I am frequently surprised by how many people tell me that they had previously never had a LMP work on their SCM’s.  The SCM, or sternocleidomastoid, is a hugely important muscle that should be getting worked on almost anytime you get a massage for neck or back pain.  This muscle is one of the main movers of your neck and it also helps out a bit with your breathing.  It is a muscle that can get very tight on people – especially those that spend a lot of time in front of a computer.  When the SCM gets tight it also pulls the head forward and down and can help to create pain in the back of the neck.

I am bewildered by why some of my clients who had received many, many massages before me would have never had work done on the SCM.  It is not a hidden muscle like the psoas major in that it does not require advanced skill to locate and work on. It is not a muscle that people tend to be uncomfortable with getting work done on like the abdominal muscles.  If I went in for a full body massage and did not get work done on my SCM I would be surprised and disappointed.  If I went in for a massage complaining of neck pain and they did not work on my SCM then I would be quite angry.  It would be like going to get your car washed and them leaving the windows caked with mud.  It just is not a complete car wash and it just is not a complete massage.

So, I hope that whoever your massage therapist is, that they are working on your SCM (not to mention your scalenes!).

How does one miss that giant red muscle on the neck!

Its been a while since I’ve posted.  I have been very busy.  However I did want to write a bit about Positional Release Therapy (PRT).  PRT is a technique that I learned in school and found to be effective but one that I didn’t use all that often with my clients –  That is until I started assisting at the massage school in a neuromuscular technique class.  Helping to teach these techniques not only helped me to practice them again but also helped me see just how amazingly effective they are.

Positional Release is a technique that is best used to address a particular type of pain, tender points.  These spots are points on your body where it is really tender and painful to the touch.  If you’ve ever jumped out in pain when someone poked a particular spot on your body then you have experienced this.  The way that these nasty little spots are treated is through putting the body in a position where the pain goes away and then holding it there for 90 seconds.

With this very gentle technique I have gotten some of the most profound changes with some clients.  One man had been experiencing low back pain for 30 years and been managing the pain through medications.  I was able to use PRT to address a couple of tender points on his low back and his pain dropped considerably.  There were still some other types of pain that he was experiencing due to some issues with his vertebrae but he was very, very thankful for the pain decrease.  I have worked with many other clients who had similar experiences of finally getting relief from long held pain.

If you have localized pain that hasn’t responded well to traditional massage or other treatments, then Positional Release might be what you need.

I love computers.  I love being able to know anything about everything within seconds.  I love being able to video chat with friends a thousand miles away.  I love so many of the conveniences that computers bring me but what I could do without is what it does to me physically.  I am not even talking about how every hour in front of the computer is an hour I am not doing actual physical activity.  I am talking about forward head posture, shallow breathing, low back pain and cramped hands and fingers.

Having my practice in Bellevue I see A LOT of people who spend over 12 hours a day in front of a computer.  I have worked with game developers, Microsoft software engineers, IT people, and a whole bunch of other tech people.  But it is not just tech people who use computers now right?  Practically every does now and we see these oh so common physical issues in a wide range of professions.

When we sit in front of a computer our heads shift forward, chin pointed out, as though we just need to see the screen closer by that extra inch.  This forward head posture is hard on our neck and upper back muscles.  Imagine if someone told you to carry a medicine ball around all day.  Would you rather hold it in close to your body or hold it out in front of you?  It would be considerably easier to hold it in close to you and bear the weight with your core rather than just your arms.  So now, if your head was the medicine ball, it would be easier to support that weight by having it sit squarely on your neck rather than have those little neck muscles hold on with all their might.  Those neck muscles eventually get really sore from all of their effort.

Another thing that happens with hours upon hours of typing away on a little keyboard is that our shoulders roll inwards as we assume our “T-Rex arm” pose.  As with any position that we are in for long periods of time, our bodies eventually adapt to that position – our fascia tightens to support that pose, our muscles try to accommodate as well.  We end up with tight pectoral muscles and overstretched mid and upper back muscles like the rhomboids.  The overstretched muscles get rather sore and painful and it can feel good to get them massaged but there won’t be a positive effect unless those pecs are loosened up in the front.  The tight pectorals are causing the stretching out of the rhomboids.

The tight chest teams up with tight scalenes (neck muscles) and intercostals (ribs) and abdominal muscles to make your breathing more shallow and as we all know, breathing is important.  Proper breathing helps provide the body energy and allows for optimal functioning.  Put into simple terms, breathing disperses oxygen throughout our body (good) and helps expel carbon dioxide (bad).  Breathing deeply, from the diaphragm, makes this process work better.

Slaving away on the keyboard can hinder breathing and cause us to forget to breathe.   It can also cause some pain in our hands, wrists, forearms, and fingers.  Studies seem to show that there isn’t a conclusive connection between carpal tunnel syndrome and heavy typing but that does not mean that it is not hard on our hands.  Humans have been very successful in large part due to our ability to use our fingers to perform fine tasks.  However, the small muscles that operate our fingers can fatigue when put in use for more hours than they were designed to do.  Cramping and pain can result.

Of course, I write this on a computer and I will go on to spend hours and hours in front of a computer.  You will too no doubt.  What we can do though is try to be more mindful of our posture as we sit and type.  We can take needed breaks to stretch our neck, shoulders, back, arms, and hands.  We can try to situate ourselves as ergonomically correct as possible.  And we can utilize treatments such as massage or chiropractic, as well as training such as yoga, to help bring us back to proper positioning every so often.  It is a digital world now and we all have to adapt.