Florence Arnold, LMT

06/03/2026

Since I started doing massage a few decades ago, i have worked around a certain amount of wrist pain with relatively good success.

I chased after every ergonomic training I could find and practice a style that is gravity and alignment-based, forearm-based and have steadily incorporated more and more Ashi as my skill set in that modality has grown.

Last fall, I got my first cortisone shot ever. My hand doc made clear that I get only one. To his credit, he is not a fan of repeating cortisone in his patients who use their hands heavily to make a living.

The shot failed. My doc did an Xray and MRI in April. Come to find I have ‘positive ulna’. This is a bone length discrepancy I was probably born with, which stresses the TFCC on the ulnar side of the wrist.

Ulnar deviation, especially under load, is something I have avoided like the plague. Because (duh) if something hurts, I stop doing it.

In spite of my best efforts, I have a right TFCC tear (specifically, a horizontal tear through the meniscus homologue, for my fellow anatomy nerds).

This is not a super common massage therapist injury. It is more common gymnastics, contractors and racket sports. I have no arthritis nor any of the nerve issues common with MTs.

I should have had problems sooner.

I will be out from the surgery date on July 10 for 6-8 weeks.

I hear a lot about MTs quitting because of persistent wrist or hand pain, but I don’t hear a lot of stories about chasing down the cause of, and solution to, the pain.
The bigger lesson here is about teaching massage with some knowledge base about anatomical variety and the challenges that deviation from the norm can create for practitioners. Not everyone can or should do Ashi. Not everyone can or should use their forearms. And I think Rebel Massage needs to have a warning label on her videos. And I still think Robert Gardner is amazing.

I am still taking appointments through the month of June and the first week of July. I will keep everyone posted.

05/21/2026

Updated website. Easier to book, easier on the eyes.

https://www.florencearnoldlmt.com/

04/23/2026

Yes.

Exercise actually moves the mental health needle. If you want to improve your mood, go for a walk — because it will truly work.

And maybe pass on the “single-session interventions” discussed in a recent post.

Exercise for depression and anxiety just got a resounding endorsement from an unusually large new META-META-analysis — yes, that’s TWO metas, meta^2. I don’t normally write about pure psychology, but this study is truly HUGE, big enough to swerve out of my lane for.

It’s also informative to compare those exercise results from Munro et al. to the SSI results reported by Ziadni et al., which were distinctly underwhelming — and about the same as what people get from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

Small but significant benefits, the authors said. Standardized mean differences in the 0.25–0.37 range. Fine. Technically real, as reported. Not exactly a revolution. Even if you believe them.

And along comes Munro et al., covering 81 meta-analyses of over 1,000 component studies, with nearly 80K participants, all examining exercise for depression and anxiety.

The effect sizes? SMD was 0.61 for depression and 0.47 for anxiety. Quite a bit more than for SSI. And THAT is what I want to see in an effect size. Not necessarily huge, but … respectable.

For reference, 0.2 is considered “small,” 0.5 is “medium,” and 0.8 is “large.”

This is a casual apples-to-pears comparison I’m making between these studies: Munro was about exercise for PEOPLE WITHOUT DISEASES, while SSI had the handicap of focusing on PEOPLE IN CHRONIC PAIN, who often struggle with exercise. A direct comparison might narrow the gap.

Or … not? Because exercise for anxiety can work just as well for people with pain: SMD .63! Exercise for depression with pain is a different story: it didn’t work nearly so well, just .21 (much like SSI). See Amiri.

Exercise can truly affect psychological states, regardless of whether there is also pain involved (high confidence) … but SSI barely does so in people with pain (quite possibility not even that, because the data is so much weaker and fishier).

If your mind and mood are relevant to your pain at all, you should certainly be taking exercise more seriously than SSI/CBT. And that’s without even considering the other general health benefits of exercise.

I’ve collected a bunch of other highlights from Munro et al. for the PainSci bibliography. Link in the comments.

~ Paul Ingraham, PainScience.com publisher

04/23/2026

Massage is not a luxury.

I do not use my hands exclusively.

That seems like a non sequitur but hear me out.

My best deep table work integrates use of my forearms, soft fists, knees, feet and shins. I even throw in the occasional shoulder.

I am in this profession for the long haul.

The deepest work possible is not appropriate for everyone, especially my clients with chronic pain.
(What is “deep” in massage, anyway? There’s a rabbit hole!!)

AND, while not drawing a pretentious, arbitrary line between "therapeutic" and "relaxation" massage (which also has great therapeutic value), I am not here to do fluffy, ineffectual work while burning myself out or destroying the saddle joints of my thumbs.

Here is bit of Thai massage history from Shama Kern at Thai Healing Massage Academy that will help explain my position:

“Centuries ago, two very different styles of Thai Massage developed side by side.
The first one is sometimes called the 'commoner' style. It evolved organically in the northern villages of Thailand, where therapists worked on regular people.
They used forearms, elbows, knees, and even feet. They leaned in with their body weight and worked with plenty of body contact to get good leverage.
It was effective for the client, and it was kind to the therapist's body.
The second one is the 'royal' style, which was developed for working on members of the royal family.
In this style, therapists were not allowed to use any body part besides their hands. No elbows. No body contact. No getting on top of the client.

All the pressure had to go through the fingers and thumbs alone.

You can imagine what that did to the therapists over time.
Here is the uncomfortable part: a lot of Thai Massage being taught today is actually much closer to the royal style than to the commoner style. Lots of thumb pressure.
Very little use of other body parts. Hardly any use of body weight.
While the royal style might sound fancy and impressive, it is actually the worst way for therapists to do Thai Massage. And it is one of the main reasons why so many therapists burn out in this profession.”

-Shama Kern

04/10/2026

Working in Parker today. Thank you Lisa Trader🙏❤️

04/05/2026

04/10/2025

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.
Healing trauma involves not the banishing of the traumatic imprint, but rather the gradual development of the capacity for presence, for awareness, and for self-regulation.
The patterns that have been laid down over decades cannot be erased, but they can be transformed—not overnight, but through a gentle and persistent process of remembering our fundamental wholeness.”
~ Peter Levine