AMTA Trip to Minneapolis

I was helping out at the CranioCradle booth for the 3 days.  I touched many lives and one in particular stood out enough to write about.  She shared with me that her husband was legally deaf from an accident and that she had just graduated massage school.  Since working with him with her limited skills and knowledge he was able at times to go without the hearing aides.  She asked me about his forward head posture and the types of therapies she should take in the future to continue to help him.  I explained the role of SCM over working as he was overworking to hear someone.  Go ahead, lean your ear to listen closely as someone whispers.  That is using the SCM, scalenes, traps, etc.  So what would help?  NMT for head, neck, and TMJ work, Craniosacral therapy, muscle energy, entire fascial lines, cupping, heat, body retraining for posture, craniocradle, ATM for Cervical and that is just to name a few.  I told her to keep adding to her tool box every chance she got because you just never know which technique or combo will do the trick.

Happy educating to all

Flexibility and Fibromyalgia

How can flexibility help fibromyalgia? The more flexible the muscles are the less likely they will be to cause compression on the nerves. Put a rubber band around your finger or wrist and leave it there, you will soon find out how compression can cause pain, tingling, and numbness all of which patients complain of that have the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. Adding flexibility to your massage therapy sessions will help take the stress off of you as a therapist and will give the patient long lasting benefits. Using stretching in your therapy sessions is also a great teaching tool to the patient as to what they should continue to do at home. If you are unsure of how to add stretching to your massage routine, join us for our Flexibility Coaching Program.

Happy Stretching.

Eat, Pray, Love Another Message

I rarely work a Sunday, but I got this call from a young women who wanted to do something special for her mom's birthday. The only day both daughters and the mother would be available would be Sunday. Something in me said ok, we would be happy to make a very special day for your mother. They arrived and mom had never had a massage or a facial. If fact from what I learned about her that day I am quite sure she always did everything for everyone else. The reason I am writing about this very special lady this time is not because she was in pain, but because we all could learn a very valuable lesson from the unselfishness of this 45 year old lady. I took the daughter in first for her facial and asked what her mother's age was, and how special it was to do this for her. Her daughter tells me they have only had a couple of hours of sleep because for her mother's birthday she wanted to have a religious ceremony (they were Hindu) and the religious ceremony consisted of cooking lots of food starting at 3:00 in the morning for friends and family and praying. What a contrast to most of us who would have maybe wanted to be taken out for dinner or be bought some sort of gift. Her gift was giving to the people she loved, praying for the people she loved, and eating with the people she loved. If that is not beautiful and inspiring I can't imagine what is.

So to those that might read this, eat, pray, and love
Debbie

Shoulder Assessment with a surprise

This week even I got a surprise. I got a call from a chiropractor in town who was seeing a mutual patient. He called me to give me the results of an MRI that I had suggested to the client that if I were her I would get. The results were a full thickness tear of subscapularis, a partial tear of supraspinatus, arthritis in the AC joint, and arthritis in the labrium. He called to tell me how he couldn't believe he had missed the tears and I was right in my assessment of this patient. That was not the only surprise in this case. When I did the assessment she had full flexion, extension, abduction, internal and external rotation actively. She did not test weak in any of the muscles surrounding the joint. What? That's right, the only thing that allerted me was when we were attempting some simple strengthening exercises of flexion, she had a moment where the arm grabbed on the way down which is sometimes an indication that supraspinatus is partially toren and will grab the humerus on the eccentric load. The next indication was when I had her on the massage table I felt the grinding of the joint when moving the arm from external to internal rom. I noticed also that her SC joint was misaligned on that same side and was painful on palpation and was not smooth at either end of the clavical. There seemed to be that familiar almost clunk that a toren labrium will produce when moving once again from internal to external rom. So at the end of her third session we talked about her upcoming hip replacement and that after that she would not be able to get a MRI of her shoulder so why not go ahead and find out for sure what was going on with the shoulder. She originally came to me for some strength exercises of her hip and what she thought was a weakening shoulder over the course of the last year. What a surprise for her to find out not only will she be facing a hip replacement, but now a shoulder repair as well. This shows you the necessity and importance of feeling, listening, and assessing.

Happy Assessing, Debbie

Something Special About Mother's Day

There was something so special this Sat. about the day before Mother's Day. We had 8 ladies join us for a Day of Beauty, a family that well deserved some pampering. That is not so unusual so why read on. Because there was one special lady which proved the power of touch. I needed my receptionist to translate for me, she only spoke Spanish. In this particular event I was needed as a facialist. I asked my receptionist to join me as I introduced this mother to her facial. She looked to be in her early 70's. Her and I would only be able to communicate with touch. I began to explain what was going to take place and my receptionist translated. She told me she suffered from vertigo and needed extra pillows and time to sit up. Her smile lit me up, her tiredness, her gentleness, all told me how much her life had been up to this point. Being pampered was not very familiar. The translation began to make her very comfortable with me and the trust began. I can't tell you how much this one experience can do for you if you look deep inside yourself as a therapist and really know what it is you are sent here to do. You are sent here to touch peoples lives, to understand a deeper part of yourself. What greater gift than that. We proceeded with no language and at the end we looked into each others eyes knowing that something special had just occurred. Not really knowing how to end the session, I said gracias, she told me oh no gracias to you, mucho experiencia, oh your hands, gracias, gracias. I hope you get the depth of this, there is not a larger thanks than to touch anothers soul. Without words, you can achieve so much.

Happy Mothers day..

Debbie Roberts

Shoulder Replacement

I just wanted to share with you an interesting case of a little lady of the age of 80. She had a right shoulder replacement 5 years ago. Which she told me was doing fine until her PT handed her a rope and asked her to stretch her quadriceps over her shoulder. After that she had loss of range of motion in the new joint. What happened? Well if you meet this lady, she is one determined active lady, and she probably pulled on that rope pretty hard. Anyway, I am seeing her now 2 years post that incident. Why, she came to me was because the other shoulder had ended up with a impingement and bursitis. So if you can imagine, she was without use of either shoulder. She is a widow and it was making life difficult to do anything with her arm much above 70 degrees if that. And the pain was bringing her down. There is a happy ending to this story, keep reading. She came to me in late Nov. She also has a severe scoliosis of the right back with high levels of pain at times and low levels all the time. So my time was divided between two shoulders and a entire back. She came in once a week for therapy. In 5 weeks, her left shoulder had full range of motion and her posture had improved. I did ATM each and every time. I used NMT, cupping, stretching, AIS, muscle energy, and Muscle Activation as the entire treatment. Two weeks ago, we hit a milestone, the shoulder replacement side, finally responded and she could lift her arm to about 140 and the pain had subsided. She is so thrilled, she is swinging her arms in the air showing everybody. I should mention also, she was a very faithful student. She did her isometrics and ROM exercises at home. She is dancing, she is doing Ti Chi and best of all she hung a clock on the wall all by herself. Her back has so much djd, that at best we can help keep her pain levels lower. But as you can see, nothing is stopping her. Keep her in your prayers. And I hope you will help one of our elderly out of an impossible situation because of this posting. Take care, until next time. Don't guess, assess. Debbie

Achilles Tendon

Recently I have seen quite a few runners with Achilles tendon pain. Each one had a different set of problems. The first one, I assessed her standing and then squatting. She had a severe pronation and a obvious dropped navicular. Her heel pad looked like it was atrophying. I treated her with cupping, neuromuscular massage, active isolated stretching, and finished with taping. After the third or fourth visit, I suggested she should probably get an evaluation from a podiatrist. Why, because she wouldn't stop running and the treatment I could see was not going to solve this entirely or fast enough for her. We continued to treat her each week, she got orthotics, and is back running pain free. We did address more than the foot and calf. We had to take a look at posture, core, and the weakness of tibialis posterior. I treated with muscle energy for the navicular bone. All in all, because she would not' stop running, we saw her every week for 8 weeks and she is very happy running, running, running.

This last week was a wonderful experience with a little girl who is 8 years old. She has been treating with my facility for the past year and we have effectively helped her with Tourette Syndrome. Her ticks have diminished and her mother states that the Mayo Clinic highly recommened this therapy for her. We have been doing a regular massage with Jinshin Jyutsu as an additional therapy. If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact us.