Changing directions
 

With intu-flow once you get good at doing circles with all your body parts, then you advance to figure eights. This gets your body used to changing directions. I can really tell a difference in my mobility. When I first started, I was so tight I had to turn my whole body together. I was about as flexible as Frankenstein.

Now I'm starting to get a little bit more flow in my movement. I still have tons of work to do on problem areas but I'm starting to feel some results. My entire body is starting to loosen up and move together much better. It's really neat to see my movement gradually getting better and better.

The great thing about this program is the movement is three dimensional. It's the way you move in real life. Things I've done in the past, have been more one dimensional, just moving in straight lines. I realize now that just wasn't enough to get everything moving and working together.

Another cool thing is since everything is done standing it's easy to do it throughout the day. You can do bits and pieces of it on your problem areas all day long. I'm constantly doing little hula hoop type circles with my lower back during the day and it's starting to feel pretty good. I do a lot of arm circles and figure eights too. It helps to keep things loose.

Hey Coop:

I picked the dvds up on EBay but waiting for them to arrive. I got to be honest with you. Those shoulders circles and movements make me nervous. On the video, he says to move the shoulders back and down which I'm fine with, but the "pinching" together is a recipe for disaster.

I did a pinch together movement given to me from a TOS Neuro and it put me into a flare for months and deep throbbing shoulder pain. Do you think he means more of a "glide" together, not a "pinch." It's a subtle difference, but a huge difference.

I think I'll start with 1 Rep, as all the arm flailing looks nasty :). I've read a bit about the program and it makes logical sense, but can it be applied to severe neuro problems will be the question.

Anne

Trust your instincts
 

Anne, Scott Sonnon always says to trust your instincts. If you think something might flare you it's probably best to avoid it at first. You don't want to get a huge flair right off the bat. To be honest when I first saw this program I never thought I'd be able to do as much of it as I am now. I really didn't, but my body has gradually adapted.

Also, it might be best to just try a couple of things at first to test the water. Then, if you're doing OK you can gradually add more movements. I would also suggest keeping the pain level at a 2 or less at first instead of 4 like he suggests, just barely to the edge of the tension. Even that will probably cause some inflammation at first.

Encyclopedia of Joint Mobility-Steve Maxwell
 

The Encyclopedia of Joint Mobility-Steve Maxwell is another cool DVD I just got several weeks ago. There's a little bit of intu-flow on there, but the majority of exercises is other stuff. There's tons of different stretches on there for every part of your body and they all involve movement, like I've been doing. A lot of it is way too difficult for me right now but it gives me something to work towards. There are a lot of things on there that are helping me, though.

One thing I've been doing a lot of is foot and ankle stretches. He really stresses the importance of having flexible feet and ankles since they're the first thing that touches the ground. If the feet are tight that tension works its way through your body. Everything's connected. My feet were super tight when I started but they're starting to feel much better. It really makes a big difference in the way I feel.

Another thing I've been doing is putting a little super ball on the floor and rolling the soles of my feet around on it. It really helps loosen the feet up and makes them less sensitive to walking on uneven surfaces. The first time I did it my feet were sore for several days after, but now they're used to it. I do this almost every day now and walking around barefoot is getting a lot more comfortable for me.

A good TOS tutorial
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFvNY...eature=related

These doctors do a good job of explaining TOS using one of the Bodyworld's figures as a visual aid. They also talk about the importance of breaking up adhesions.

Have you tried any of the Graston Technique and Active Release Technique
like on these videos?

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...Technique&aq=f


I used one of my big stainless steel serving spoon (the handle is wide & smooth) & Palmers Cocoa butter :)


I should do some again , my forearms are a little sore from doing extra chores & projects lately.

I haven't tried using anything metal like those instruments, but I have been doing a lot of self massage on my forearms and wrists lately. I really wasn't a big fan of self massage because it seemed to make me worse, but lately it seems to be helping. I guess my body is getting healthier.

My lower legs and calves are a problem spot too. If I lay on the floor, a 26 ounce can of spaghetti sauce feels pretty good to roll my lower legs around on. That's metal. Does it count? Maybe redneck Graston? LOL

Lateral Neck Glides
 

My neck is one of my biggest problem areas. After more than 30 years with TOS, it's very tight and stiff. When I stretch my neck, I have to be very careful. On a pain scale of 1 to 10, I try not to go above a 2 when I'm working on my neck, and I never do more than two or three reps of any exercise. Some of my worst flare ups have been from overstretching my neck.

One of the exercises on Intu-flow is lateral neck glides. There's also a front to back neck glide, and I can do that one fairly easy. The lateral glides I still can't do, though. No matter how hard I try, my head just turns when I try to do them. He says it's a hard movement for most people to learn. After all these years with TOS, my thoracic area is so gunked up, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to do that exercise. Has anyone else tried to do those?

Not a very good month
 

I don't feel like I made much progress this month. I started out the first day of the month with a bad flare that lasted eight or nine days. It wasn't from stretching, but because my wife was driving and went around a couple of sharp turns too fast. That's all it took to set me off.

The last week or so, my lower back and legs have been flared and sore. That is my fault. I was seeing how far I could push them and obviously it was too much. So I'm not really overflowing with encouragement and enthusiasm right now. Hopefully next month I can get back on track.

Stretching like this can be kind of an emotional roller coaster. I have to try and not get too discouraged when it's not going well, and not too overly enthused when I'm doing better. I'm not seeing the message boards overflowing with old-timers who are getting better so maybe I'm just kidding myself.

Keep at it, after the flare passes...:grouphug:

I still over do once in awhile, or try a new thing and push a bit too far, then learn to take it back a notch..and go easier next time.


I wish more of the old timers would try some of these things & post about it too, but maybe the damage is too much, or pain is just too high, to even consider starting something like this..:(

Does anyone else get alot of cracking and popping noises when doing these exercises?

I get alot espically in the shoulders and neck

Yes, I get popping and cracking noises sometimes. I think it's just things loosening up. They don't hurt.

Indian clubs are working well
 

Several months ago I bought some little 1 pound Indian clubs to experiment with and I have to say, I really like them. I've been using them a lot for some of my shoulder and arm exercises. They came with an instructional DVD, "Club swinging with Dr. Ed Thomas". At first, I just practiced doing some of the exercises on the DVD freehand, without the clubs, because my range of motion wasn't good enough, but I'm getting to where I can do a few of them with the clubs now. They really help to loosen up the shoulders and arms. To be honest, I'm really surprised that I'm able to do some of these exercises without flaring myself up.

I also just play around with them a lot and make up my own exercises. Holding the club allows you to relax your arm, and just let the weight and leverage of the club stretch everything out. It feels really good. It's much different than lifting a weight, and since you can move in three dimensions, it gets all your joints working together. I also think the twisting and turning movements are really good for breaking up the muscle fibers and adhesions.

Everyday is different
 

"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.

Coop, I respect your efforts, but reports like these really make me want to avoid these particular stretches and focus on my trigger point therapy workbook first to see what results I can get out of it. The author had similar problems with stretching that you're reporting and didn't get long lasting relief until he focused on trigger points.

The book has 380 reviews on Amazon averaging 4.5 stars and I can vouch that the intro material in it is excellently written. Hopefully in a month or two I'll be able to report whether or not it helped!

I did start with the Egoscue stretches/exercises which I found easy to learn and quite helpful with my pec minor and shoulder pain which is now mostly gone.

380 reviews? How many with TOS that got better?

Hard to say, but you can browse through them if you like:

http://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Point-...dp/1572243759/

The book pages that mention TOS are 80 and 109, although the material I'm looking to get into is more extensive than that. I hold so much tension in my neck and traps, and I want to see if I can release it.

There also appears to be symptom overlap between TOS and trigger points, although given that the "S" in TOS stands for "Syndrome", that might be a non-point.

Wish me luck because I'm going to give it a try. :)

Here's a website with good detail on Trigger points

http://www.triggerpoints.net/

and some more from our useful sticky thread post #1

Triggerpoints and referred pain and stretching:
http://www.pressurepointer.com/pain_reference_chart.htm
http://www.triggerpointbook.com/index.html
http://triggerpoints.net/_sgg/m1m1_1.htm
http://altmedicine.about.com/library...ressure+points
http://www.drlowe.com./triggerpoint.htm
http://www.bodymindresources.com/car...horaciclab.htm
http://www.erikdalton.com/articleduramater.htm
http://deeptissue.com/articles/articles.html
http://www.edgelow.com/
http://www.rossiter.com/aboutus/tellmemorerossiter.asp
http://www.egoscue.com/htdocs/index.asp

the links didn't carry over :(- here's the post w/active links
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/post388-1.html

So, what are my odds?
 

I keep searching the Internet looking for people who have beaten TOS, fibromyalgia, chronic pain. I haven't found that much. I know Jomar has done it, but she didn't have surgery. That lady that cured her fibromyalgia has done it, but she didn't have TOS surgery either. I haven't heard of anyone who has had a failed TOS surgery and then got better years later with exercise. I could be wrong, I'm just saying I haven't heard a story like that. Has anyone else?

So I guess that doesn't make my odds very good, but that's OK. It just gives me more motivation.

I think there was a teacher or 2 & a singer?? that had surgery and seemed to be fine, more or less and they went back to work, but haven't heard anymore from them.
No updates from them and I can't recall the usernames...it was years ago.

I suppose many might feel bad posting that they are better when others are still in pain and having problems..

Also, when people get better from health problems they tend to go back to living their life. The non-problematic cases are unlikely to be hanging out here.

In fact, I hope someday I'm not here either. :p

Coop, you had your surgery a long time ago IIRC. Are you due for a fresh round of exams and imaging? :Scratch-Head: Maybe you've already had that; I don't know your whole history.

Actually, I did have one of those fancy MRA/MRI scans of the thoracic and brachial plexus area about seven years ago. It didn't show any major compression. I talked with a surgeon at UCSF about it and he didn't feel any further surgery would be beneficial. He felt like scar tissue was a lot of my problem.

Chroma: I think trigger point therapy and myofascial release are paramount before you begin any therapy that would inflame, disrupt or aggravate what's going on. I did buy the Intu-Flow program that Coop's been doing, but my gut tells me I'm not there yet. I need another 6 months or so of therapy under my belt and a slow testing of the waters before I try. My nervous system is now calm and I want to re-train my brain out of the 24/7 fight or flight response. Manual therapy has made the world of difference for me. I only wish I could go 3 times or more per week.

Coop: I see you are in Northern Ca. Did you have a Werden MRI?

Yep, Dr. Scott Werden was the guy who did it and I think the surgeon I saw was Dr. Avery.

Movement Heals
 

"No matter how good your diet is, if you're not moving that joint, it's not getting any of the nutrition your puttting in your mouth." -Scott Sonnon(Quote from Ageless Mobility seminar on Youtube)

I learn a lot from listening to Scott Sonnon. He seems like a very intelligent guy. The Ageless Mobility seminar on Youtube is pretty interesting.

He talks about how movement brings nutrition to your joints so they can heal. Without the movement, he says your joints don't get any nutrition, so your body is literally starving to death.

That makes sense to me because over the years I've tried many different diets, nutritional supplements, vitamins, minerals, etc. and I've never found anything that made a noticeable difference in my pain levels, or helped me heal. I guess if your body is really tight, and stuck together, like mine, no nutrition gets to those tight, adhered together, muscles and joints.

Another thing he mentions, is that most injuries, are the result of overuse, or inactivity. Overuse is what got me into all this pain in the very beginning. Now, inactivity may be what has kept me from healing. Hopefully, continued joint mobility exercises will do the trick.

As things get more and more loose form streching and ect can it cause aches and pains, I get aches and pains in my shoulders all the time and im trying to distinguish what its from? I do the shoulder circles and ect but i dunno.

Is streching everyday to much ?

Stretching everyday might be too much, sometimes. I've learned to let my body be the guide. If I feel good I do more, if I'm in pain, I do less. I think it's something you kind of have to play around with and figure out. I'm still learning as I go.

I resolved my shoulder pain with the Egoscue stretches, many of which are passive where you lay on the floor in a certain position and let gravity do the work for you. This allows you to let go of the muscle.

I've been doing these 6 days a week.

Whats the link to buy the egoscue guide? I have heard to many good things.

Here is the book I'm using:
http://www.amazon.com/Pain-Free-at-Y...dp/0553380524/

He has four books and the first review for this one, by "Clopper Almon Jr", talks about all four so you can pick one:
http://www.amazon.com/Egoscue-Method...dp/0060924306/

And here is the main web site:
http://www.egoscue.com/

They also have clinics where you can get an evaluation of your alignment and problems and they'll prescribe an exercise set and teach them to you. I already had my alignment reviewed by my chiro, so I haven't bothered. Otherwise, that sounds like a good idea.

20 years ago this month
 

I was just looking at the calendar and I realized it was 20 years ago, this month, that I had my scalenectomy. It was August 1991. I had no idea how much misery and pain that was going to cause me. I had never even heard of TOS at the time.

We owned a dairy, and that's how I got TOS, milking cows everyday. Squatting down and reaching underneath the cows is very uncomfortable. It was a classic case of repetitive strain injury. I had no idea why I was in pain all the time and I worked that way for 12 years before I was ever diagnosed.

Finally, I blew out some discs in my lower back and a physical therapist I was seeing noticed my hand was purple. He's the one that finally diagnosed me with TOS. I had no idea what that was since I had never heard of it.

I had the surgery and instead of getting better I felt terrible. Much more pain. It was the end of my working days.

It's been a little over 16 months since I started stretching, doing the Sharon Butler self-care program and the Intu-flow program, along with lot of stuff that I make up myself. I have to say, that even though I'm not pain free, I am feeling the best that I've felt, since that surgery 20 years ago.

I had actually given up on ever getting any better. I thought the damage was done. But now, I'm actually feeling cautiously optimistic, that maybe if I keep this up, I may have a chance of being a somewhat functional person again someday.

Hidden pockets of injured tissue
 

Sharon Butler says, "In any RSI(repetitive strain injury), there are hidden pockets of injured tissue that are hard to find and a challenge to feel. Most stretches will fail to find them for you."

I'm finding that the little Indian clubs that I bought are the perfect tool for finding these tight areas. Here's a link that shows Indian clubs being demonstrated.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reWVC...eature=related

I can't do all those movements yet but I can do a few of them, one arm at a time. Using both clubs at the same time takes a lot of coordination and I'm not there yet. Plus, my range of motion isn't that great so it's easier to focus on one arm at a time without hurting myself.

The first couple of months after I started using these, I got a lot of inflammation in my arms after but it seems to be getting less as time goes by. In fact lately, the more I use them, the better I seem to feel.

Yikes, I could never swing my arms around like that. :eek: Swinging my arm on the symptomatic side exacerbates my symptoms.

LOL. Yep, conventional wisdom hasn't gotten me far, so I'm starting to think outside the box.

I did a little bit with a 3 & 5 lb weights - missing the matching sets- due to a puppy I think...:rolleyes:

the 5 lb weight was a bit too much for my R shoulder - it has some chronic strain or something - my R arm is stronger so I used the lighter weight in my L. L side did OK. I only did for 6 mins or so and did a swaying warm up.

I used one of the other video styles since the hand weights wouldn't work the same as the clubs.

It seemed to encourage me to tighten my core for stability. :cool:

Circular and rotational movement
 

I'm finding myself doing more circular and rotational movements lately, as I progress. I'm noticing that using the Indian clubs is helping to strengthen all the little rotator muscles in my shoulders, elbows, and wrists. My shoulders and arms feel better than they have a long time. They're getting looser and more flexible, and the pain in my elbows and wrists isn't as bad. Even the nerve pain on the inside of my elbow seems to be getting better.

Here's a link to some other rotational exercises I've been doing that are helping. I think this rotational stuff is really important. I don't know why therapists don't use more of it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSZ99x6xH2k&NR=1

Self-administered Graston technique and rice for heel pain
 

I've been having trouble with pain in my right heel. It's an ankle I sprained badly many years ago playing football. There seems to be a lot of scar tissue there and I think the nerve may be stuck in it. That's my unexpert opinion anyway.:confused: When you start doing this joint mobility you start to uncover old injuries you forgot about.

I've tried doing the Graston technique, that Jomar posted on here, a couple of times on it. I just used the handle of butter knife and some baby oil to massage the scar tissue and then I did some ankle mobility exercises after. It seems like the ankle feels a little looser but the pain is still there. Maybe I need to work on it some more.

My other idea is I bought a plastic container and 10 pounds of rice. I filled the container with rice and I put my foot in there and move it around. I just started this today. My hope is that the rice will massage the heel and loosen up the scar tissue. I've seen athletes use buckets of rice to condition their hands so I'm thinking maybe it will work for feet too. It doesn't hurt to try.

Looking down is terrible
 

Ever since I had that scalenectomy 20 years ago, looking down causes me terrible pain. Not just at the time, but for a long while afterwards. It wasn't this way before the surgery, it got much worse after surgery.

Holding a book, or paper, and trying to read it is almost impossible. It just gets too painful. Also, a computer page that can't be scrolled will cause me pain, if I have to look down at the bottom of the computer screen to read it.

I was hoping this was something that would improve with all my joint mobility exercises, but so far it's not.:mad: I've improved in a lot of other areas but not here. I'm not really very confident that this will ever get much better.

17 months and still improving
 

It's been a little over 17 months now since I started this stuff. I'm still gradually improving. My flexibility is gradually getting better and my pain levels are not quite as bad. I still have pain, but there's no way I'd want to go back to where I started.

This is a very slow process. It's definitely a marathon. I've spent hundreds of hours stretching and working on joint mobility. Everyday I just keep working at it. My wife thinks I'm a bit obsessed with it, but I'm not getting any younger, more work means faster progress.

Intu-flow is a good gauge of where my problem areas are. If certain exercises are hard, those are the ones I need to work on. The easy ones don't do me as much good. I constantly change my routine to keep my body progressing and to keep myself from getting bored.

Any place the brachial plexus is touched by muscle (the entire length of it), it can be affected by muscle tension. BUT... only minimally except by the scalenes, pec minor and sometimes in axilla region by corocobrachialis.

Be careful working around the neck and in the armpit. Nerves, blood vessels--lots of stuff can be injured by even light pressure.

All this talk of stretching? Muscles themselves don't stretch--golgi tendon organ at the joint and muscle spindles in the belly of muscle protect the muscles from overstretch. What you're stretching, I think, is the fascial covering that binds muscles in bundles and the skin covering to muscles. The best way to do that IMO is with myofascial release. A forearm is pressed into a broad plane to the depth of slight tenderness; the therapist will hold there until the tissue in his direction of travel relaxes; he will take the sweep all the way down the muscle, adjust position and sweep the other direction-- MFR practitioner will hold wherever he encounters adhesion or a trigger point. Covering one quadrant of the back can take half an hour or more. MFR can be used on thighs, forearms, back, buttocks, chest. Full body MFR, 2-2.5 hours. But the results are miraculous.