I HAD been told by my work colleagues that the unassuming green door near my flat was that of a blind masseuse. As I have had a painful lower back for as long as I can remember I thought I would give it a try.

I rang on the doorbell with optimism but no real idea of what to expect. Little was I to know that I was about to embark on a journey of pleasure and pain in the strangest mix.

I was met at the door by a small, benign looking lady in a slightly grubby white coat. With a friendly smile she welcomed me into what looked like her (slightly grubby) living room.

We began with an examination and as she expertly palpated her way up my spine with strong, probing hands, I explained to her my lower back problem. She promptly told me that this was not the problem - you could have fooled me - and that the problem was actually in my neck.

After a couple of squeezes and pokes around my neck yielding intense pain, she told me not to sleep on my side with my hands under my head.

How she knew my exact sleeping position from her cursory examination baffled me. Almost as much as how she expected me to change the habit of a lifetime and sleep on my back.

The massage itself was excruciating. Her hands, strengthened by a life-time of grappling with sore muscles seemed to radiate pain through my back, shoulders and neck as she dexterously went to work. Sporadically she would ask "tong ma?" (does that hurt?) in a sweet, gentle grandma-esque voice as she administered what felt like gruesome torture, possibly involving a blow torch, on my back.

I would have replied: "That hurts more than anything I have had the displeasure of being subjected to in my whole life", if only my Chinese had been up to it.

A stifled groan had to suffice. The scales, at this point, were heavily stacked in favour of pain over pleasure.

At one point, while she had her finger what felt like 3 inches into my right shoulder, my left foot started twitching uncontrollably. I wasn't sure whether to take this as a good sign or not.

The next morning I awoke to a bruised spine and an aching neck. However, the ever-present tension in my lower back did seem to have subsided somewhat and as I went about my day I felt strangely supple and relaxed.

With this success fresher in my mind than the torture of the previous day, I resolved to book another appointment before I thought better of it.

Over the course of the next few weeks I have had a weekly appointment with Ms Wu. I am happy to report that the massage has become less excruciating, and the benefits have continued. And, thankfully, my foot stopped twitching last Thursday.