Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68185
SCAR TISSUE RELEASE FOR TATTOOS My client's history of injuries, at the age of 27, was too vast for him to recall in specifics other than the most dramatic and painful, the concussions, and of course, the one that ended his football career. His leg-length difference added an opposing hip and shoulder torsion to the complex soup of dynamics underlying his pain. Initially, the work progressed well. His anterior pelvic tilt reduced, and even with his uncorrected leg- length difference, much of the pelvic rotation decreased, as did his lower back pain. Restrictions in his hips and knees eased, while changing his stride and cross-body pattern. He remarked that he no longer "walked like a duck," and his strength and endurance were improving. Everything below the sacroiliac (SI) joint seemed to be moving along a predictable and gratifyingly rapid path. His upper body, however, was not so cooperative. His skin, stretched taut over well- developed chest muscles, was pulled even tighter across his back. His shoulders and head pulled forward as though he were perennially considering going into a crunch. Taking my cue from his body, the work focused on the abdominals, pectoralis major and minor, serratus anterior, scalenes, sternocleidomastoid (SCM), and his deep anterior neck muscles. Back work was more to release the overstretched condition of the superficial and deep back muscles. What little success we achieved lasted only a day or two and by the time he returned the following week, his body had drifted back into a posture that was beginning to seem welded into place. On this particular day, visceral massage revealed a tender spleen from a recent basketball injury. Upon release, his upper right quadrant relaxed, but it did nothing for his strangely shaped kyphosis. Stumped, I pulled up my New Skin Layer Epidermis Dermis Sweat Gland Erector Muscle Hair Sebaceous Gland Tattoo process. Image provided courtesy of HowStuffWorks.com. rolling stool and sat down next to the table to better see what was, or was not, going on. This time, as he lay prone on the table, I really saw him. His "roach" back posture seemed impossible, given the anterior release work we just completed. Pressing into his back muscles, his ribs confirmed this was not an optical illusion. This was the moment when his tattoo became more than a point of passing interest. A pair of wings cloaked his upper back. Sweeping outward from a crest floating over C7, they spanned his shoulders and scapula to embrace his posterior deltoid, trapezius, and infraspinatus. The ends of the feathers scooped upward to meet at T3–4. Staring at it, I began to see irregularities where older art lay beneath. The star and crescent hovering above C7 was an older image that contained ridgelines of scar tissue within the lower left point of the 74 massage & bodywork september/october 2010 star. The upper line of the feathers traced the spine of his scapulae. A slight blur on the lateral side of his left scapula spoke to where an old tattoo lay beneath the feathers. It suggested potential scar tissue. The line along the bottom of the tattoo, tracing the feather tips and bottom feathers, looked smooth and even, but it still held my eye and begged to be touched. His taut skin was difficult to tease into a skin roll, but a tiny ridge managed to make its way from his axilla to that mesmerizing line, where it stopped and he reported a sharp, precisely localized, needle-like pain just as the roll reached it. Testing what was quickly becoming a hypothesis, I rolled that tiny ridge along the path of the line and he reported the same pain. When the skin roll drifted inferior to