For example, if you say “I have pain in my forearms”, they should be able to find the spot to work in order to ease the tension just by feeling it.
I’m not sure whether that’s a good heuristic. A good therapist will be able to feel where things tense up, flinch and a bunch of other factors but pain is in the realm of qualia that normally can’t directly be felt in another person.
I would not rule out that there’s one school of people who can feel pain, but that’s not an ability that you should expect even among people with highly trained perceptions. Knowing about how a patient perceives their own body is valuable information for a therapist. Asking questions about it is a good sign.
Apart from information gathering, there’s a school of thought that recommends asking patients for their experience to build patient agency.
I agree that asking questions is a good sign, but I still stand by the basic point I was trying to make. Often the place the pain is felt and the knot of tension causing the pain are not colocated. A good massage therapist should understand the human body well enough to figure out what’s wrong from a combination of palpating and communicating, rather than solely working the place where you tell them you have pain.
I’m not sure whether that’s a good heuristic. A good therapist will be able to feel where things tense up, flinch and a bunch of other factors but pain is in the realm of qualia that normally can’t directly be felt in another person.
I would not rule out that there’s one school of people who can feel pain, but that’s not an ability that you should expect even among people with highly trained perceptions. Knowing about how a patient perceives their own body is valuable information for a therapist. Asking questions about it is a good sign.
Apart from information gathering, there’s a school of thought that recommends asking patients for their experience to build patient agency.
I agree that asking questions is a good sign, but I still stand by the basic point I was trying to make. Often the place the pain is felt and the knot of tension causing the pain are not colocated. A good massage therapist should understand the human body well enough to figure out what’s wrong from a combination of palpating and communicating, rather than solely working the place where you tell them you have pain.