Let me back up a bit... (or if you're in a hurry, skip to the next paragraph)
I work for Potter Art Metal Studios in Dallas, TX; have been working there for over seven years now. Several years ago, the fine motor skills I perform with my graphic pen started to wear my body down. Why? Well, I basically sit in front of a computer, all day long, drawing something, designing on Adobe Illustrator, manipulating images on Photoshop... basically, performing lots of fine motor skills with my right hand. Doing such tasks makes my entire right arm over-rotate to the front, my shoulder to tance up, my right side to tense up, and the list of what goes wrong with my body just goes on and on... not to mention that sitting down for long periods of time has been proven to absolutely take a toll on my body. That list goes on as well; early death, blood clots... not pretty... and I do it to myself all day, every day. Call me mad. Perhaps I should re-think this self mutilation one of these days... for now, I am ignoring it for the sake of having fun designing high-end custom ornamental metalwork and lighting. I work with the best interior designers in the business, play with other people's houses and money, and live creativity on daily basis.
I suppose that I could just go back to painting and sculpting... one of these days I will sit down and poner upon this, but for now, back to Todd.
A few years ago this got very, very bad... to the point that I couldn't unscrew a water bottle; no kidding. I decided to get help. I went to the doctor, had all sorts of x-rays, tests, etc performed, and ended up in physical therapy and massage... I'm just going to say that none of it worked. Well, the aerial yoga and cirque fit arts, which I tried after the failure of massage and physical therapy, did amazing things as far as strengthening my body, but I still kept having these work-related problems. I really believe in aerial yoga and cirque arts, but that's a topic for an whole other post... if you have no problems, do it for sure! It's amazing how far your body can get. But, back to Todd... I really felt that no one was addressing the entire problem... everyone was focused on "The problem". I felt like someone needed to focus on my entire body, which I felt was really out of it... and that's when I ran into Todd Steele, LMT. Quite literally, he appeared out of no where... he certainly wasn't supposed to be at the dinner I was attending with a friend. If your'e looking for a wonderful myofascial release massage therapist in Fort Worth, who may also see you in Dallas, I'm just going to go right ahead and post his number here because I think that everyone needs to get to know Todd. (817) 927-0114
This is Todd Steele, and Todd's philosophy is very much like my own... strengthen the body and the body will take care of the problem. "The problem" apparently had a whole lot to do with me doing what I am doing, which caused my muscles to shorten, which caused a systematic disfunction of my muscles, which of course caused a lot of pain as well as restriction of motion.
A bit about what Todd does: Well, he uses myofacial release to cure the actual problem; he accomplishes this by relaxing the contracted muscles, lengthening them, and stimulating the facia to stretch out to where it should be in the first place. This also increases the blood circulation to the starved muscles and releases the muscle knots.
Everyone knows about muscles and muscle knots, but what the heck is fascia, right? Well, it's a structure of connective tissues that surround muscles, groups of muscles, blood vessels, and nerves, bindig different structures together while permitting others to slide smoothly over each other. When fascia is screwed up, muscles can't freely glide and stick together, then shorten... nasty problem to have, trust me. (I was going to post a photo of what fascia looks like, but it's pretty icky looking since it's always shown on a cadaver, so I'm just going to say google it at your own risk)
Here is a link which explains a lot about myofascial pain syndromes
So, what did Todd do for me? Well, on top of my problem, I also mentioned that I had really bad posture. Todd determined that I needed 20 sessions to get the problem under control. He did not start by working on "The problem", and quite frankly after a few sessions I started complaining about it, at which point I was told that he can take care of my discomfort right now or we could continue with the plan, which was to work on different lines of fascia apparantly. I grumpily accepted that he knew what he was doing and quit complaining, and just went with the plan. Todd also mentioned that there might likely be setbacks in the entire process, which I was not willing to accept at all.
Well, he happened to be right about all of it. There were setbacks, but the plan was working! There was a steady climb up the hill. My body started straightening, I started standing up a lot more straight. I started sitting up in my car instead of completely caving into the seat, my chest started coming out to the front instead of creating a front "U" with my houlders... the list just goes on. I always ask my hubby: Do I look straighter? "Yes, you do."
My fingers also are back to working just fine as well! I can open picke jars with the best of them!
It's really interesting how he does this too. He'll follow the line of facia "Today we'll work on the deep front line"... make me get up and walk around the room, and my entire sense of space and body is completely different then it was just a few minutes ago. Then he'll say "Okay, looks like your right leg is still longer, and you're still rotated to the right... lay back down on the table, this time put your knee up in the air" Then he'll fix the other side and all of a sudden the overly curve in my lower back is straighter and I feel an inch taller. My head is more level and I look ahead instead of looking down.
A fair warning. If you continue doing what you are doing, like I am, you'll have to start developing skills to combat the effects of what you are doing. The simplest thing, of course, would be to drop the habit in the first place. The bad news for me is that what ever Todd keeps fixing, I keep breaking. Well, sort of... I mean, things progressively get better, but not as fast as they would have if I would just quit messing it up. The good news is that I'm slowly learning what to do to break it less and less.
Thanks Todd! The thing about you is that you rock!