1. FREE PROGRAM

To those individuals who just recently became subscribers to this newsletter, I welcome you to our community!

If you haven’t yet signed up for the FREE program offered with your subscription, you can do so here.

For those of you who were subscribers prior to the pandemic, you may not be aware that…

My self-treatment program for Iliopsoas Syndrome is now FREE with your subscription. You can claim your FREE program by clicking here and signing up.

2. LOW BACK PAIN AND PELVIC TORSION

Over the course of thirty years of treating chronic pain, I have found that the common denominator in virtually every case of stubborn, unexplained low back pain has been the presence of Pelvic Torsion.

The counter-rotation of one pelvic bone twisting against the other, along with the functional leg-length difference that results, is in my view the root cause of more mysterious low back pain than any other single factor.

Read the entire post here:

A Twisted Pelvis, also Called Pelvic Torsion, Can Be Corrected.

3. The RALF Pattern

This is a short preview of my post about The RALF Pattern, one of my primary focuses right now. Full post should be live soon. But for now…

The RALF Pattern (short for Right Anterior, Left Fixed Pelvic Torsion Pattern) is the name I’ve given to the dominant pelvic pattern I see again and again.

The acronym RALF — Right Anterior, Left Fixed — refers to the right pelvic bone which is found to be rotated in an anterior, or forward, rotation, and the muscles and fascia of left hip region which are found to be braced, dense and fixed.

For a long time I resisted the notion that there was a single dominant pattern, but after seeing it a thousand times over, and applying certain treatment protocols to correct it, I have come to accept the overwhelming evidence.

One thing that's become clear is that in this pattern the regions of greatest pain are often muscles that are is a locked long or strained position.

But, contrary to what you may have heard, muscles in a strained position should NOT be the focus of deep stretching and mobilization.

This is one of the chief stumbling blocks of generic physical therapy exercises: the outdated notion that, if its painful, it’s weak, and therefore needs to be strengthened.

This is an incomplete and primitive model of muscular pain. What I have found to be much more effective is to identify the locked short muscles — that is, the muscles that are the tightest and least flexible in the body — and to focus deep stretching on those areas.

The crucial point to remember is that these locked short, super-tight areas often have NO symptoms whatsoever. But still they are responsible for the postural shape that the body takes.

When we move, tight regions don’t respond to movement, they remain more or less fixed in place. Strained areas, on the other hand, are forced to absorb that movement, thus increasing their pain and discomfort.

Teaching self-correction for The RALF Pattern will be a core component of the online course I currently have in development: Relieving That Pain Your Doctor Can’t Explain. Release date: Summer 2020.

4. Flexibility Diagnostic I am in the process of developing a Flexibility Diagnostic to help sort out and provide self-treatment solutions for such issues as The RALF Pattern.

It will be a video guide for flexibility testing and will enable you determine in a very detailed way which parts of your body are locked short so you can focus on improving flexibility in these areas.

My clients are often surprised to learn, for example, that deep stretching of their leg muscles (where they have NO pain) has a MAJOR impact in bringing relief to their low back muscles, where they have A LOT of pain.

The Flexibility Diagnostic will take you through a comprehensive series of stretching tests where you give each muscle being tested a grade from 1 to 5 like this:

RIGHT
☐ 1 - Flexible
☐ 2 - A little tight
☐ 3 - Tight
☐ 4 - Very tight
☐ 5 - Inflexible

LEFT
☐ 1 - Flexible
☐ 2 - A little tight
☐ 3 - Tight
☐ 4 - Very tight
☐ 5 - Inflexible

I hope to announce the Flexibility Diagnostic being available within the next month.

That’s it for this edition of the BACK ANSWERS newletter. Please stay safe out there and I look forward to connecting with you in the next issue.

Warm regards,

Stephen