I’ve been dealing with a pain in my left shoulder that starts in my bicep and spikes into my shoulder when I move it the wrong way. Unfortunately ‘the wrong way’ meant about 80% of anything I wanted to do. Awaiting my physiotherapy appointment has been debilitating as I’m not able to do the simplest of things without feeling like someone is poking my arm with an ice pick.

As serendipity would have it, on Wednesday I had to cancel Thursday’s appointment with my Physio due to a work appointment that I couldn’t switch, but that very morning a friend came by and recommended a Physio that he goes too, and he told me to look him up on my web browser. So, the moment I canceled my schedule-conflicted appointment, I went online and saw that this new Physio had a time slot just after my conflict time and just before my dinner meeting.

This new Physio asked me a lot of questions about my lifestyle and goals for recovery and put me through a series of mobility tests, moving my arm in different directions, sometimes with resistance. Then he told me, ‘it’s one of 3 muscles’ and started me on an exercise regimen, after three of these, he said, “It’s down to one of two muscles, but they both do the same thing, and the treatment is the same.”

He then had me squeeze my fist as tight as I could and punch above my head 10 times slowly. After that he had me move my arm in directions that minutes before would have sent a spike of pain through my arm, but now there was just mild discomfort. He then ran me through 2 specific exercises that will not just help me heal, but will also strengthen the muscle. And he told me to use the punching-the-air-above-my-head move twice a day, and again if I felt any twinge if pain,

“Think of this as pain relief exercise instead of pain relief meditation. I know it looks weird, so you might want to find somewhere private to do it.”

I told him my secretaries were used to weird, and maybe I’d even play some disco music while I punched the air above my head ten times, just to see their reaction. 🤣

The process left me feeling like I had just visited a voodoo doctor. I was expecting 2-3 weeks of progressively less pain, if I was lucky. Instead, I walked out with instant relief and an exercise rather than pill-based pain reliever. It’s amazing not just to watch, but also to experience the skill of a knowledgeable practitioner. This reminds me of a favourite story that I often share:

“There is an old story of a boilermaker who was hired to fix a huge steamship boiler system that was not working well.

After listening to the engineer’s description of the problems and asking a few questions, he went to the boiler room. He looked at the maze of twisting pipes, listened to the thump of the boiler and the hiss of the escaping steam for a few minutes, and felt some pipes with his hands. Then he hummed softly to himself, reached into his overalls and took out a small hammer, and tapped a bright red valve three times. Immediately, the entire system began working perfectly, and the boilermaker went home.

When the steamship owner received a bill for four hundred dollars, he became outraged and complained that the boilermaker had only been in the engine room for fifteen minutes and requested an itemized bill. So the boilermaker sent him a bill that reads as follows:

For tapping the valve, $.50 x 3: $1.50
For knowing where to tap: $398.50
TOTAL: $400.00”