WELLNESS: A Tailored Therapeutic Massage at Body Kneads

We’re not given an instruction manual on how to exist when we’re born. We’re just thrown into the world and told ‘good luck.’” I’m on the massage table at Body Kneads in East Greenwich and massage therapist Nick Pasquarelli’s crash course in body mechanics sounds more like the advice of a sage, which is apropos for this serene East Greenwich studio that mixes hippy chic with a clinical aesthetic. Anatomy posters hang beside tranquil tapestries, signaling a perfect yin and yang of their mix of therapeutic massage with more relaxing modalities.

Blending deep tissue (which works the deep muscles) with other treatments like Swedish (long strokes with a lighter touch) and even assisted stretching, Pasquarelli doesn’t come to the massage table with any assumptions about the client.

During my intake, we mapped out a loose course of action. My left knee was acting up from running, and my left elbow goes pins-and-needles when I do push-ups. We briefly discussed my job, which includes lots of desk time at a computer, fingers tapping away.

“Knowing what you do for a living is kind of generic,” he says, noting he digs deeper with clients once they are on the table. “How is your computer set up? How long do you sit at your desk? All that information has purpose to the therapist.” A full eight hours a day sitting at a desk hunched over a computer can have a dramatic impact on the body. (It’s me, I’m the problem.)

Gathering this information helps Pasquarelli tailor each massage to the individual. In my case, it begins with me face up, focusing on the muscular attachments around my occipital bone, where the neck muscles attach to the skull. Mine are surprisingly tight, and Pasquarelli used minimal pressure for maximum impact – just enough to know something good was happening but not so much I tensed up. “That’s the sweet spot,” he says, tracking my reactions through my musculature.

Once my occipital insertion points were released, he moved on to my face, another pleasant surprise. I’d never had a face massage outside of a facial, and this was different. The intent behind it wasn’t glowy skin. Eye strain and a clenched jaw tense all those tiny muscles.

After working his way up and down my arms and legs (including massaging my exhausted feet), it was time to flip over to work on my back. I had no real issues going on there – or so I thought. I was not expecting how much my muscles screamed for manipulation.

The glutes may be the largest muscles in the body, but they are woefully ignored. Using deep pressure at the center of my piriformis, which in the center of the glute, Pasquarelli forced both sides of the muscle to elongate and stretch, something these muscles don’t get enough of. “Usually you stretch other muscles, like hamstrings, and glutes kind of go along for the ride, if they are lucky,” he explains and then rotated my leg in the socket, finding trigger points along my behind that helped ease tension in places like my tight hip flexors.

My rump sufficiently stretched, Pasquarelli turned his attention to my back, his deft fingers separating each vertebra along with precision (heaven). “This might feel intense and a little funky,” he warned before easing his hand underneath my left scapula to manipulate my subscapular muscles. “How often do you have someone’s hand under your shoulder blade?” (Hint: never.) According to Pasquarelli, this manipulation helps remind the shoulder blade “it shouldn’t be a part of the rib cage.”

My right shoulder blade was stubborn and refused to lift. Since it’s my dominant side, the overused scapula was cranky and Pasquarelli didn’t want to force it open and risk hurting me. Instead, he called getting under there a “stretch goal,” noting the more the upper back was worked, the scapular would eventually release. “The more you do [massage], the more I understand your body, and where I need to focus, the deeper we can go because your body learns not to fight it.”

This makes a great argument for including regular massages in your wellness routine. Like stretching, the more you do it, the more your body adjusts, and the more your body reaps the benefits. “You’re putting 160 hours into work a month,” Pasquarelli shares a final bit of sage advice. “You can spend an hour a month to take care of yourself.”