Interview with Leif RodrigUez
Where did you go to school and what was the schooling like?
Swedish Institute. I realized on the first day that there was a lot more to massage than I had anticipated. I figured that I would have to study anatomy and physiology, did not know about neurology and pathology or Shiatsu. It was an intensive grueling course of 5 semesters with 2 weeks off between semesters. I honestly didn't think I would make it past neurology but I worked hard and finished with a 3.9 GPA.
What is pathology—and what did you like about studying it?
It is anything to do with the cause, origin, or progression of illness or injury.
Say someone comes to you and has leukemia, Would that figure into the type of massage you would give?
It depends on what stage they are at. There is a type of therapy we studied called polarity. Sometimes you cannot touch people in treatment because it is too painful, so you actually work on them without touching them. It’s energy work, which is kind of freaky, I didn’t believe in it at first and then someone did energy work on me and it was an amazing experience. It is deeply relaxing.
What is your typical client like?
I’m getting a reputation for treating athletes, but also people who work in an office and sit at a desk and work on a computer all day. When people get a little tired while working they have a tendency to lean forward, since your arms are right in front you: Your shoulders start to rise, your head starts to move forward, your back starts to bend and you get terrible pain in your shoulders. Those are my most common clients. I do work on their shoulders, their mid back, their low back.
You seem good at explaining the areas that need work and giving take-home instructions too. So say someone comes in for tendinitis, as I did. When they leave the session do you give them any ideas to take with them?
Yes, like working with your issue and working with the FlexBar. A Flex-Bar is used to improve grip strength in the arm, hand and shoulder. You went home with instructions on how to stretch through the week so that when you returned we could start in an already relaxed position to speed up your treatment. I give everybody homework. Say a runner comes in and I work on their psoas muscle (which connects the lumbar vertebrae to the femur); I give them a stretch to do at home. The psoas is one of the most painful muscles to work on, so if a client comes to me after doing the home stretches, the muscles will already be worked out enough for me to work on. That is when we make real progress, rather than them coming in just to keep fixing the same pain.
I know your method works because you fixed me, but give me another example of how you can help.
Years ago I used to work on an older gentleman who came to me; he had a back that was bent over and he wasn’t able to straighten out—almost at an L bend. He was one of my first myofascial release clients. If you want to say standing straight up is 0 degrees, he was, I would say, at 50 degrees. He would come to me twice a week for 90-minute sessions and I worked on him for what must be about eight months, By the time he stopped coming in, he was up to about 25 degrees. He still had the bend but he had improved so much. In the beginning he was L-shaped, walking with a cane, and by the end of our sessions he was 25 degrees, no cane, and walking fast.
Wow, amazing!
My father is another example, I have a simple exercise I teach. My father’s head was so far forward and his shoulders so tight and risen that he was in pain. I worked on him a little bit every week and gave him some home exercises. His neck moved back and his pain subsided.
So it sounds as if you work with the clients and help direct them to help themselves so they are not completely dependent on you to fix them. So it seems to be teaching as well as massage?
Yes. I enjoy teaching my clients the stretches that will help them to help themselves in between sessions.
I recognized that when you showed me the movements I was making that caused the pain—and showed me how to stretch—and then I became aware of certain postures and through instruction and therapy most of my pain went away.
What I want is people to be well, I want them to be OK. I want them to come to me for the sole reason of health—or rather to stay healthy. Not only to fix something that is hurt, but once we work on it to not have to come back all the time, but just enough to maintain their health.
So massage therapy is also preventive?
Yes. Once people get to a place where they don’t have day-to-day aches and pains, the massage is then preventive massage. You want to be able to relax your entire day, but we have certain habits, and unless we are thinking about it all the time, the pain will come back. So once a month, once every few weeks, going through that training again, it allows your body to literally sit in its own relaxed cushion.
So a reminder to keep yourself relaxed and in check?
Yes, and it helps. It circulates the blood, it relieves the muscles, and it relieves the strain in your mind (as we do live in New York City).
What sets your work apart from other massage practices?
I don’t do spa work. I don’t use oil because myofascial massage can be performed only on dry skin. I don’t play ting-y music, I don’t like incense. I basically find out what the issue is and I work with the issue. I’m here to heal the body.
What do you see as your specialty?
My specialty is myofascial release along with medical massage therapy, which is a dry massage. With this type of massage you individualize all the muscles. There are certain spots on your body where—because of certain movements that you do repetitively—your skin will stick to muscle. So the dry part is trying to pull the skin away from that muscle so that the muscle has more flexibility. You are also trying to pull certain muscles away from other muscles. For example, the quad group. There are four muscles in the quads. People think these four muscles do the same thing, but they actually do different things. Since they are so well grouped together, they can start to work against each other.
What myofascial release does is it pulls those muscles away from the other muscles and it isolates each muscle from the others so you have full capable movement. Same thing with bone. Muscles stick to the bone and it limits movement. The whole purpose of myofascial release is to individualize the muscle, the tendon and separate it so it works on its own rather than having to work with a bunch of other muscles stuck to it. It lessens the work; it eases the body.
You mentioned that one of your specialties is people in offices, that coming to see you would help them be aware of their posture.
Yes, I help train people to use their large muscles. When you get a little tired, when we’re growing up we learn to do things wrong—like brushing your teeth: People tend to raise their shoulder high. What I do is help retrain the body to use its muscles right. I show people how to drop their shoulders, how to sit properly, to stand properly. That’s one of my big things, especially with office workers: correcting their posture.
Basically, here’s how I treat someone who sits at a desk all day: When your neck is forward, your arms are forward and your shoulders are forward and raised. What happens is when you are holding up your head, neck, and shoulders—which should weigh about 12 pounds—they now feel as if they weigh 60 pounds. Your shoulders are up, so you are not holding them up with your big muscles, you are holding them up with your balance muscles, tiny muscles that don’t cross any bone but just attach on both ends. Your big muscles usually cross a joint, so those are your strong muscles. They are not used for balance; they are used for strength. So when your shoulders and your head are forward, you are now holding what seems to be 60 pounds with your neck rather than with your back. By doing that you get a bolt of lightening pain. Not only does it hurt your neck, it hurts your mid back, because your mid back is now overstretched and trying to hold up your upper body. Since you are doing that, your lower back turns into a weird bend and then you are using your lower back to balance yourself, and hold the weight of your head. Basically it’s just bad posture. So then your knees start to lock up to hold yourself up. It’s all a chain that can be fixed by doing one thing: a knee bend that makes your body fluid and bouncy. You have balance, your shoulders go back, your head will go back.
What sets you apart from other massage therapists?
What’s different is that I’m a good mechanic. I’m not trying to get you to keep coming to the office; I’m trying to get you healed and I’m trying to get you to stay healed, without going to doctors. What’s different is that I’m actually trying to fix you. It’s like when I had my frame shop and someone said, “I want this big ornate gold-leaf frame,” and I would say, “That will cost maybe 5,000 dollars and I can do it—but it will look better in this and cost less.” My dad said the difference between a salesman and a hustler is that you’re always happy when the salesman leaves—and happier when the hustler leaves, but you are never happy with what he leaves. I’m not trying to hustle anyone, I’m trying to fix them. I’m trying to show them a healthier, easier way to get through life.
