You have tried your best, paid your dues, done your homework. Followed through.
Still the symptoms persist. Diet, exercise, supplements, x-rays, etc. Nothing seems to help much. Or everything helps for a while, and then not.

You get despondent, depressed, because there are no results to all your efforts. But wait! What is occurring right now may be the best result one could wish for. The impasse you have reached is an invitation to not only look deeper and wider, but to release your grip on what you want, and relax into WHAT IS.

​In Bodywork, the cause of a 'problem', like say a pain in the neck, may easily not be in the neck. A tightness in the shoulder may be putting too much pressure on the neck. A tightly held jaw may be radiating into the neck. And that jaw tension could be an emotional holding, something you don't want to say for example. It could be in the neck, because someone at work is such a 'pain in the neck'. The shoulder thing could be from the experience of carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Layers of radiating and referred pain. Pain seems to be in one place, but its real source is elsewhere. Trying to release the hurting spot, may only irritate that already weak spot. Using detective skills, the place, or system which is causing the problem is tracked down, and addressed. Holistic healing potential.

And probably the vein of 'injury' runs much deeper. It connects to things that happened in our childhood, and ancestral patterns that go back generations which we may or may not be aware of at all. Structural and functional patterns of use and abuse layer upon layer build on top of each other until without really seeing where it is from, we carry chronic discomfort and pain filled programmes within the body mind. 

All this is not bad news. It points to even deeper levels of healing that a 'pain in the butt' is trying to draw your attention to. For how else can your body get your attention and communicate with you than to create pain. It is a code for change. It is something to listen closely to, and  happily respond to.

I can't believe that I forgot to mention Stress anywhere. Perhaps because its everywere, and so much of the work we do in a session is de-stressing. 
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If you google images for 'stress', people are shown clutching an area that holds a big amount of the bodies tension. It is estimated that up to 70% of all tension lives in the crevises of the face. The eyes are straining, the jaws store huge bits of tension party due in part to the shape of the maseter muscle, which in order to chew needs to be very strong without taking up too much space. Because of that density, and the responsibility the jaw has, it is also a logical place to hold major tension. 

The scalp is so stressed, the typical image of someone pulling their hair out is a clue to all that can be held in the fascia of the scalp. The nose not only smells, it contains nasal passages that can get very clogged, broadcasting and accumulating tension. The list goes on.

All this to explain why I like to take ten minutes every session to open the face. Working specific muscles, different fascial levels and layers, not to mention cartilage and bone. Ten minutes well spent, within a session that spends a bulk of time working on different interconnected parts in a logical sequence. As one area starts to release, the rest of the body is reminded of what healing is. Re-turning to a state of relaxation the body naturally knows but it gets distracted or forced to some other  programme. The body is only too happy to get back to natural function when it is possible. The body is always in some kind of balance. But some balances are more relaxed and open that others. 

SOmetimes, it is not 10 minutes for the face and head, but the whole session. Layers of habitual stress can be stirpped away. Will they return? Thats up to you. Stress of course is a part of our lives, no avoiding that. But we can change our habitual behavior in order to accumulate and store less stress. If stress comes and then we return to relaxation, we have a fuller spectrum of possibility, and a richer life. Its well worth the effort, so that we can relax.