Continue your education in the revolutionary CTB approach and master analysis and treatment of more advanced pain conditions.
NCBTMB-Approved CE hours for massage. Don't want to have to think about your CEs for years to come? The Advanced Bundle lessons award 70+ CEs, making this content a great value even without the CTB™ Session Library. Get lifetime access to an entire year of material as soon as you sign up. Our Advanced Bundle, which includes what was previously called Year 2 of the CTB Membership, is now hosted on the Kajabi platform, for a fast and clean user experience, Community features, live events and more.
Finally master those confusing headaches, forearm, hand and foot pain complaints! Your work in Year 1 has fully prepared you for taking on these challenging cases, as many of these complaints stem from the shoulder and hip muscles.
Save your clients from unnecessary and potentially life-threatening back surgeries! And get rid of those crippling migraines and the dangerous pharmaceuticals used to treat them!
Extend your opportunities with specialist certification – now including specialties in headaches/migraines, plantar fasciitis/foot pain, carpal tunnel/hand/wrist pain and low back pain. Become part of our growing CTB™ Specialist referral network via our Pain Hackers Directory.
Chris Eliades
CTB Advanced Member
We used to sell this material as 52 weekly lessons, but now with our Advanced Bundle on Kajabi you get immediate, lifetime access to Year 2 and more. Many very important and common pain areas are covered in advanced detail: Head and Neck, Lower Leg, Foot and Ankle, Low Back, Gluteal and Pelvic, Mid Back, Abdominal and Thoracic and Forearm and Hand.
Immediate access to the entire CTB Session Library. These recorded sessions are real time treatments on pain clients in the CTB clinic, performed by Chuck Duff and Doug Ringwald, also attended by clinical apprentices. See master practitioners at work, their decision making processes and answers to apprentice and client questions.
70+ hours of remote CE - we are a longstanding approved provider of continuing education with NCBTMB.
The Muscle Liberator™ and EPS (electronic point stimulator) are amazing tools if used correctly on the right muscles. Learn effective techniques using these tools on each muscle covered. ONLY available in the Advanced Membership.
Download the CTB Muscle Manual for Year 2. A great resource that condenses the important knowledge for each muscle: anatomy, TrP referral patterns, satellite referral relationships, differential diagnosis, treatment, contract/relax and more.
Participate in the private CTB Members Mastermind Community on Kajabi. Interact with other students, administrators and instructors. Ask questions, get feedback and answers from instructors and peers. Attend live events, or view later from within the course.
- Valoree Gift
CTB Membership Student, LMT
- Joanne Verone
CTB Membership Student, LMT
- Dawn DeHamer
CTB Membership Student
The Coaching The Body™ Session Library is an ever-expanding collection of client sessions performed by CTB Founder Chuck Duff, Master Instructor and Practitioner Doug Ringwald and other therapists.
Clinical sessions on clients recorded for the express purpose of educating certification students.
Observe how CTB™ sessions are structured.
Hear practitioners' client interviews and watch essential assessments that will shed light on the client's individual case and perpetuating factors.
Learn alongside certification students as they observe sessions, ask questions and take part in assessments and treatment.
Learn the critical skills of analysis & decision-making.
This year of the membership includes more in-depth training on the use of our Electric Point Stimulator (EPS) - a single-point TENS unit that is very effective in trigger point work and Coaching The Body™ techniques.
Trigger points are small areas of metabolic stagnation at the neuromuscular junction, where the motor nerve meets the muscle fiber.
Electrical stimulation saturates the motor endplate zones in a region with stimulus, causing sarcomere twitch contraction, improved metabolism, reduction of tenderness/hardness, and increased ability of the fiber to contract on demand.
With single-point low-level electric current, the EPS can target individual muscle fibers.
Stimulating a motor response from a dysfunctional muscle will quickly and easily soften contracture fibers and increase your efficiency in restoring normal muscle function.
Diane Sawtell
CTB™ Membership Student and LMT
Vera Zarth
CTB™ Membership Student and LMT
Thurman Roberts
CTB™ Membership Student and LMT
Focus: This lesson provides an overview of the analysis and treatment of head and neck pain. This area is subject to a wide range of perpetuating factors, and proper analysis is critical if we're to be successful in treating the pain in a lasting manner. Breathing, anterior and lateral posture, stress, work and sleep ergonomics and many other factors must be uncovered in order to treat pain in the head and neck successfully.
Head & Neck Pain Overview Slides & Downloads
Head & Neck Pain Overview Lecture
Focus: Many factors tend to converge at the head and neck, so we have to undertake a thorough analysis of several perpetuating factors to get to the source of pain in this area. The muscles that stabilize the head and neck are sensitive to lateral and anterior postural asymmetry, breathing dysfunction, shoulder positioning, overall stress, sleeping position, and much more. In this week's lesson, we will go into detail on how to conduct this analysis and each of the key assessments.
Treatment Principles
Postural Assessments
Head Range of Motion Assessments
Postural Assessments Demo
Focus: The electronic point stimulator is a very useful tool for CTB work. Because it directly influences the neuromuscular junction and stimulates sarcomere contraction, it can be very effective at quickly softening taut fibers, clearing neurologically influenced downstream trigger points and removing peripheral sensitization. The EPS is particularly useful in certain muscles, often in areas that have superficial exposure through the skin. This week's lesson will introduce the tool and show several common treatment examples. We use the EPS heavily in the neck muscles, and it will show up in many of the weekly head and neck lessons.
EPS Overview
EPS Example: Forearm
EPS Example: Vastus Medialis
EPS Example: Neck Muscles
Focus: Basic high trapezius and SCM treatment begin any head/neck protocols, as down-regulating these muscles can provide an immediate relaxing effect to the entire upper body, as well as soften 2 muscles that may prevent progress in other areas if not treated first. Both tend to be headache and migraine muscles, so this work early on in the session can provide significant keys to how to focus the rest of your session.
High Trapezius & SCM - Anatomy and Theory
High Trapezius - Palpation
High Trapezius - Treatment (Manual & EPS)
High Trapezius - Treatment (Muscle Liberator)
SCM - Treatment 1 (Manual & EPS)
SCM - Treatment 2 (Manual & EPS)
Focus: Levator Scapulae is known as the "stiff neck" muscle. It can severely limit neck rotation when there are trigger points due to pain on movement. Trigger points in this muscle commonly react and produce pain when the muscle is shortened, actively or passively.
For example, when a person turns their head to the right and they feel pain on the right posterior lateral neck, this is due to the shortening levator scapulae muscle on the right side. The referral pain also commonly spreads downward into the upper back and sets up problems in the mid and low trapezius.
Trigger points in levator scapulae can occur during sudden overload, as in whiplash or a fall. Also TrPs commonly develop when the muscle is actively or passively shortened for an extended period of time, such as during sleep with the head turned or when working without arm support. This muscle responds wonderfully to both EPS and Muscle Liberator treatment.
The scalenes are neck stabilizers and side flexors of the neck. They limit neck side flexion and have potent effects in the shoulder, upper back, brachial plexus, chest and down the arm. While not direct contributors to head and neck pain, the scalenes have important functional relationships to other neck muscles and must be included in treatment.
Levator Scapulae & Scalenes - Anatomy & Theory
Levator - Treatment
Scalenes Treatment 1 -
Scalenes Treatment 2 -
Levator & Scalenes Treatment -
Levator Scapular Treatment - Muscle Liberator
The lessons continue to delve deeply into head & neck pain thru week 62, also covering conditions such as tinnitus. From there, we continue into the other important advanced body areas - please see below for module descriptions. Along with the Foundation Bundle, the Advanced modules fill out your knowledge to make you
With mobile devices so ubiquitous, head and neck pain are becoming more and more common due to postural stress. There is a powerful interaction between head and neck pain and shoulder pain. Head and neck muscle dysfunction can set up severe, chronic shoulder conditions such as frozen shoulder. You will learn to analyze and correct trigger point conditions setting up headaches, persistent neck pain, facial and jaw pain, TMJD, some visual and auditory disturbances, vertigo and more.
There is a powerful, hidden relationship between foot and ankle issues and pain complaints in other parts of the body. You will learn not just how to treat the muscles in this area, but how to analyze and correct conditions like hyperpronation, leg length discrepancy, and more. This is crucial, considering the commonality of hyperpronation and gait disturbance, which can contribute to issues ranging from low back pain to headaches.
Low back, sacral and pelvic pain is at epidemic proportions in our society. These complaints are very often misunderstood by the medical profession, leading to useless and even damaging treatments, including inappropriate back surgery. Learn to treat the extremely common trigger point patterns and perpetuating factors that underly most of these conditions. We build on the low back material in the Foundation Bundle, covering deep muscles in the low back and pelvis, including pelvic floor.
We show you how to understand the confusing ways in which trigger point pain can mirror between the abdomen, thorax and back, sometimes masquerading as organ or spinal issues. Many abdominal and mid back complaints are muscular in nature, yet clients and practitioners alike rarely understand the true origins of pain in this area, and are likely to assume serious medical diagnoses instead. You will learn how to understand and coach clients to improve dysfunctional breathing, a powerful perpetuator of upper body pain.
Forearm and hand pain is a confusing and complex area because of the large number of fine muscles, complex functional relationships and detailed referrals in this part of the body. We've been teaching practitioners how to treat the forearm, wrist and hand for over 20 years and will show you how to sort out direct and satellite referrals, detailed functional anatomy and using compression, vibration and the EPS to eliminate pain for good.
As you've likely seen in your practice, pain from trigger points is responsible for many complaints throughout the body. While Year 1 gave you training that will help you tackle many of the more common pain complaints that come through your doors . . . Year 2 will give you the in-depth skills to analyze and address difficult pain cases that fool most other practitioners.
As a CTB Member, you have already differentiated your practice from typical practitioners who look for an injury to explain the pain, and "rub where it hurts", which trigger point therapy has proven to be unsuccessful the vast majority of the time. Now take the next step toward becoming an elite advanced practitioner - who other therapists and MDs will refer their patients to - because you know how to get to the true source.
We stand by our training and products 100%! If you are unhappy with your purchase for any reason, you may return it within 30 days of the purchase date for a full refund.