Click the links for our home exercise videos, audio files and articles.
Upper Quadrant
Introduction
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
Exercise 4
Home Cervical Traction
Purpose:
This form of traction can be used effectively to treat cervical pain and headache. It is also useful in promoting relaxation.
Method:
- Fold a small - medium size towel (lengthwise) into fourths.
- Bring the two ends of the towel together, forming a loop.
- Securely tie a piece of durable rope or cord around the loose ends of the loop.
- Position the towel approximately 4 finger widths from the floor and tie the other end of the rope around a secure doorknob or something similar in strength.
- Lie on your back and place your head in the loop (or sling).
- Your head should be comfortably resting in the sling, approximately 1 - 2 inches from the floor. Your head should be in line with your body or should feel only a very slight pull on your neck.
Please Note:
You may remain in the traction for up to 15 minutes. You may want to set a timer, as it is very easy to fall asleep while in the traction. Remaining longer than 15 minutes may result in neck soreness.
Lower Quadrant
Soreness vs Pain: What's the Difference?
There are many benefits to exercise, including the potential for improved physical and mental wellbeing. However, there may also be some physical discomfort associated with these activities due to the stresses placed on the body.
The key to preventing injury or making an injury worse is being able to tell the difference between soreness and pain. There is a distinctive difference between muscle soreness and pain. Click the link below to read the article.
How To Save Your Knees
Don't ask guys about the state of their knees. Because they'll tell you. And if their stories aren't full of minute descriptions of aches, creaks, lacerations, buckling, and "strange clicking sounds," they'll go on about visits to physical therapists, acupuncturists, rheumatologists, orthopedic surgeons, and outpatient clinics. Other body parts may preoccupy younger men, but by early middle age, it's the knees.
Retrain the Brain (Articles / Web Resources)
Chronic pain is surprisingly treatable — when patients focus on the brain: An unexpected therapy shows results.
One-fifth of American adults — 50 million people — suffer from chronic pain, defined as pain experienced most days or every day during the past six months.
Sleep and pain
Sleep problems and chronic pain seem to go hand in hand. Frequently people with chronic pain find it difficult to fall asleep, or sleep is often disrupted with long night awakenings.
Easing Musculoskeletal Pain
Clinically supported information, tips, support and personal stories to help manage musculoskeletal pain.
9 Things You Should Know About Pain
Pain is output from the brain. While we used to believe that pain originated within the tissues of our body, we now understand that pain does not exist until the brain determines it does. The brain uses a virtual “road map” to direct an output of pain to tissues that it suspects may be in danger. This process acts as a means of communication between the brain and the tissues of the body, to serve as a defense against possible injury or disease.
A Neuroscientist's Guide to Getting Organized (Plus: Survey!)
If you had to guess, how many facts have you taken in today? How many factoids, dates, times, sale alerts, tweet-sized factoids, and other factual-or-at-least-pretending-to-be-factual pieces of information have passed across your screen? At this rate, how many more do you expect to take in by midnight?
Explainer: What Is Pain and What Is Happening When We Feel It?
What is pain? It might seem like an easy question. The answer, however, depends on who you ask.
Some say pain is a warning signal that something is damaged, but what about pain-free major trauma? Some say pain is the body’s way of telling you something is wrong, but what about phantom limb pain, where the painful body part is not even there?
Pain scientists are reasonably agreed that pain is an unpleasant feeling in our body that makes us want to stop and change our behaviour. We no longer think of pain as a measure of tissue damage – it doesn’t actually work that way even in highly controlled experiments. We now think of pain as a complex and highly sophisticated protective mechanism.
Pain really is in the mind but not the way you think
Everybody hurts, but not everybody keeps hurting. The unlucky few who do end up on a downward spiral of economic, social and physical disadvantage.
While we don't know why some people don't recover from an acute episode of pain, we do know that it's not because their injury was worse in the first place. We also know that it's not because they have a personality problem. Finally, we do know that, on the whole, treatments for chronic pain are not particularly successful.
This sobering reality draws up some interesting reflections on pain itself. What is pain? Is it simply a symptom of tissue damage or is it something more complex? One way to approach this second question is to determine whether it's possible to have one without the other - tissue damage without pain or pain without tissue damage.
No brain, no pain-it's in the mind so test results can make it worse
Everybody hurts, but not everybody keeps hurting. The unlucky few who do end up on a downward spiral of economic, social and physical disadvantage.
A common recommended "don't" of the Choosing Wisely campaign in the United States, Canada and now Australia is getting imaging for non-specific back pain. The initiative, which identifies tests, treatment and procedures that have little benefit but may lead to harm, is indeed wise in highlighting the dangers of such scanning.
The recommendation is based on several major studies - from 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. But while not imaging might be based on solid advice, it's old advice. The recommendation has been around for years - ever since it was discovered that the state of your back MRI doesn't relate very well to whether or not you have back pain.
How Well Do You Understand Pain?
Chronic pain affects an estimated 86 million American adults to some degree. Most people think of pain as this definition that you see when doing a Google search for "definition of pain":
Pain - Noun: 1. Physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury.
However, this is not necessarily true. Many times, pain can occur when the brain "thinks" that tissue damage is eminent. So, pain is not necessarily an indication of tissue damage or degeneration, because it can also occur when there is a potential of tissue damage.
Click here for the Adapted Moseley's Pain Sciences Quiz and test your understanding of pain. Take the quiz under the "Before" heading first. Then, read these articles and take the quiz again under the "After" heading to see if your answers change:
Short Articles about Pain and Pain Science (Mostly Lorimer)
- Pain really is in the mind but not in the way that you think
- What is pain and what is happening when you feel it
- No brain no pain it is in the mind so test results can make it worse
- The Right Words Matter When Talking About Pain
- Great Series on Pain related topics, various authors (fantastic references for more short really great links for pain science articles)
Website Resources for Explain Pain
- Body in Mind - Research into the role of the brain in chronic pain
- NOI | Neuro Orthopaedic Institute
- painHEALTH - Easing Musculoskeletal Pain
- joijam.com
- Left/Right Discrimination
- Protectometer - The next step in the Explain Pain Revolution
- Taming The Beast (that beast being ongoing, persistent pain)
Stress Related Resources
General Exercise Information
- Stand Up, Walk Around, Even Just For '20 Minutes'
- Take A Hike To Do Your Heart And Spirit Good
- How Meditation, Placebos And Virtual Reality Help Power 'Mind Over Body'
- Walking Fends Off Loss Of Mobility, And It's Not Too Late To Start
- Evidence Indicates Cyclists May Age Better Than Those Who Don't Bike
- Hearts Get 'Younger,' Even At Middle Age, With Exercise
Retrain the Brain (videos)
Pain Revolution 2019
Trevor, ex-chronic pain sufferer talks about his pain education experience
The Mysterious Science of Pain
Explain Pain Posters
Understanding Pain:
What to do about it in less than five minutes
How does your brain respond to pain?
Mind and Its Potential: Body in Mind: The role of the brain in chronic pain
Explaining Brain Smudging
Understanding Pain:
Brainman chooses
Understanding Pain:
Brainman stops his opioids
Elliot Crane: The mystery of chronic pain
Taming the Beast
Mirror Box Therapy with David Butler
The Drug Cabinet in the Brain With David Butler
The Cost of Pain to Society
Great presentation about OA knee and changing the image of the inputs
Tennis Elbow and the Radial nerve, very useful video
Use of Theraband to explain neural mobility
David Butler and a long lecture on treating pain using the brain
Bad Language by the ongoing persistent pain patient Thought Virus Video
Great Lecture by Lorimer
Why Things Hurt: Ted Talk
The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do For Your Stress
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
What is the single best thing we can do for our health?
Retrain the Brain (podcasts)
Pertinent Podcast Worth Listening To
- Time to catch the brain bus to learn from pain educators. Lorimer Moseley and Karim Khan. from BJSM in Podcasts.
- Explain pain to treat it! Dr. Stanton gives the deep dive on managing osteoarthritis pain #324 from BJSM in Podcasts.
- Painkillers aren't the only answer! Simplifying pain science to better manage a patient's pain #323 from BJSM in Podcasts.
- Am I safe to move? Professor Lorimer Moseley: New understanding of pain and focusing on the patient from BJSM in Podcasts.
- Is education more important than exercise in treating patellofemoral pain? Episode #322 from BJSM in Podcasts.
- to Consider psychological factors in when treating PFP. Prof Bill Vicenzino and Liam McLachlan #318 from BJSM in Podcasts.
- Alan Alda Wants Us To Have Better Conversations from Hidden Brain in Podcasts.
- Tunnel Vision from Hidden Brain in Podcasts.
- You 2.0: Deep Work from Hidden Brain in Podcasts.
- The Big Questions with Adam Spencer in Podcasts.
Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ)
TMJ Exercises & Stretches to Relieve Jaw Pain - Ask Doctor Jo
Heal Your TMJ Disorder With 3 Simple Posture Exercises
Click here to read the article
Exercises to Stretch the Lateral Pterygoid Muscles
Click here to read the article
Pelvic Health
Pelvic Floor Contractions
Pelvic Floor Relaxations
Pelvic Wand Use
Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation - Men's & Women's Health Treatment
Miscellaneous
Why We Sleep with Matthew Walker PART 1
Why We Sleep with Matthew Walker PART 2
Soreness vs Pain: What's the Difference?
There are many benefits to exercise, including the potential for improved physical and mental wellbeing. However, there may also be some physical discomfort associated with these activities due to the stresses placed on the body.
The key to preventing injury or making an injury worse is being able to tell the difference between soreness and pain. There is a distinctive difference between muscle soreness and pain. Click the link below to read the article.
Low Back Pain
23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?
Stretching: The Truth
Did you know that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds (static stretching) is actually bad for you? Research has shown that static stretching doesn't prime muscles for a workout, but rather weakens them. So, what is the right warm-up stretch?
Stretching muscles while moving (dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups) is what you should be doing to prime your muscles for a workout. Dynamic stretching does what a warm-up stretch should do: loosen muscles and tendons to increase the range of motion of joints as well as warming up the body.
Click here to read the informative NY Times article, Stretching: The Truth for more information.
Don't Just Sit There!
Researchers have linked sitting for long periods of time with a number of health concerns, including obesity and metabolic syndrome. Those who sit all day also have a greater chance of developing type 2 diabetes, according to researchers at the University of Leicester Departments of Health Sciences and Cardiovascular Sciences. To find out exactly what goes wrong in our bodies when we sit for extended periods, download this informative poster.
Stand Up, Walk Around, Even Just For '20 Minutes'
Vertigo
BPPV is a common cause of dizziness. About 20% of all dizziness is due to BPPV. While BPPV can occur in children (Uneri and Turkdogan, 2003), the older you are, the more likely it is that your dizziness is due to BPPV. About 50% of all dizziness in older people is due to BPPV. In one study, 9% of a group of urban dwelling elders were found to have undiagnosed BPPV (Oghalai et al., 2000).
Click here to read about home treatment of BPPV.
