Trigger Point Therapy Recommendations

If you can find a physical therapist who uses "spray and stretch" in your area and can afford to go - go to them ASAP. Make sure this is one who follows Travell and Simons. You will be fixed soon and my blog will have some information in it to help you avoid recurrence.

If you want to save the money, or like me, you can't seem to find such a person, then don't despair. You can have your partner or caregiver do this for you and can even do it to yourself, if your good arm is pretty flexible.

I did massage to all my accessible shoulder trigger points, and got a lot of improvement, but not 100%. What I found out was that the real culprits were two muscles that are not available to massage. One is the supraspinatus, deep in the top of your shoulder, hidden under your trapezius. The biggest villain of them all is the subscapularis, which lies under your scapula and on top of your rib cage, wedged in there with a poor blood supply.

Here's how to unstick those muscles. We're going to do two different "Spray and stretch" techinques with ice.

Making the Therapy Popsickle

Take a dixie cup or small plastic bowl and fill with water, stick a spoon in it and put it in the freezer overnight. Take it out, tear off the dixie cup or pull it out of the bowl, and cover it with saran wrap. I put a rubber band around it to hold it. It's kind of a therapy "popsickle".

Supraspinatus treatment
You will have to take off your shirt for this. I would suggest removing your bra, too, if you are a woman. Now, sit on a stool and bend forward slightly. Stretch your bad arm behind your back straight and across your hips, lift it away from your back, holding it straight as much as you can without pain. Now, have someone (or do it yourself if your other arm is flexible enough) stroke an edge of your "popsickle" starting from your neck, going over the top of your shoulder and down over your upper arm. Do this in "stripes", starting from the front edge of your shoulder and working backwards. After stroking the top with 4 or 5 strokes, you should be able to stretch your arm out more. Repeat a couple of times.

Subscapularis treatment
Again, no shirt and for this one, definitely no bra. Lay on the floor on your good side or your back. Lift your arm, like you were going to put it over your head as much as you can. Take the popsicle and using an edge, "paint" stripes starting from the middle of your side, going up to your underarm and up the underside of your arm. Stretch your arm up more if you can as you continue to paint. I found that the trigger point on the inner edge of the scapula was a problem for me, and I needed the stripes to include my scapula and continue back to across my upper back. For this reason, I think its better to be on your side than your back. Repeat the painting sequence a couple of times.

Once you are done, take a hot shower, or put a hot warm cloth over the area. Don't stress the shoulders out too much for a couple of days. Gentle stretching is fine. I will provide some easy stretches for these muscles that you should do several times a day. I hope, like me, that you find that you can instantly move your shoulder in ways that you haven't for some time! You can do this treatment every day until the shoulder is free. The trigger points will have a tendency to stick again until they become desensitized.

This sounds very unpleasant, but you will be surprised. The edge of ice does not really make you cold and the release of the muscles will feel great! If you get a partner to do this for you, it will help to relax as much as possible, keeping the rest of your body warm and relaxed. Pretend you are at the spa! Have some wine or a warm drink. Soft music wouldn't hurt.

I've also done a version of this in the shower and had it work pretty well. I bring the popsickle, minus the saran, into the shower with me. Paint one set of stripes and then put the shoulder under the hot water. Paint some more and then warm up again. This is not the conventional treatment by any means, since T&S don't like you to get wet, but it did me a lot of good.