Sometimes it takes a lot of patience when working with chronic pain clients. It is difficult to impossible to do CTB manual therapy when the client is so guarded that they cannot let you move their joints without engaging the muscles. They cannot consciously control the guarding against the movement. Their nervous system does not ... Read more
How Using Trigger Point Phenomena Can Make You a Pain Hacking Hero Most people don't think of the feet and ankles as potent instigators of pain elsewhere in the body. I know I didn't when I started out. But 15 years of clinical observation have made it abundantly clear to me. Many of my ... Read more
So. We've been talking a lot about latent trigger points, and how they can fire constant nociception into the nervous system, causing chronic pain. (By the way, if you happened to miss my most recent article about this, you can read it here.) But what about active trigger points? Many therapists and non-bodyworking-professionals know something ... Read more
In the last article, we talked about the fascinating topic of neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to change its wiring on the fly. This is one of the ideas the Coaching The Body methodology is built on.But in order to apply the principle of neuroplasticity to the treatment of chronic and severe pain, you ... Read more
This week, I want to talk about neuroplasticity. This fascinating development in neuroscience has become a hot topic across the alternative health field—and we're just beginning to comprehend the incredible adaptive capacity of the human brain. It's pretty exciting!The old school medical paradigm believed that once we were fully developed adults, the brain was basically fixed. As in, done ... Read more
Most sciatic pain is caused by trigger points in muscles. Sciatica is the most common lower body pain complaint that we see in our clinic. It is a description of radiating leg pain, not a diagnosis. Although most physicians and physical therapists will assume that it is caused by nerve entrapment in the lumbar spine ... Read more