TREAT YOURSELF
TO
PAIN FREE LIVING
by
Julie Donnelly, B.S., L.M.T
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright © 2010 by Julie Donnelly
License Notes
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Disclaimer
This book is not meant to replace the advice and care of your physician. If you have any conditions that concern you, it is important that you discuss it with your doctor and get permission to do the self-treatments demonstrated in this book.
******
Dedicated to the memory of
Beth Randolph
For showing me
I was far more than I believed
*****
Table of Contents
How to Do the Julstro™ Self-Treatments
Chapter 1: Do You Qualify as the Poster Child for Aches and Pain?
Chapter 2: Muscles. Without Them, We’re Just a Big Pile of Bones.
How We Move and Other Interesting Info.
Chapter 3: A Roadmap to the Body. Reading the Trigger Point Charts.
Chapter 4: Avoiding Needless Surgery
Chapter 5: A Very Special Muscle Group – The Cause of Pain, Tingling, and
Weakness in the Upper Back, Shoulders, Arms and Hands
Chapter 6: Bits and Pieces for the Curious
PART II: BREAKING FREE OF THE TIES THAT BIND
Chapter 8: The Upper Back and Shoulders
Chapter 9: The Upper Arm: Biceps and Triceps The Arm and Hand
Chapter 10: The Back, Chest, and Ribs
Chapter 11: Oh, My Aching Back!
Chapter 12: The Many Faces of Hip Pain
Chapter 13: The Upper Leg and Knees
Chapter 15: The Foot and Ankle
Acknowledgements
All books take the work of many people to actually come to completion, and this book is no exception to that rule. I would like to first thank the thousands of clients with whom I’ve worked through the years, both in person and online. I’ve learned by listening to them and then finding answers to their questions on what to do to stop the pain. I’ve also had wonderful teachers, especially Lyna Morimoto, DAc, LMT, and Koichiro Togo, MPH, LPT, who taught me to think about the body in a whole new way. Their instruction was the basis of the knowledge I now understand and teach.
There are several people in the medical field who have been especially helpful in working with me to bring my understanding to the world: Mario Cauli, MD; George Brainard, PhD; Estelle Goodell, PhD; Paul Lentini, DC; and Peter Lin, MD. Thank you to Zev Cohen, MD, for trusting your patients to my care.
Special thanks to Annette Fazio, Francis Bologna, Bruce Wilkinson, Robert Menard, John and Irene Dolan, Jack Canfield, Dan Poynter, Paul Froehlich, Keith Ward, Susan Whitt. You each played a major role in the direction of my life – often without even being aware of how important your message was to me. I appreciate you more than you can imagine.
Without the models, all of whom are clients of mine, this book would be difficult to understand. Thank you, Irene, Inge, Cynthia, Mary, Grascila, Becky, Rachel, Ana, Bernie, Harry, Bob, Paul, Scott, and David for making the Julstro™ treatments come alive.
The artwork that brought this book to life is the work of Jerry Trump, Phoebe Addison, and Dixie Nudell. Thank you for your beautiful work.
Theresa Taylo, Tess & Megan Bennett, and George & Sidney Copeland, thank you for all you did to make this printed book become a reality.
Last on this page but certainly first in my heart, I thank my family for the love and support you have always shown to me. Anne-Marie & Rob, Michael & Colleen, Meaghan, Ellen, Jack, Martin, Kate, and Aidan…you are the stars in my heaven. I love you.
Introduction
Reading this book will change your life in more ways than you can imagine!
Your body is worth infinitely more than your car, yet most people know more about their car than they do about their own body. Consider this important fact: you can buy a new car when the current one breaks down, but there isn’t a replacement model for your body. Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living is like an owner’s guide for your body. You’ll be thrilled when you see how a few minutes of your time will show you how to keep your body in good repair. As you read Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living, you will learn how to stop pain fast.
The Julstro™ Technique was developed because I had been diagnosed with arthritis in my thumbs soon after I graduated massage school. I didn’t want to stop my career, so with my new knowledge about muscles and how the body works, I developed a way of working that didn’t use my thumbs. I relied more on body pressure and other body parts: my elbow and forearm. That technique worked so well that I now teach it to massage therapists all over the country.
As I worked with my clients, most of whom had chronic pain from either accidents or sports injuries, I needed to figure out how to teach them to continue their treatments at home. Then a strange thing happened that has moved my work in a whole new direction: I developed a frozen shoulder. This mild-sounding condition is amazing in the amount of pain that it causes and in the vast area that it affects. It expanded so I was also suffering from a severe stiff neck at the same time. I quickly learned that the only relief my physician could offer to me was muscle relaxants and painkillers, and they didn’t help.
Even with all my experience in the pain that muscles can cause, I was shocked at the excruciating waves of pain that shot from my head, across my shoulders, upper back and chest, and all the way down my arm. I just had to do something! I couldn’t find a massage therapist who could do the treatments the way I wanted them done, so I decided to treat myself. Even in my world of massage, self-treatment is not the norm, so I had to figure it out as I went along. It took me months to work it all out, but I did, and then I started to show my clients how to do the treatments that worked for me. It was exciting to see them find the knots in their muscles and then watch their faces as they felt the fibers untie. To this day, I still love to watch people as they release their own pain. The biggest benefit is that they now are in control and, should the problem return, they know how to stop it fast.
It’s Not Just Based on Luck – Research Proves It Works!
When I started to work on myself to do something about the terrible pain I was experiencing, I looked into two major research books I had in my office. Janet Travell and David Simons, MD, did years of research, proving every point that is marked on the Trigger Point Charts that are included in this book, and they authored a two-volume book titled Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction. The Trigger Point Manual. I studied their research, looked at all of the areas where I was feeling pain, and then pressed on the trigger points they had mapped. It worked! I’d feel the tension melting under my fingertips. The pain would lessen and then disappear. It’s fantastic how the research done back in the 1960s combined with the self-treatment techniques I’ve developed are changing people’s lives and enabling them to live pain-free. The Julstro™ System is proven effective every day in my office and by people all over the world who e-mail me to let me know how the self-treatments work for them.
You can feel secure that the treatments taught in this book are based on proven scientific research, not just hearsay.
Why Read Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living?
The body is a perfectly designed combination of hormones, nerves, organs, bones, and muscles. Fortunately, you don’t need to know everything about the body. It usually moves along well in spite of how you treat it. Oh, there may be a glitch every now and then, but for most people, other than the “aches and pains” of daily living, their bodies are just fine. However, those aches and pains can surely make it difficult to do the things we want to do.
This easy-to-follow “how to” book isn’t here to replace your doctor, but it is here to show you that you can find and release the tension that ties you up in knots – literally! I’m not trying to turn anyone into a medical student or a massage therapist, but I have seen that people live happier lives when they know some techniques that quickly ease joint and muscle pains.
Benjamin Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” I’m here to show you how to prevent – and “cure” – pain that is caused by tight muscles. I’ll do my best to lighten the topic so it doesn’t become overwhelming.
Mind-Body Awareness
Much has been written lately about the mind-body connection, and I’ve seen its effects over and over in my office. It has been said, “What you think about you bring about.” People who have a positive attitude, who are in touch with their “inner being,” and who visualize themselves as healthy will heal faster. If you focus on the result you are seeking, you are far more likely to reach it than if you were to focus on the negative aspects of a condition.
About This Book
This book is not a novel, so it doesn’t need to be read from front to back. I have also given you ample room to write notes on the back side of each page. I suggest you write down how you’re feeling before you start the treatment and then any notes you may want to make as you are doing the treatment. Then write down how you feel after you’ve done the treatment several times so you’ll be able to track your improvement.
While I suggest that you read the front half of this book before you do any of the Julstro™ treatments, they’ll still work even if you never get any background information.
The body isn’t a nice straight line. It’s actually a tangle where one thing affects another thing. Eventually you feel a pain somewhere that may be far away from the source. Whenever I feel it is necessary to go backwards a bit, I’ll tell you what you should be reading first. For example, there is one muscle in the low back that can cause pain anywhere from the upper back to the foot! But don’t worry. I’ll let you know when it’s a possibility, and I’ll tell you the order of treatments that will give you the best results.
I’ll explain how to use the colorful charts as a roadmap to your body. These are the keys to knowing where to press in order to unlock your joints and to relieve pain quickly.
Why Should You Learn How to Treat Yourself?
A quick answer is quality of life. You can live on various pain medications yet still have to give up the activities you enjoy because you hurt too much to do them. Pain can even threaten your financial security as you slide into limited productivity or even permanent disability from some repetitive strain injury. The good news is that you can do something about it. That’s pretty convincing to me, but let’s look even further.
Medical costs are climbing every day, and many people don’t have insurance to pay the bills, which leads me to an interesting observation. If your car needs major repairs to keep it running, you wouldn’t think to tell your mechanic that you just won’t have the work done – at least you wouldn’t say it if you didn’t want to find yourself stuck someplace with a car that is just a heap of metal. In fact, to save money, you might even consider trying to do some of the repairs yourself. In the same way, self-treatment on your body can lower medical costs. Obviously you do care about your body or you wouldn’t be reading this book, and I’m happy to be your “virtual therapist.”