The pain cycle: In order to understand how massage therapy can help with pain management, we first need to understand the cause of muscular pain. When muscles are damaged, whether through a physical trauma, an over-use chronic injuries, or over stimulated by psychological stress, they go into spasm. Muscle spasm is a state of involuntarily muscle contraction attempting to prevent further damage being done. If the muscle fibers contract for an extended period of time, the cond