Days 37-40 – Aug 11-14th. Have faith, put in the time and effort, believe you can heal and get better, seek out competent help. That is my mantra when it comes to my body.
Have you ever heard of the Scalene Muscles? I am not sure that I had specifically, however as I have been going through this issue with my neck and arm, I have heard it mentioned by Matt Safarik & Heather Stokes. I have this book called “The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook” and for some reason I have not brought it out to reference what I am going through and yesterday I decided to check it out. Not sure why I finally decided to read it, but I think it has to do with me finding some relief the past week or so and I am getting really excited to explore more deeply into what I am discovering.
Here is a quote from the book about the Scalene Muscles “Trigger points in the scalenes cause an impressively wide distribution of pain, numbness, and other abnormal sensations in the chest, upper back, shoulder, arm and hands. Pain can occur in the back of the neck as well. The scalenes are rarely suspected as the source of the trouble because they’re almost entirely hidden by the sternocleidomastoid muscles. Symptoms created by the scalenes are easily misdiagnosed. Neurologists often mistake degenerative vertebra, collapsed disks, or stenosis as the cause of the neck, shoulder or arm pain. There are a lot of other symptoms that can come from the scalene muscles like carpal tunnel syndrome.”
When you take this info and combine that with my tight chest muscles, you have a recipe for disaster. Matt has been working on this area of my neck as it is really bunched up. Lately we have really been focusing on my chest muscle which feels like a rope knotted up, and the scalenes along with my subscap. The muscles are so wound up that is it is taking daily focus on them to find some relief.
The past 5 days I have been doing my own massage and trigger point on my chest, shoulder, subscap with a lacrosse ball and a shiatsu massage device. Yesterday, Aug 14th, I had by far the most relief that I have experienced since April. Major breakthrough. I can feel the chest starting to release which is making room for everything else to correct itself. Crazy how all of this stuff works.
Now I also know that my attitude towards this is causing some of the relief as well but it sure gets you motivated to get after the rehab when you see some success. The road to recovery will be a slow slog as I’ve stated before. Diligence, persistence, playing the long game is the key to success. No one will ever really know what I went through day to day to beat this, they will just see that I did and not fully understand the day to day battles I have been through.
One of the causes of tight scalene muscles is breathing with your chest vs. your diaphragm. I have always been a chest breather who takes shallow breaths. I have been converting that to a deep diaphragm breather through my meditation and mindfulness around breathing in general. Breathing is so important, you cannot put enough emphasis on it other than you need oxygen to live. I think some of us, me included, take that for granted. Jared Markiewicz at Functional Integrated Training says that proper breathing is more important than proper nutrition. I believe that now.
Get your top ten list done for the day, believe in yourself and your bodies ability to heal itself. No matter what you are going through, you have to believe that you can heal. Then do the work, find the support team, eat nutritionally to help your body heal and avoid food that causes inflammation in your body. Meditate to learn to breath deeper with your diaphragm. Pray, God will be there for you.
Photos are from our trip out west to CO and SD. These are from Black Elk Peak in SD. Easy hike up to the highest peak in SD. We made it up in 85 minutes and down in 35 minutes. We ran down. So now imagine me running downhill with a pack on! I did it!
To your health & abundance,
Steve Aune, Ninsurance Ninja
Steve Aune 
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