Dylansbob 

It's changed my life. I feel the best I've felt in nearly a decade

Here's a long-ish story that brings me here,

I had a bad crash in '12. Blackout drunk coming home from a party, I ran wide on a downhill turn and hit the curb. The last thing I remembered was, "this isn't good, I'd better close my eyes". Amazingly the bike was undamaged, so I managed to ride home. Two days later, I had to go back to my 30m rt commute. With daily increased pain, I soldiered on for another 2.5 yrs. After about 2yrs, my left side was bound up I had trouble riding so I switched to fixed gear. After another post-work party (I was drinking heavily for the pain), I attempted a fixie skid and felt my hip socket fail. 4 months later I finally quit the job, barely able to move.

I was completely off the bike and walking with a cane for about 3yrs. Couldn't pee since my prostate was huge. My back always hurt. Drank way too much, which I would later find was connected to that. Massive mental health issues. Tried multiple PT people, MRIs showed anterior and posterior damage, but docs wanted to do exploratory surgery. No thanks.

Eventually, I was recommended a Hellerwork PT, who the consensus of opinion was that she was a very gifted Healer. After a few visits, she determined that my psoas was massively bound up, due to my kidney being embedded into the surrounding viscera. As I would later find, my pelvis was over 1" turned to the left as well. She had me breathe while holding her hands over that spot and my kidney freed itself. Suddenly, I could urinate. The biggest logjam was freed.

A few months of PT before a blood test found that my liver and other kidney were the cause of my back pain as the heavy drinking had taken a toll. We theorize that while that while the left kidney was bound up (and being constantly bumped whenever I moved my leg), my body shut it down and made the right do all the overwork. I stopped cold-turkey.

The continued bike commute while I was all out of align had caused a lot of soft tissue dysfunction. Luckily for me, I met a very gung-ho Grastin/GuaSha practitioner. He absolutely flayed me, clearing out scar tissue from 40yrs of athletic activities in addition to the huge adhesions in my hip. I would look like I'd been thrown out of a moving car when I came home from a session. Between him, my accupuncturist, and a new chiro (who looked at my new patient xrays and straightened my pelvis), we released so much tension that my pelvic floor finally softened up some and gave my prostate and lower GI some relief. I had great improvement until covid.

Since then, things have been so much better but I had left leg dysfunction, especially when under stress. I've been doing what soft tissue work I can do myself. 2 days ago, I finally self-grastin'd a adherence at my ribcage/psoas area. My diaphragm on that left side will finally release and no longer have that little tug downwards of my left side. Still have work to do to make my legs feel better, but wow it's nice to breathe clearly in my upper body. I did a fairly vigorous ride yesterday, which normally cause me some reflexive tension on that side. This morning, no problems getting out of bed.

Just wanted to celebrate a little.

jack pot 

well mr DylanBob you know what they say, "it takes a beer to cry it takes a bike to laugh" .................... glad your better and be careful out on Highway 61

work4bike

I'm not really into medicines, alternative or otherwise; however, I do believe eating heathy foods and very regular exercise (not just riding a bike) is in itself medicine. I'm very careful where I get my food and much of it I grow myself, because if you build healthy soil and grow food in that soil with zero amendments, no store-bought soils, no fertilizers nor x-icides. Then the soil life will rebound and provide the plants with all the nutrients they need and in turn all the nutrients, including all the micro-nutrients you need.

It's easy to start, just do away with your lawn, mulch over and let the weeds take over; however, I have also bought some edible plants from various sources, such as the Moringa tree and many other things. And just as I don't buy store-bought soils, I also don't buy their mulches, rather, I go around nice neighborhoods and pick up loads of leaves/logs.

This guy is great at getting one started in identifying various edible weeds and some are actually considered more medicinal than a food, but there are better resources for that, but it's just not something I've looked into much.

thook

I don't know you @Dylansbob, but I heartily extend congratulations.

zandoval 

This morning no problems... BRAVO!

RubeRad

very interesting, thx for posting dylansbob, I'm glad you've improved your quality of life!

I googled and read some of this link about Hellerwork

In terms of musculoskeletal alignment, I borrowed from the library the book Deskbound by Kelly Starrett, and then bought a copy of his Becoming a Supple Leopard (I haven't read it all, but the parts I did read made a lot of sense to me and have helped me some with posture and how I walk)

Juan Foote

I have a sacroiliac joint disfunction in my left hip as a result of amputation. Any activity that is more strenuous than walking a flat area pops my hip out of position. It builds on itself and starts causing sciatica, pain and bad alignment of your back, knee pain...it just continues to build. I go and see a very good (and unfortunately very aged) chiropractor a couple of times a year and keeps me working properly. In some cases, a person can put their own sacro back in place with a tension exercise. I am not strong enough or getting the correct leverage to do so.

The only thing the "doctor" wants to do about it is give muscle relaxers and pain killers which do absolutely zero for the issue itself as it continues to get worse and worse.

Hondo Gravel

Cool Dylanbob glad to see that you have made major progress ya might as well celebrate a lot.

canklecat

Hellerwork sounds like a less brutal form of Rolfing, which my dad used back in the 1970s-'80s for chronic pain and related mental wellness issues. It worked for him.

Not my thing -- my background is in traditional allopathic health care -- but now that I'm a patient rather than a health care worker, I can see why some folks seek alternative treatments. After experiencing serious injuries from being hit by cars twice in 20 years, and cancer in 2018, the quality of care I've received has veered wildly from thorough and personal to indifferent and incompetent.

And that was before the pandemic. Now, with hospitals overloaded for two years, it's much harder to get treatment for non-life threatening ailments. My primary care doc with the VA doesn't even return my messages or calls, and pretty much blew me off during my annual checkup in autumn 2021, so for the first time I'm using my Medicare coverage instead.

And for chronic pain related to old injuries and an autoimmune disorder, since 2018 I've switched mostly to CBD for mild pain, kratom for worse pain, and occasionally take NSAIDs for inflammation -- although NSAIDs, especially ibuprofen, caused my psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis to flare up. I have prescription muscle relaxers and use maybe one a month for severe neck spasms.

And I'll try pretty much any supplement at least once... but it had better show me something definite or I won't spend money a second time. I'm not big on the placebo effect, so wishful thinking and accolades from acolytes won't impress me.

That includes chiropractic, which is mostly a placebo at best and too often a scam. I've met maybe two genuinely good chiropractors and those guys retired or died years ago. I've tried a few others since then and they were utterly useless. The worst of them did nothing but clicky pen treatments for five minutes, and I traveled four hours to see him for a few visits based on a referral from the VA. Seemed like a scam to bilk the VA, Medicaid and Medicare. If you haven't experienced the clicky pen treatment, it's basically a ballpoint pen used as a magic wand and just about as effective as it sounds. You could get the same effect by flicking a finger in the general area of an ache. I bought a couple of percussion massagers which are much more effective.

Stadjer

If you want to think of yourself as rational skepcism should be expected which usually translates into a negative attitude towards alternative and Eastern medicine and therapy. Fortunately I got a bit too skeptic for that and have made some observations.

-The separation of body and mind in Western medicine is not scientific, it's just the consequence of the biomechanical and biochemist approach that the mind is not part of it.
- The institutional skepcism, organizations who debunk alternative medicine, which should happen, is one sided. It's more a matter of loyalty, helped with money from the industry.
- Fysio therapy is alternative therapy, it has no base in science, other than emperical evidence that it works allthough that is weak. But because it's Western, it isn't treated like that.
- A lot of Eastern medicine is simply not tested properly because no one has the financial incentive.
-Empirical not as in evidence but as an experience is not without value.
-The Chinese aren't backward.

I had an elbow injury once that didn't go away. Doctor sent me to the physio, she tried a few things, like a sound wave machine which turned out to be unscientific (that's when I found out) and after weekly therapy for two months there was hardly any progress. A friend, who is from Hong Kong origin and had a miraculously quick healing from an ankle injury after he got some very smelly stuff through his uncle was into Shihatsu massage back then and treated several people. He also was telling about muscles pulling bones in the wrong way, anyway, he felt a bit and touched a spot which hurted terribly. The fysio therapist had never managed to find that spot. And after two short massages the pain was almost fully gone.

I'm still skeptical. I still have issues with the language the procedures are described in. They don't know exactly like in Western medicine, so you often get some vague speech. I also believe there is more room for quackery for obvious reasons and therefore more quacks and crooks. But I think we could advance Western medicine relatively cheaply by double blind testing of some of the Eastern medicine that has been taken for ages.
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RubeRad

Yeah, that link about Hellerwork notes that Heller had come up as a Rolf disciple before branching off in his own direction