By Porsche
The blue light of my laptop cast an eerie glow across my home office at 11 PM. Another late night, another project deadline looming. At 32, I’d become a poster child for the digital marketing hustle – hunched shoulders, chronic neck pain, and a body that felt more like a rusty machine than a human.
I’d ignored the warning signs for months. The occasional sharp twinge in my lower back? Just stress. Those tension headaches that seemed to grip my skull like a vice? Part of the job. The constant ache between my shoulder blades? Totally normal for someone glued to screens 12 hours a day, right?
Wrong.
It was my partner who finally intervened. “You’re falling apart,” they said bluntly one Saturday morning, watching me wince while reaching for my coffee. “Healthland in West Melbourne. Book a remedial massage. Now. They’re the best”
Skepticism was my default setting. As a digital marketer, I’m trained to research everything. Reviews, comparisons, cost-benefit analyses – I do this for a living. But my body was sending urgent signals I could no longer ignore.
Walking into Healthland felt like entering a different universe from my high-stress digital world. The therapist wasn’t just another massage professional. She was part detective, part body mechanic. The remedial massage wasn’t just a treatment. It was a full-scale intervention. The therapist worked through layers of accumulated tension with surgical precision. Each pressure point told a story of prolonged stress, each stretch a revelation of how disconnected I’d become from my own physical well-being.
What surprised me most was the holistic approach. This wasn’t just about temporary relief. The manager, Pattie, suggested stretching routines I could do between emails, and explained how prolonged screen time was literally reshaping my body’s natural alignment.
The HICAPS service meant I could claim part of the treatment through my health fund – a practical bonus for someone who meticulously tracks every professional expense.
Leaving Healthland, something fundamental had shifted. My body felt different, yes, but more importantly, my approach to work-life balance was being rewritten.
To my fellow digital warriors in Melbourne’s west: your body is not a machine. It’s time to invest in yourself.
