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At Bast Medical Massage, we provide therapeutic massages that help to address everything from migraines, headaches, lower back pain, and a wide variety of common illnesses and conditions. Let’s look at an example of how BAST can help.

 Let us look at an example. A lot of people work in the office using a computer the whole day and lean our head forward for a prolonged period of time. The muscles around our neck and shoulder will be tightened up. We feel muscle soreness and stiffness in the beginning. If the same sitting position continues for months or years, then we will find our head deviated to a forward position which we call forward head posture. At that point, we might experience lower back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain as well. It certainly doesn’t stop there, gradually the discomfort may further develop to include headache and migraine, insomnia, jaw pain, dry eyes, numbness and tingling or even trigeminal neuralgia, bell palsy.

Office Syndrome is a real problem. To prevent this, it is crucial to maintain at all times, a proper posture with a balanced body. Not only that, we are now living in a modern world with many different causes and events that are disrupting the balance of our body, which include:

  • Stress
  • Posture
  • Traumas (whiplash, sports injury, surgeries …)
  • Misuse (repetitive strain injuries e.g. carpal tunnel syndrome, golfers elbow …)
  • Chronic Degenerative Diseases (multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, arthritis …)

Why Choose BAST?

In reality, when we try to tackle the multivariate imbalances, choosing the most appropriate technique(s) sometimes is challenging and considered to be more an art than a science. It is complicated because the human body itself is exquisite and interconnected. Let’s use our office syndrome example, we notice that:

  • The body responses to the abnormal posture by adapting, compensating and initiating protective mechanisms. All these activities are continually changing the tissue compositions and interrelations between each other.
  • The condition progresses, the discomfort might just start from the neck and then spread elsewhere, gradually to the shoulder, head and back area.
  • Adhesion, trigger points, Inflammation, misalignment, nerve entrapments, local ischemia, edema, fibrosis, contractures, calcification might develop.

These cascades of events is unnoticed until the first sign of symptoms appears. Can we stop that chain of deteriorating events? Yes, the earlier the better! However, people usually procrastinate, tends to wait until the condition becomes intolerable! At this point, the best window of mindful self-treatment has already been missed. When we try to find a professional treatment, the practitioner is obviously required to possess the necessary insight and experience.

If you are lucky to start a treatment when the condition is in a very early stage, then a lot of therapies can produce satisfactory results. However, we’ve seen a lot of cases that these therapies are not in any way, returning the body to a fully balanced condition, leaving behind a latency period for later break outs.

Ideally, an excellent treatment should be able to alleviate symptoms, normalize and balance all structures and tissues.

In the past, massage and many other therapies cannot produce consistent and repeatable outcomes, so people consider massage a luxury or use it for stress-release for most of the time. Being exhausted with options, many chronic pain and disease sufferers are unfortunately being told to cope with the conditions for the rest of their life. In BAST Medical Massage, we are committed to continually improve the techniques of alleviating pain and symptoms. We have trained and developed ourselves with a refined, sensitive technique of observation and palpation, together with a highly specialized massage technique, we would precisely:

  • Identify the true cause of a problem, how they have been compensated and progressed and based on that, adjust the treatment accordingly
  • Assess the severity of the condition
  • Gather instant real-time feedback from the client’s body itself during treatment

FAQ's

  • We strongly believe that if the body structures and tissues are balanced, oxygen and nutrients will be sufficiently replenished; metabolites and toxins will be efficiently removed throughout the body. In such a balanced condition, the body’s innate ability to repair, to heal and to maintain will be carried out properly. 
  • The body heals itself. It’s not the practitioner or the treatment that makes your body back to wellness, it’s the body itself that does the job. 
  • Questions regarding somatic dysfunctions arise: 

What exactly are the structures and tissues that need to be balanced?

How to balance the abnormal or misaligned structures and tissues? Thousands of satisfactory outcomes indicate that BAST Medical Massage is doing the correct things to promote the innate healing capabilities of the body. 

  • BAST Medical Massage produces consistent and repeatable results, in particular, for musculoskeletal and related issues. Unless the conditions are congenital or have been developing with irreversible complications. 
  • BAST provides personalized treatments based on the unique pattern presented by each individual client. When we look carefully into patterns associated with the severity of frozen shoulders for example, each client exhibits different protective patterns, adaptations, compensations and progressions. We are facing varying degrees of difficulty. Insight is crucial here. 

To summarize, BAST is unique in the way we identify: 

  1. The physical abnormalities or causes associated with a health condition;
  2. The goals of a treatment; and most importantly
  3. The treatment method. 

“First do no harm! We have an obligation to do good, we also have an obligation to be good. We have an obligation to care”
— Dr. Jonathan M. Evans

BAST is a Natural, Drug-free and Non-Invasive way of manipulating the soft tissues of the body.

For most of the time, finger pressures ranging from 0.5 to 5 lbs of forces are being used to work on the clients. Contrasting to other everyday incidents like falls, trips, impacts, collisions 0.5 to 5 lbs of forces are basically having negligible mechanical effects on the body.

Sometimes, we use cuppings for a few minutes to prepare the tissues for treatments. Cuppings are definitely not in any way, a substitute of BAST. We strongly discourage using cuppings for too deep or too long to leave any bruise marks on the body. Though the marks will disappear within days, the body actually heals itself by leaving scar tissues which creates new problems and makes the original issues more complicated.

We use cuppings occasionally for short period of time, apply them to selected spots to prepare the body for BAST treatments.

It is important that clients should inform the practitioner thoroughly about their medical history and current health conditions as well, so that we can modify the techniques and make necessary changes accordingly.

Over the years, we have treated thousands of clients with various conditions aged between 11 to 89 years old. With diligence and experience, we only came across few cases of minor bruises. So BAST should be considered a very safe treatment. Again, it is very important that communication between clients and practitioners should be thorough, timely and without any hesitation. If there is going to have any discomfort or abnormal sensation happen during treatment, let the practitioner informed immediately.

For Acute Conditions or Pain such as sprained ankle or arm swelling that happen suddenly, we suggest that clients should first and foremost, go and get the necessary checkups and advice from their primary care providers. For safety reasons, make sure that all possible underlying complications are being checked and ruled out. 

Other than that, we at BAST, are ready at any time for your conditions such as: 

  • Chronic Pain and Disorders 
  • Stress-Induced Diseases and Anxiety 
  • Repetitive Strain Injuries 
  • Rehabilitation from Traumas and Surgeries 
  • Postural problems 
  • Sports Injuries 
  • Age-related issues 
  • Musculoskeletal Disorders 
  • Peripheral Neuropathies 
  • Sub-Optimal Health Conditions … . Check out for a comprehensive list of conditions that are shown to be beneficial by using BAST treatments. 

The Sooner The Better Nearly all disorders or conditions start from a small, confined area. Sometimes the conditions have been treated by other therapies, and the symptoms and pain have disappeared. However, if the treatments didn’t normalize the tissues and did not balance the body structure, that means the causes of the condition are still there inside your body, the condition inevitably reoccurs. 

For example: 

  • When you woke up one early morning, and noticed that it was painful and difficult to raise your hand while pulling on your sweater. At the same time, pain started happening in the right shoulder blade. 
  • You thought you might had worked too hard in the yard the previous day, so you took some Advil and soaked yourself in some hot baths with epsom salt. 
  • A week later, the pain was still there and getting even worse. You went to see your family doctor, and you were sent to have a blood test, an X-ray and MRI scan. Results showed that you had some inflammation and “Frozen Shoulder”. So, doctor prescribed you anti-inflammatories and pain medication and referred you to a physical therapist. 
  • You checked in with the physical therapist twice a week getting electrical TENS treatments, stretches and exercises. Pain improved slowly and gradually. After 3 months with therapies, you shampooed your hair freely. You were very happy that your range of motion was back. 
  • However, perhaps a couple of months later, pain in the shoulder came back which was a lot more severe than before. This time, you started to feel numbness radiating down your hands; your neck stiffened; you woke up many times at night which made you feel tired and less concentrated at work. 
  • Your doctor suggested that frozen shoulders recur in different stages. It might be age related, and it could be genetically predisposed … . You are given alternatives of taking another stronger pain medication, or seeing an orthopedic surgeon discussing the possibility of an injection or surgery. 
  • You tried to avoid taking too much pain medication. So you chose to get a couple of injections. Each injection was effective in controlling the pain for about three to six months. 
  • Right before having some additional injections, you were pretty sure that injections were not going to help you in the long run. You seriously considered having a surgery. 
  • After the surgery, you were ordered with months of painful exercises and rehabilitation protocols. 
  • You started becoming desperate because you knew very well about your own body. Pain has become an inherent curse that you would have to ‘cope’ with for the rest of your life. 

These courses and scenarios are very typical among “Frozen Shoulder” and other “Chronic Pain” sufferers. You have spent years proactively on testing, pain medication, injections, surgeries, therapies and exercises, but none of them seems effective enough to stop the progression of the conditions. You eventually end up becoming one of the 50 million chronic pain sufferers in the United States. 

What’s happening? Is it inevitable? Is there anything we can do about it? 

There must be some missing pieces in the health puzzle! 

It is very important to understand that even with no pain or symptoms, any trauma or stress will inexorably, leave behind some notorious scar tissues and distortions inside our body. These distortions and scar tissues will further develop adhesions, fibrosis, trigger points, contractures, ischemia, structural misalignments, compensation, nerve impingement, inflammation, dysfunctions and muscle atrophies … . 

Because of this progressing nature, the condition is getting more and more complicated over time. Any delay of treatment would make it increasingly more difficult to get treated. 

That means, even when we talk about shoulder pain, each client starts with different causes and origins, each one of them will be complicated by how long the progression has gone through. On top of that, different lifestyles, postures and activities are also critical to the development. It is unimaginable that we can stop the pain and progression by using one or two preset protocols (unless you are lucky enough to get treatments in the very early stage). We should use different strategy targeting each specific pain pattern. 

Over the years, we have seen hundreds of clients with shoulder problems, each of them presented with varying degrees of severity. They all went through months or years of other treatments before coming to BAST. The results were just incredible. Most importantly, we have acquired sufficient experience and confidence that applying BAST will achieve consistent and repeatable results that are incomparable by other therapies. 

So make an appointment with BAST as soon as possible to stop the progression before the condition is getting too complicated! 

Not all therapies or massage sessions are created equal. 

No matter what people say, real benefits and effectiveness are critical criteria when you come to the question of choosing an appropriate therapy. 

If you have tried other therapies before, it is very easy for you to tell immediately whether BAST is going to work for you or not. 

For first-timer, you don’t have to tell your BAST practitioner how much pressure you prefer. Because the practitioner is very well trained, he/she knows exactly where and how to apply finger pressure. 

Wherever the fingers land on your skin surface, you feel pressure and probably a little bit discomfort or pain. When the pressure is taken off, you feel an immediate release from deep inside your body. The “lovely” pain before the release is exactly what people are craving for, they often refer that the “sweet pain”. It hurts but it feels good at the same time. 

After the first session with BAST, you will experience: 

  • a little sore. However, your body is so relaxed, you feel a very deep release like never before, you sigh and wow involuntarily. 
  • Very often, one session is enough to significantly releasing your pain and improving your symptoms. You don’t just feel good and relaxed. Depending on your treatment goals, you can also see: 

– a notable change on the pain scale of 0~10 ; or – an improvement in the range of motion (ROM) of how much you can raise 

your hands above your shoulder; or – the number of hours you can sleep at night … so on and so forth. 

  • Usually the practitioner will schedule with you a 2nd treatment which is 48 to 72 hours after the first session, depending on your age, fitness level and the severity of the condition. 
  • The next day following the first session, you will feel tired and sore all over your body. If you are 

– relatively weak, – a senior or 

– the first time getting BAST treatment, we normally not recommend having more than an hour of treatment in the first session, otherwise your body might get too overwhelmed. 

  • Even pain subsided or symptoms disappeared, we still highly recommend you coming back for the 2nd treatment. We mentioned earlier that 

“even with no pain or symptoms, any trauma or stress will inexorably, leave behind some scar tissues and distortions inside your body.” The 2nd session is important for the practitioner to make sure that your body is well balanced and chances of recurrence are minimized. 

  • Sometimes, pain and symptoms come back before the 2nd session. It could be 

– Less severe than before, or – Very rarely getting more severe, or – The nature, the pattern or the location of pain and symptoms changed. These are actually good signs showing that your body is responding to the first treatment, BAST has initiated the self healing process, your body is trying to establish a new balance. More often than not, one session would not be enough to bring your body back to an optimal balance. Unless you are very young, your body is well toned and your condition is being treated fairly early. 

  • Since your body is getting more accustomed to BAST treatment, the practitioner will work deeper and initiate more changes to your body during the 2nd and the later sessions. After the 2nd session, you would find significantly more releases and improvements of your pain and symptoms, your body would be less sore after the treatment. 
  • If your pain or symptoms is not having any improvements or even getting worse after 2 to 3 sessions. STOP the treatment and get advice from other specialists immediately. Yet this hasn’t happened to non-cancer or non-hospice patients so far. 
  • Don’t waste time and money on ineffective therapies. 
  • Now you can see that BAST is result-oriented (outcome-oriented). We are not just satisfied by making you feel good and relaxed. We are really trying to alleviate your pain and symptoms and make the results last much longer if not for long. 
  • We always remind ourselves to take a good deep breath, let the clients and the results speak for themselves.