Frozen shoulder is a strange and often misdiagnosed problem. It’s very different from a rotator cuff injury, and so the treatment for it is again quite different.

Related posts:

1. The Kinetic Chain (and what this means for Trigger Points)
2. A Highly Effective Treatment for Whiplash Injuries
3. Self Treatment – Trigger Points in the Neck

“Go into cubeland in a tightly controlled corporate environment and you immediately sense that there is a malaise about being tied behind a computer screen seated all day. The soul of the nation is sapped, and now it’s time for the soul of the nation to rise.”

Dr. Levine

You don’t need me to tell you that sitting around too much could give you a sore back or a spare tire. Added to this a day at the office can give you eye strain, sore shoulders, RSI and trigger points.

Indeed, sitting in front of a computer for hours is not that good an idea. Studies have shown though, that hours spent just sitting – in and of itself – could be a problem.

So how dangerous is sitting really?

Here’s a few background facts to shed some light on the situation that a lot of you with desk jobs are probably in:

• A 2003-2004 U.S. survey, Americans spend over half of their time awake sitting
• A 2006 study showed that men who spent six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting had an overall death rate that was about 20 percent higher than the men who sat for three hours or less.
•  In the same study, the death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher
• Another study, published last year in the journal Circulation, looked at nearly 9,000 Australians and found that for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11 percent
• 63.1% of adults in the U.S. were either overweight or obese in 2009

So, this is all rather worrying. It appears that hours spent sitting has a cumulative bad effect on hour health. The important question arises – what can we do about it?

Here are some simple changes you can do to your office to make it healthier place to be.  And these changes can also reduce risk of back pain and trigger points.

Office Ergonomics

The first thing to deal with is our chair-based lifestyle. There are a  couple of chair alternatives here – you may want to try a combination of both.

Option 1.

Don’t sit down! Get a standing desk ($200-$750) with an anti-fatigue comfort mat ($20-$40) to give your feet a little extra cushioning throughout the day.

Option 2

Get something to sit on that will continue to work  your core and stabiliser muscles. Sit on an Exercise ball ($40) instead of a conventional chair.

There’s several things this will do for you:

• you won’t be able to slouch very easily
• your balance and core muscle strength will improve
• this reduces risk of lower back pain and injury.

To stop your exercise ball from rolling round the office, get a yoga ball base ($11). Added together, these two cost much less than a traditional office chair – and you get the benefits of daily core muscle strengthening.

Workstation Improvements

Keyboards are a huge cause of shoulder pain, neck pain, wrist, finger and hand pain. So an ergonomic keyboard is a sensible investment. Here’s a couple of different price ranges.

- Kinesis Advantage Keyboard ($269)

- Goldtouch Adjustable Keyboard ($95)

The mouse is another technological marvel that can cause a world of pain. Hours spent doing fine manipulations is not something we were really designed for.

An alternative is the Designer Appliances E Quill AirO2bic mouse ($90). It works quite differently from a conventional mouse, so it’s a good idea try one out first.

The stronger your muscles are, the less likely they are to get injured. So something which strengthens the muscles in your wrists, hand and arm is well worthing using.

So  use  Hand grippers ($20) for relieving stress and improving grip strength. A tennis ball or squeeze ball is a cheaper alternative. Another good idea is the Gyro Wrist Exercise Ball - used by climbers, typists, musicians and athletes to strengthen the wrist and hand muscles.

Related posts:

1. The Journey Back to Health

While chairs in various forms have been around for almost as long as humans have, sitting for hours on a 90 degree chair is a fairly recent development.

And it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s not a good development. In terms of back pain, buttock pain and the human hip joint 90 degree chairs are simply not the best option.

In this video,  Grant Dillon and I look at the ergonomics of sitting – and why western style chairs are bad for you.

For more tips on correcting posture to prevent muscle pain, have a look at the Posture Course here.

Related posts:

1. Levator Scapulae Trigger Points
2. The Ski Coaches Secret that Could Help Pain Relief

How do you use your body? Are you focused on what you are doing – or how you are doing it?

This is an interesting philosophy to grasp. Most people forget about posture and instead focus on what they are doing.

That’s how you end up with people driving awkward positions, hunched over computers and getting back pain from stressed posture muscles.

In this video,  Grant Dillon explains how the Alexander Technique gives you a framework to rethink not just your posture, but how you approach the wider task of living.

Are you focused on the outcome – or the process?

(Hint – the process is 99% of whatever you accomplish in life – so you’ll enjoy life much more if you enjoy the process of whatever you’re doing.)

For more on posture and awareness, go to the Posture Course here.

Related posts:

1. Alexander Technique – Effortless Posture
2. Alexander Technique, Tense Shoulders and the Startle Pattern
3. Post Exercise Soreness- a surprising & fascinating process.

What is most people’s idea of good posture?

Unfortunately, it’s often the head up, shoulders back military style. This  stiff upright posture is tiring to maintain and easy to slouch out of.

In Alexander Technique, good posture has one defining characteristic – it’s effortless. And this is a crucial part of how one of our senses functions best.

It’s not one of the well known 5 senses. But without it we probably wouldn’t survive a day. It’s  proprioception – the sense of the orientation of your limbs in space.

And proprioception is so much easier when you have effortless posture. You are allowing this amazing sense to do what it does best – shifting and aligning your body in space so that you can go about your daily deeds with the minimum effort and tension.

This is beautiful Alexander Technique concept is elegantly illustrated in the video below by my friend and Alexander Technique practitioner  Grant Dillon.

To find out more on posture correction and preventing back pain, head on over to the Posture Course here.

Related posts:

1. Alexander Technique, Tense Shoulders and the Startle Pattern
2. Alexander Technique Principles – Process vs Outcome
3. The Top 3 Posture Mistakes that Cause Trigger Points

Could a primeval reflex be causing you neck pain? The answer is yes – but you’re likely to be completely unaware of it.

This a clip from a video I shot with the fantastic Grant Dillon - a friend and Alexander Technique teacher in Auckland.

There are instinctive responses we humans have – reflexes that have come with us from our evolution in the jungle to the modern world. And while most of these responses still work to keep us safe, if you’re constantly under low grade (or high grade) stress, these responses may be causing you neck and shoulder pain

And this is all happening under the radar – without you realizing it. That’s where a skilled Alexander Technique practitioner can help – by making you conscious of invisible habits that may be causing you neck, shoulder and back pain.

For more information on correcting your posture to stop muscle pain, have a look at the Posture Course here.

Related posts:

1. Alexander Technique – Effortless Posture
2. Alexander Technique Principles – Process vs Outcome
3. Levator Scapulae Trigger Points

I often see people who’ve reached the end of the road in terms of chronic pain. They’ve tried every other test, treatment and diagnosis to get to the bottom of what’s causing their problem.

And sometimes – the answer to what’s giving them severe, unremitting pain – is trigger points.

The problem is that trigger point pain can look and feel like quite a few other medical problems.

When you’ve been told ‘it’s not your heart, not a pinched nerve, not arthritis and not a prolapsed disc’ but you still have severe pain – it could be worth checking to see if you have trigger points.

For a detailed free guide to diagnosing and treating triggers, click here.

Related posts:

1. Herniated or Prolapsed Discs: Natural Recovery

What many people who get diagnosed with osteoarthritis don’t know is that it can mean different things. It depends where you get the arthritis – ie what joint. Many people who show a lot of wear and tear in their joints have no pain.

So the fact that you have arthritis does not necessarily mean you’re going to spend your old age getting steadily worse – moving less and hurting more. In fact for some people it’s quite the opposite.

Pain from arthritis can also cause (or be confused with) trigger point pain. Click here to find out more about treating trigger points.

Related posts:

1. Myofascial Pain Syndrome: the Good News and the Bad News
2. Osteoarthritis Defined: Its Cause and What That Means for You
3. Natural Anti-Inflammatories & Understanding the Science Behind Good Nutrition

This is slightly counter intuitive – but once you think it through it makes perfect sense.

How you use your body when you’re recovering from surgery will have a big effect on how your scar turns out. It’s known as ‘relative rest’ and runs counter to the old ‘lie in bed and don’t move’ form of recovery.

Using relative rest, your scars heal in a way that makes them smaller, more flexible and stronger.

On the subject of activities you love doing, for me that sport is kite surfing.

Now, from the outside, kite surfing is slightly more extreme than golf, but since it’s all done in water, it’s a relatively safe sport.

But it does have its frustrations – mostly around waiting for the right kind of wind.

The other day, I was considering whether to go out or not.

The wind was sketchy – not quite enough for good kiting, but I was still hopeful.

While I was waiting, I saw 4 kiters go out, and proceed to flounder around in the patchy wind.

Why, I thought, did they go out? One of the disappointed returning kiters answered me.

‘What happened? It was supposed to be windy!’

We human beings do this all the time.

We disbelieve the evidence of our eyes in favour of what we think is ‘supposed’ to be.

I’ve seen this time and time again in medical practise.

Professional athletes return to their sport despite the fact that they were supposed to ‘never play again.’

Courageous people walk – even run marathons – despite the prognosis that they’d ‘never walk again.’

And it can work the other way too.

Some people never recover from minor injuries because they believe they have irreparable damage.

Other people guard their back movements so carefully because they believe they will damage themselves with even basic movements. This inactivity leads to stiff muscles and trigger points – a self fulfilling phrophecy.

Some people run on injured knees – ignoring pain messages, because they believe they should be better already.

Knowing when to rest and when to exercise is one of the keys to recovery.

The skill to master here is to listen to what you actually are feeling – not how it’s ‘supposed’ to be.

Learning to trust and listen to your body is one of the major parts to recovery – and this skill will stay with you once you’re fully recovered as well.