly personal experience. That’s why t-bar massage is never “one-size-fits-all.” Instead, we utilize a wide variety of t-bars in our neuromuscular massage therapy techniques to give every individual client the maximum benefit possible.

Chronic pain is one of the most common reasons adults seek medical care. It’s estimated that roughly 20% of U.S. adults (50 million) have suffered or are suffering from chronic pain, which can greatly limit experiences throughout our lives. Those that suffer have sought out relief from this pain from a great variety of approaches (e.g., traditional medication, chiropractic services, stretching, etc.), but in a great number of cases the pain does not go away.

If you suffer from chronic pain, perhaps it’s time to try something new. Neuromuscular massage therapy is the tested and true treatment for chronic muscular pain. Neuromuscular massage therapy (NMT) is a highly targeted form of deep tissue massage that is highly effective at treating chronic soft tissue pain.

Neuromuscular Massage in Denver: How Do We Do It?

Our certified Neuromuscular Massage Therapist, Sarah Monreal, is a dedicated practitioner of NMT and is intensely passionate about helping others find relief from chronic pain. This passion comes from her own real world experiences as an athlete, who suffered from chronic pain issues in the past. When practicing Neuromuscular Massage Therapy, also referred to as trigger point myotherapy, Sarah uses a step-by-step approach to assess the body, focusing on areas of muscle spasm or pain commonly called trigger points, and relieving the chronic stiffness and pain of the trigger point through extremely focused pressure. Chronic pain in muscles is often the result of a lack of blood to the area; our neuromuscular massage in Denver uses pressure to reopen those muscles to allow blood back into the afflicted areas and relieve the pain naturally.

In our Denver office, we will approach NMT with a therapeutic tool called a “t-bar.” When engaging in such high-pressure massage therapy, sometimes the thumbs just do not cut it. The t-bar allows Sarah to work through a detailed massage, acquire the best leverage, and isolate the trigger points. The t-bar is a very versatile tool that we employ daily in our neuromuscular massage in Denver. Once a trigger point is identified, Sarah will utilize the t-bar to apply alternating levels of concentrated pressure directly on the trigger point for anywhere between 10-30 seconds.