Hello Steve -

It was good to see you again and thank you for all your good work  ;-)

I have two stories for you -

When I was out there in Arizona I got a phone call from a woman in CT,
manager of a soon-to-open women's wellness spa near my home.  She got my
name from my massage school's website b/c I had listed 'oncology massage' as
one of my specialties - we had a good talk on the phone and today I went to
see her and the facility.

Good, good location - right across the street from the UConn Medical
School/Center and on the edge of the gold-plated Farmington Valley.
And - a lovely, lovely space.

Nice woman - former dental hygienist whose profession took a toll on her
shoulders and wrists, and she's a Reiki practitioner - looking for
'like-minded' practitioners who believe there's a larger purpose to work and
doing business than making money.
So far she's got a nutritionist, life coach, esthetician, acupuncturist, and
a couple of massage therapists.

We chatted about all the usual things for a couple of hours and next week
I'll do an "audition" massage.  She's good, wants to know what practitioners
have to offer beyond what she knows about...

She was "squirming" her shoulder as we talked, so...  I found a couple of
strains and releases ­ she said she wasn't saying "Wow!" only because she
knows there are modalities she doesn't know anything about...
Bless her heart, staying cool and calm...

Then she did something with her shoulder and I realized it was a little
frozen ­ I raised her arm and found a release way up in her armpit ­ and
she put her arm straight above her head!  ­­ such a cute lady, her eyes
popped right out of her head and she said "You're hired!"
I asked how long it had been since she could raise her arm like that, but
she was so busy putting her arm up and down she never answered, what a
sweetheart ­ I'm guessing it had been a while...

So neat ­ a great tribute to your NFR work ­ even in the hands of a novice.

Apparently she goes to some big-guy LMT who hurts her a lot but she feels
better after...  hmmm....   Welcome to a better way.

It's so good ­ and such a treat ­ to be able to help people this way ­ like
the guy sitting next to me on the flight to AZ who reached for the tray
table and cringed.  Turns out he had had rotator-cuff surgery some weeks
before and blamed his trouble on not being able to keep up with his
stretching regimen while traveling.
Ten minutes and a few releases later he wasn't blaming the stretching thing
anymore, his shoulder felt OK.  A couple of hours later, after the plane
landed, he waved and shouted to me across the terminal, "It still feels
fine!"  NFR at 30,000 ft ­ what a trip!

I don't think I've ever told you - my mother had a terrible frozen shoulder
the last twelve years of her life and no one had anything to offer that
really helped...  So, so much pain... the farthest we ever took it was the
Lahey Clinic and when they told us there was nothing to do we believed them.
So when I can do anything for someone's shoulder especially, I am very
grateful.

Thank you, thank you so much --

Sheila C., M.S., L.M.T.
New Britain, CT

 


Dear Steve.

I wanted to tell you a story.

Last week I had a new patient. She had had a lumbar fusion, and she had picked us for therapy because she had come here once before, and knew that hate to cause patients any pain. She was very, very tender post operatively—and she was scared. When she laid down, she grabbed the side of the table—and her eyes got big. I told her to relax, and she was in a panic.

In the past, MFR, Strain-counter strain would have been my tools of choice. But I decided on NFR. Ribs, iliac crests, lateral legs all calmed down very rapidly. She started crying and said, “How can you do that? It doesn’t hurt any more.”
 
When she stood, she said that her back was a little sore. So quadratus lumborum was calmed down just as quickly. She smiled ear to ear- damn it felt good.
 
Thanks for NFR [NeuroFascial Release].
 
P.C., PT
Camarillo, CA

Hey Steve.
 
Had to write and tell you of a fun osteopathic experience I had last night. I was at a party when one of my swing dance friends dislocated her shoulder.  Not just subluxed but a complete dislocation with humeral head inferior and below the glenoid.

She was in the bathroom and some of the girls rushed me over to help as her shoulder wouldn’t go in on its own and she was in severe pain. I held onto the right (affected)shoulder with my left hand from behind the scapula, holding the coracoid process and spine of the scapula between my third finger and thenar eminence while I held the dislocated humeral head between my thumb and first finger.

From here, I assessed the dislocation and how the head popped out (anteriorly, probably due to a torn labrum and anterior capsule from previous dislocations). Then feeling the tissue tension and way of ease I gently guided the humeral head with my right hand, from the distal aspect of the humerus, anteriorly and superiorly and out from under the glenoid. When the head reached the anterior aspect of the glenoid a very large sensation of muscular contraction pulled the head back into  its normal position immediately reducing the dislocation and placing the humerus back into its normal position (much to the relief of the woman and much awe for myself).

The treatment was effortless, painless and took maybe 3 seconds. It felt like lightning bone setting. I was very excited to have this opportunity to treat something like that for the first time in my life. (Of course, sad for the poor woman, but you know what I mean).

Thanks for having helped me to understand the body so that I could be helpful in such a situation. Your training and the inherent healing power are definitely what helped me to be successful in such a situation.
 
J.M., P.T.
East Stroudsburg, PA

Hi
 
I have a client who came to me with back pain and a complaint of feeling  as if a nail was stuck in the side of his calf. He had an MRI which showed a bulging disk at L5. He often had trouble standing straight.

The doctors decided to give him cortisone injections to the low back, but  wanted him to continue coming for therapy.

Last Tuesday, he showed up very hunched over and complaining of nurnbness in the front of his shin as well as his typical pain. He said he woke up that way. The only thing that was making him f eel better was flexion. I was concerned that the disk had gotten worse and told him he needed to go back and see the doc.

However, I had him lay down and did some work to try to calm his system. Somewhere in my brain it dawned on me to release the nerve roots in the low back, as we did in class and in the tutorial. I attempted this via NFR [Neurofascial Release].

I felt like they had released but was unsure. (Even worse, I thought the tightest restriction was around L3, which made no sense to me.) He had a little relief while on the table, but as he walked out he said the only thing that would make him feel better was flexion. He returned to me on Thursday. He told me he woke up on Wednesday morning with intense pain in his back and leg which put him on the floor for about thirty minutes. He almost had his girlfriend call all ambulance. Then, he was okay for fifteen minutes. Then he had a second bout of pain for about fifteen more minutes.

After that, he reports the leg pain was gone, he no longer felt the stabbing pain in the calf, and he feels he has shadow numbness. (“It is kind of but not really there.”)

He saw the doctor that afternoon, but was not having pain. The doctor decided he should have the third cortisone shot anyway. The patient told  me he did not do anything significant after the Tuesday treatment. I saw him  again a week later. He was still doing well.

L.C., P.T.
Ellington, CT