Helping You Successfully Take Charge of Your Recovery From Repetitive Strain Injury

Issue 0501, January, 2005

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What's In This Issue?

Coming Soon:

• Occupational Programs

• Weekend Stretching Retreats

• One-on-One Phone consultations

Work In Progress:

• Sports-specific Programs

• Music-specific Programs

This Month's Feature Article:

"Full Recovery Requires Several Shifts in Your Thinking"

Cool and Intersting Stuff:

• PRSI Stretch Break Program

• SearchIt!

• Income opportunities!

Coming Soon!

1. Injury prevention programs for specific occupations.

I am in the middle of completing work on 74 occupationally-specific programs for those of you who are experiencing symptoms in your upper body related to your work. The programs contain lots of helpful information in addition to exercises and stretches that will specifically target the areas of your body most affected by your work. Some of the occupational programs include:

• Computer Users

• Poultry Processors

• Bus and Truck Drivers

• Dental Hygienists

• Hair Dressers

• Flight Attendants

• Librarians

• Court Stenographers

• Massage Therapists

• Grocery Store Clerks

And many, many more! Be sure to visit https://www.selfcare4rsi.com frequently to see if your occupation is listed. If you are in a high-injury profession and would like me to develop a program for your occupation, e-mail me at occ-prog@selfcare4rsi.com.

2. Weekend Stretching Retreats

There is a great need for one-on-one coaching in the art of stretching for RSI recovery. I will be scheduling 2 day stretching retreats in the near future that will help meet those needs. The weekends will be an intensive course in how to stretch to recover from any RSI, how to find stretches that help restore your body back to normal, how to customize those stretches to get the maximum benefit, etc. Most people will experience a significant reduction in their symptoms in a single weekend. Look for details in upcoming issues of this newsletter.

3. One-on-One Phone Consultations

Do you ever just need a helping hand to guide you personally through the confusing maze of RSI recovery? I will be re-introducing One-on-One phone consultations to help guide you. Phone sessions are scheduled weekly and each lasts 30 minutes. Stay tuned to www.selfcare4rsi.com to learn when the program begins.

Work In Progress

• Injury Prevention Programs For Sports

Similar to the occupationally-specific programs, these programs will deal with injuries experienced as a result of sports, or injuries that are made worse by playing sports.

• Injury Prevention Programs For Musicians

These programs will focus on helping to correct the injury challenges faced by musicians of all sorts.

FEATURE ARTICLE -

"Full Recovery Requires Several Shifts In Thinking"

Our attitudes, beliefs and habitual associations can play an important role in recovering from any Repetitive Strain Injury. If you can harness the power of these beliefs, attitudes and habits, then you can exponentially increase the success rate of your recovery program. Here are the most important factors to consider:

1. If you believe you will have a successful recovery, then you probably will.

An attitude of success opens your mind to considering all possibilities, seeing from a new perspective, accepting that success is inevitable. While it may feel like the search for information that works may go on for a long time, an attitude of eventual success will keep you open to all possibilities and help you receive new information with a clear and open mind.

2. You must be willing to try new things.

Face it. If you were already using your body in the best possible way, you would not have gotten injured, or the recovery programs you have tried up until now would have already been successful.

If this is the case for you, then success requires that you change your thinking about how you will recover. You must be willing to try new things, experiment with new techniques, dare to do things differently than you have ever done before.

Recovering from a repetitive strain injury is highly individual. Each person is unique and how their injury developed and what tissue it affects is different for each person. Any program you try will probably have very effective components to it, but no program will be exactly right for everyone.

So, what do you do? Be willing to think outside the box. If you are trying a stretch, try varying the stretch slightly. Hold the stretch a little longer. Try pulling through a slightly different direction. Add a little movement to the stretch. Pay attention to the sensations you feel and the result you get. Observe the after effects. Has this new variation worked better for you? If so, add it to your repertoire!

3. Realize that you are dealing with damaged tissue.

At the beginning of a recovery program, your tissue is at its most injured. Nerves are the most stuck and irritated, adhesions are at their strongest. Muscle fatigue feels the greatest.

Acknowledge that since your tissue is damaged, you will have to treat this tissue more gently than if it were functioning normally. After all, if you had a severely sprained ankle, you would never ask yourself to jump rope, would you? Of course not!

The same is true with repetitive strain injuries. Be gentle with your body during this time of recovery. As more and more of your body returns to its former state of wellness, you will be able to safely tolerate more and more strenuous stretches and other activities. Within a short period of time, you might even be able to return to some of the sports and other physical activities you enjoyed before being injured.

4. Think differently about stretches.

Most people are introduced to stretches as part of a conditioning program. In that context, stretching is done by following a set of stretches, each repeated a certain amount of times, in a sort of stretching “regimen”.

I want to encourage you to think differently about stretches when you are using them as tools for recovery. I prefer to think of stretches as “handles” with which you can “grab” tissue and pull it along a particular line. In other words, a stretch is a tool you use to pull the injured tissue in a certain direction.

In recovery, stretches should not be done in “sets” with a certain number of “reps”. They are tools that are used to control the line of pull, the speed of release, the order of release throughout the body.

I follow this principle in all of my self care programs. Even if the program is designed to help eliminate forearm pain, the first stretches found in the program work to release the upper body. There is virtually no work done on the forearms in the beginning. Why? Because the component of the body which is injured is the fascia. Read more about Fascia at:

https://www.selfcare4rsi.com/fascia.html

Because fascia is one big continuous and connected bunch of tissue, it is important to create some “slack” in neighboring areas before approaching the most injured area. This makes it so much easier for the body to release in the affected area, i.e., the forearms.

In many cases, the upper body stretches are all that is needed to get complete recovery in the forearms. In other cases, more direct stretching of the forearms is eventually needed as well. It all depends on how your body developed your injury in the first place.

So, begin seeing your stretches as tools to help you access the parts of your body that are most symptomatic, where the most damage has been done. Use the stretches as a means to assess how sensitive the tissue is, where the exact location of adhesions are, what it takes to get the adhesions to let go, and to assess when the adhesions are completely gone.

Employing all these changes in thinking about your injury, how it formed, and the techniques you will use to recover will greatly enhance your ability to fully recover from whatever repetitive strain injury you have. Realize that you can successfully recover, remember that the tissue you are dealing with is damaged and deserves your careful attention, and being willing to try new things as you use your stretches as tools to access tight, restricted, and adhered tissue will help you recover faster and more effectively than you ever imagined possible. Carry on!

Repetitive Strain Injuries are injuries of habits and body use. In a thousand different ways, people create new habits for themselves that can and do impact the health and functioning of the soft tissues in the body. Over time, these habits become "normal" and can no longer be felt. But, the effects on the body continue to build and change how the body operates and what feels comfortable. Over time, injury results.

For the best and most effective way to recover from these injuries, I highly encourage you to try one of the Self Care Programs found at

https://www.selfcare4rsi.com.

Each program is highly effective, easy to understand and follow, inexpensive and fully guaranteed. I have taken my 14 years of RSI treatment experience and condensed it into each of these programs. I am sure you will be delighted with the changes you can make in your own injury.

Cool and Interesting Stuff!

PRSI - Cutting Edge Stretch Break Software!

A fellow Hellerworker and student of my RSI treatment work has developed a really cool stretch break software program called PRSI (which stands for “Prevent RSI”). Illustrations are animated for extra ease in understanding how an exercise is done. Instructions are clear and follow along with the exercise being shown. You can set the intervals you would like to take for your breaks. Easy to use too. I have personally checked out all the stretches and give this program an enthusiastic thumbs-up! Check it out at:

http://www.prevent-rsi.com

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Questions From Readers

Here is where you can ask me anything you want about RSIs. I will answer your questions to the best of my ability.

To send a question for consideration, click

questions@selfcare4rsi.com

Answers to your questions will appear in an upcoming issue of Self Care For RSIs.