Here’s feedback a client sent me about how Somatic Exercises helped her relieve her arm pain, wrist pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome:
Lately I’ve been having hand, wrist, and forearm pain. It had been getting worse for about 2-3 months. In the last 2 weeks it’s been so painful that it also reduced my grip strength severely. I need my hands for my work, so this is not acceptable. Most of the pain is centered on my right forearm near the elbow, and around the wrist when using the mouse with my computer. The pain and problem even affects my ability to take notes with a pencil! I spend much time at the computer, running my own businesses. I do a lot of research using only my mouse-hand to click.
I told Martha about the problem and she told me that the issue was probably Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA) in my arm, which affected my hand. The muscles had “forgotten” to stop contracting. I now know a lot about SMA and Hanna Somatics, but I was thinking that I had a repetitive stress injury. Martha reminded me that “repetitive stress injury” was about contracting the same muscles over a long amount of time, and “freezing up,” which was the definition of SMA.
We scheduled a Skype video session. I showed her my injured muscles as well as my health history. Then she showed me a series of Somatic movements designed to reduce the muscle tension and lessen my muscle pain. She also asked me many questions about my posture and my [computer] working habits.
Later that night, the pain returned. I could see the difference between my “mousing arm” and my other arm: my mousing arm and hand was “thicker” and tighter. Hanna Somatics practitioners are trained to assess clients’ muscle tightness to determine if the body is holding excess muscle tension. My arm was very painful and I could not even close my hand; if I could close my hand, the effort hurt. This is how I realize that my hand was stuck in a contracted holding-mouse position.
I repeated the series of forearm and wrist movements that Martha taught me over our Skype session. Instantly, after completing the series (it took about 5 minutes), I could feel my muscles relax, and my arm was not swollen or tight anymore. I could close my hand, too. My arm felt relaxed, which relaxed my body, and I was without pain. I remembered that Martha said that we are retraining the brain to relax the muscles.
However, I realized that when I returned to my computer, the pain and stiffness returned – I didn’t even need to be “repetitive” in my movements.
I am now working on changing my posture, chair height, mouse position, and tension level. Martha even told me that tensing an entire arm, or leaning on my arm, can affect all the way down to my hand! It’s been about 24 hours since working with Martha on my wrist, hand and arm. I can release my own pain, and now I am working on fixing the conditions that make the pain return. I am looking forward to working with Martha more to pinpoint my posture and tension habits. However I have learned to release any pain that arises… and soon will improve my body-awareness enough to keep the pain away forever.
In my next post I will show you a video of the movements/techniques I taught this client during our Skype session. Stay tuned!