Referral Last week I saw a new client sent to me by a doctor I know. She has shoulder pain and limited ROM. The doctor had sent her to physical therapy because her insurance would pay for physical therapy. The physical therapist could do nothing to her shoulder without her feeling intense pain and making […]
Weird Feeling Tuesday, one of our clients came in for a yoga class. As I walked into our classroom she was telling the yoga teacher about her back. She mentioned how she often had pain and “a weird feeling” in the middle of her back. Without thinking I reached out and touched her back. I […]
Chronic Headaches Okay, I am going to tell you a funny and mildly graphic and useful story. One of my clients has chronic, intense headaches. She messaged me last week begging for an appointment. She had gone to the doctor, gotten pills, taken them, and felt the headache was worse instead of better. I am […]
Thyroidectomy What happened in SMRT class in Pittsburgh? So much!! First, we had a therapist in class who had a thyroidectomy. The scar tissue in the front of her neck was pulling her chin and trachea inferior and posterior. On Saturday, we did SMRT for the anterior neck and I did some extra work on […]
Thumbs up! I had an interesting thing happen during a session today. I was working on a client’s shoulder. Her pain complaint was her right thumb. She is a long time client, so we know that typically to alleviate the pain in her thumb, her shoulder needs to be worked. Her right scapula was immobile, […]
Implant Work I just got back from teaching an SMRT shoulder girdle class in Fargo where a really cool thing happened. We had a woman in class, maybe late 50’s who went through breast cancer treatments about 5 years ago. She had a unilateral mastectomy on the left, 7 nodes removed, chemo, and radiation. Then […]
It’s all in the Ribs It is crazy how often I am working on a client and the issue is their rib cage. Last week I saw a gentleman whose main complaint was weakness in his left leg and hip pain. At one point in the session he said, “yeah, it all started when I […]
Hips & Legs the SMRT Way Yesterday I saw an elderly gentleman (a very active 81-year-old) complaining of weakness in his left leg. He said it all began when he had open heart surgery over a decade ago. At first, it was his right leg that felt weak and would not support his weight. But, […]
Headaches For the past several days I have been with friends who are therapists and we have been working on each other. One of the woman I was trading with was having back pain. The first day I was working on her posterior ribs. The ribs on her left side responded to the SMRT I […]
SMRT Move for Psoas Two mornings ago I woke up with a pain in my back that felt like a knife was stuck in my back. It was on the right side of my vertebrae at about T7 and T8. I could hardly move my back or my right arm. Breathing was difficult. I had […]
Relieving Chest Pressure the SMRT Way I had some SMRT work done yesterday. I got sick on December 3rd. It was a strong virus that attacked my sinuses first, quickly traveled into my throat, and eventually landed in my lungs. By the fourth day, the cough began and I coughed until my entire body hurt. […]
I recently worked with a prenatal client who is 38 weeks along. She asked for work on her lower back and neck, but when I began palpating her back I found the most tension in her mid-back from about T6-T9. After checking movement in her thoracic ribs, I found that on the L. side there […]
One of my new clients is a very muscular police detective who had pinched nerve or a nerve impingement at the base of his neck. I think he was shocked when I began by assessing his rib cage. His left rib cage was shifted to the right and his entire rib cage was rotated to […]
How often do you work on the abdominal muscles? What do you do? When using SMRT, we teach therapists to balance left and right abdominal muscle tone by working directly with each of the abdominal muscles. The Respiratory Diaphragm We begin with releases for the respiratory diaphragm. The respiratory diaphragm is of major importance to […]
The 2017 student experience was a few weeks ago and the learning was intense. The work we gave and received was amazing. A good time was had by all! During our Saturday discussion, one of the students asked me how to assess the rib cage as a whole. In our basic series we typically work […]
About 10 days ago, I had a 2-hour session booked with a regular client. She told me I should focus on her back and her neck, that her “hump was killing” her. I spent almost an hour and a half unlocking her back, sacrum, and posterior rib cage. The focus of this time was in […]
While in Austin, TX I met a 36-year-old woman who was in an intense amount of pain in her left chest and breast. Apparently she had been this way for about 5 years. She had seen many doctors and therapists, had many tests, and still had no idea why she was in pain. I want […]
Last night I got a wonderful phone call from Patti (who begins teaching SMRT on her own in a week! My first traveling SMRT instructor!). About 3 weeks ago, Patti, Robert, and I taught an SMRT hip girdle course in Tucson, AZ. Patti has a second home about 30 minutes south of Tucson. One of […]
Yesterday a client that I have been seeing for several years came for her appointment in severe pain. She said that she had reached down to pick up a dart and felt something pull in her right lower anterior and lateral ribcage. She had gone to the doctor and nothing was broken. The medication they […]
In the next couple of months I will teach our SMRT: Shoulder, Axilla, Ribcage, & Upper Back class twice. I want to explore why working on the ribs is critically important to pain relief in this region of the body. Specifically this short post will be looking at the muscles that attach to the upper […]