Key Points
• Incorporating self-care into daily life is an important task for career longevity.
• Taking the time to discover the most effective ways to avoid your specific pain points is key to true self-care.

In most of my YouTube video tutorials, I lean pretty heavily on my thumbs. I get a fair amount of commentary about it, ranging from genuine questions like, “How might you address this area using knuckles or an elbow?” to more assuming accusations like, “What is this lady thinking? She clearly won’t last long as a massage therapist.” All of which are fine and good. YouTube comments are an entirely different and somewhat entertaining conversation. But they do indicate, along with the plethora of emails I have received over the years, that self-care for our hands, and most specifically our thumbs, seems to be a mystery. 
If our thumbs are our most used tools, how do we care for them so we don’t have to stop doing the work we love or, even worse, end up with arthritis or some other thumb impairment? There are the tried-and-true basics, and, of course, knowledge of thumb anatomy and physiology is a plus. But when it comes to bodyworkers, the increasing quest for how to care for our abused hands and help prolong our careers involves a (kind of) new definition of self-care.

A Quick Review of the Basics 

Stretching, icing, heating, hydration, nutrition, exercise, sleep, body mechanics, and, of course, massage are the basics of self-care. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, so elaborating on the details is unnecessary. Instead, I will highlight these bumper stickers of thought: 
• Lazy stretching only scratches the surface. 
• Ketchup is not a vegetable. 
• Arizona Iced Teas are not hydration. 
• A 5-minute walk may not be a marathon, but it’s leaps and bounds better than doing nothing. 
• Ice and heat are both great. Pick one. Or both. Just don’t do neither.  
• Both sleep and body mechanics can be convoluted. Just don’t give up and give in to the idea that dysfunction in these areas is “just who you are.” Movement through the challenging aspects of our own physical obstacles is at the core of what we do for our clients. Treat yourself with the same respect and keep trying.
• And so many massage therapists are preaching the benefits of bodywork yet go months without getting some themselves. I admit it—I have traveled down this dark path. Deciding between getting a massage and catching up on Breaking Bad was not always the easiest choice to make. But, just like Walter White, we can all take a little more stock in our own future.

A Quick Review of Thumb Anatomy 

It’s easy to see how this awesome opposable appendage is one of the cooler things humans get to brag about. (OK, so do chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, baboons, koalas, pandas, possums, lemurs, and waxy leaf tree frogs.) The point is, the ability to take one of our digits, pull it away from the others, reach across our palm, and grab onto things is a handy trick. It certainly makes grabbing a muscle you want to massage a lot easier. But, with more complexity comes more vulnerability. 
The thumb is a convoluted piece of anatomy in which muscles traveling in one direction (the first dorsal interossei muscle and the first lumbrical muscle) intersect and sometimes clash with muscles traveling in a perpendicular direction (the flexor pollicis brevis, the adductor pollicis, and the opponens pollicis). This is almost always a recipe for disaster. 
Couple this with the compressive force imposed when finding that trigger point in your client’s quadratus lumborum that you so badly want to help relieve. Indeed, our thumbs don’t have it easy. With these factors taken into account, it only makes sense that our thumbs should receive that much more attention. 

A New Definition of Self-Care (Kind Of)

All these external lists of “things to do” and smarts about the tissues and tendencies of the thumb won’t do much of anything if you don’t first and foremost know yourself. Listening to outside suggestions is part of the human experience. But in that journey, homing in on who you are and what works or doesn’t work for you is a slow path of asking hard questions and then having the endurance to find the answers. Some people call this critical thinking. I call it making mistakes on purpose.
Try this: Make a list of each of the basic self-care approaches listed above. Maybe add a few of your own. Take a month and diligently practice the first one on your list. Ask yourself if you are doing it well and how you can adjust to make it work better for you. Then, for the next month, move down the list and focus on the next method. With the same tenacity, engage and stay focused on what is working and what is falling flat. Continue with this pattern until you’ve completed the list.
Do this with your keen sense of hand and thumb anatomy in focus. And, if you are motivated, use this same method to answer your next looming question of why something hurts or is difficult. This may not be the quick fix we are all searching for, but I promise it will reveal some incredible answers. 

“Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson