Body.Work: Subclavian stretching
Body.Work: Subclavian stretching
A special newsletter exclusively for paid subscribers: behind the scenes of medical/clinical massage training.
Preliminaries: Body.Work is the newsletter that I write for paid subscribers, giving a behind-the-scenes peek at my experiences in medical massage school. This is a special edition, going out to all subscribers. Thanks for reading, thanks for subscribing, and thanks for your support of my work!
I was so wired after class yesterday afternoon that I couldn't get to sleep last night. It was as if I'd had a cup of coffee. We're finishing up the muscles of the shoulder, which includes the upper arm bone, the shoulder blade, and the collarbone. Our focus yesterday was on learning a stretch for a tiny muscle that lives right between the collarbone and the first rib, the subclavius. Our instructor demonstrated the subclavian stretch on me, and then we all practiced on each other. It was, I think, the effect of the treatment that kept me awake
.
In contrast to most of my education, which involved a lot of reading and only a small amount of hands-on anything, massage school is, as you can imagine, tightly focused on learning skills. We have about thirteen hours at school each week: all but four of them are either learning hands-on techniques or participating in actual massages. The book-learning is important for us to understand what we're doing, but the actual hands-on learning is essential.
The subclavian stretch was, to be honest, a bit gruesome to learn, since it involves gripping the collarbone and holding it against the movement of the upper arm. It looked uncomfortable as I watched it done to someone else, and felt painful when it was applied to me. I didn't like it while it was happening. But once my subclavius was thoroughly stretched, which my classmates could see from how the collarbones floated above the ribs instead of being stuck onto them, I immediately felt the benefits.
My posture was better, I could stand up a little straighter with my shoulders less rounded. I felt more open, like I could breathe better. It felt great. More than great, really.
Of everything we've learned in class so far, and that I've had practiced on me, this had the most dramatic effect. Hours later, at home, I could still feel that openness, with a buzzy sense of excitement and joy. Even after I'd turned out my light and was trying to go to sleep, it was still there. Eventually I slept--and when I woke I realized that some of my morning aches and pains weren't there, especially in my shoulders.
This experience comes on the heels of discovering that a client I’ve been treating at our clinic has had an improvement in the condition that we’ve been working on. She’d previously been told that she’d just have to “live with it.”
It’s exciting to have these experiences seeing the impact that bodywork can have—on myself, and on clients. As someone who tends to do a lot of work on the computer and inside my head, making a difference in the physical body is incredibly exciting.
This wasn’t the newsletter I was planning on writing. But when I sat down this morning, still aware of my newly stretched subclavius muscles and my open collarbones, still excited from the feedback my client, this is what came out. Thanks for coming along for the ride.