
Originally Posted by
millenium girl
A licensed masseur? Could you please take the first plane to Europe? I need a private masseur ....... I have aches and pains that need to be taken care of
Whenever my left arm is painful, I have been told that the pain could be coming from my neck. And when the pain is bad, it irradiates from .. my left trap. Great post there, Morskaya

The upper trapezius muscles are notorious for spreading pain and tension throughout the entire upper body. There are many causes, but most often poor posture is the culprit, specifically in the way of keeping your shoulders rolled forward to too large a degree. There's a quick test you can perform to see if this is the case. Get two pencils {or similar objects} and hold one in each hand with most of it protruding from the top {thumb side}. Now stand as you normally do and relax. Look down at the pencils. If you're standing with your shoulders in their proper place, the pencils should both be facing directly forward. If they are facing in toward each other, this means you have too much internal rotation in your shoulders. In athletes, this often happens because they're doing too much chest and lat work. It makes their chest too tight and pulls their shoulders inward. This in turn puts a lot of tension on the muscles in their back {particularly the upper traps}. This tension will spread and cause pain, headaches, possibly even depression and increases the chances of sustaining a rotator cuff tear or myriad other shoulder injuries.
You may find it beneficial to back off from benchpressing and lat pulldowns/pullups for a few weeks. Concentrate more on movements such as rows, various forms of external rotations, reverse flys and facepulls. I would do two of these types of movements for every one bench or lat pulldown for a while. Strengthening the muscles which externally rotate the humerus and retract the scapula will naturally improve your posture without you even thinking about it.
You should also take the time to adequately stretch your chest, shoulders and biceps several times a day as even though the problem may manifest itself in your arm, it could very well originate in your shoulder girdle by way of your pectoral muscles. In addition, it may sound odd, but stretching your forearms can also significantly reduce the tension in your traps. Try that as well.
Unfortunately, I don't have any immediate plans to return to Europe and the final bit of advice I would give is to get a deep tissue massage every week. I spent a few years working as a masseur in *******, but I've no plans to return. Besides there are quite a few women in this country who would like to chain me up in their cellar and keep me on call I'm sure!
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again."
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn