Important Keys to Upper Body Pain

Most upper body pain has important, sometimes profound relationships to issues in the abdominal area and mid-back. As one common example, dysfunctional breathers who fail to properly employ the diaphragm in normal breathing are subject to a host of secondary issues due to smaller muscles being overloaded, postural collapse, blood chemistry changes and emotional stress. These lead to some of the most common pain complaints that we see, such as so-called carpal tunnel syndrome, shoulder pain including frozen shoulder, headaches, and chronic mid and upper back pain.

In the abdominal area, trigger points in abdominal muscles can cause diverse and surprising symptoms, such as IBD, colitis, severe menstrual cramps, nausea, indigestion, urinary and reproductive issues, diarrhea, intrapelvic pain and more.

Surprising Relationships Between Muscles 

There is a complex web of interlocking referral relationships between abdominal and back muscles. Without knowledge of these relationships, you will fail to properly get to the source of many pain conditions. While you may not see many clients who explicitly present with abdominal pain, you will find that abdominal issues are very frequently involved as hidden perpetuators of conditions that you do see frequently.

We can follow many referral chains through to common complaints. For example, someone with poor breathing habits is like to have a weakened, dysfunctional serratus anterior muscle with taut fibers and trigger points. The serratus refers over the low trapezius, which then refers into higher muscles in the shoulder and neck. Your client comes to you for a frozen shoulder, but unless you know the mid-back and abdominal area, you won't be able to help them in a lasting way

Learn to Treat Many Serious Pain Complaints

In this thorough online course consisting of 14 hours of video lectures, demonstrations and downloadable materials, you will learn not only the specific behavior of the individual muscles contributing to this pain area, but how to follow the perpetuation chains that are so critical. There is nothing like this available anywhere in the bodywork world. Not only has Chuck Duff thoroughly analyzed the muscles relevant to a specific pain complaint - through years of experimentation, he's come up with a short list of the best techniques for each muscle. This knowledge is worth its weight in gold for a bodyworker.