"Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own".-Bruce Lee

My stretching routine is different everyday. I basically just go by the way my body feels. If it feels good, I do more. It there's pain, I do less. Some days I can stretch more aggressively, and other days I just do more movement type stuff. It all depends on the way my body feels.

A perfect example is my lower back right now. I overdid it a couple of weeks ago and it's still sore. It's gradually calming down, but I could hardly straighten up for a week or so. When I get a flare like that, I can't keep up the more aggressive stretching, it will just make it worse. It's the same thing with the thoracic area, if I get a flare, I have to back off until it calms down. Then I have to backtrack on the stretch's a bit, I can't just leave off where I was before the flare. It can be pretty discouraging, but that's just the way it is.

I think the main difference between inflammation and a flare is, the inflammation usually calms down in a day or two, and a flare usually lasts a week or more and I get muscle spasms along with it. Sometimes in the beginning it's hard to tell the difference. Inflammation is OK as long as you don't get muscle spasms. Even after 16 months of this, I still get some inflammation if I stretch a new area.