Emergency treatment: As you go through the Tune Me System, you will have some bad days. Sometimes this means that your original pain is back, and you need to see your doctor. But sometimes it just means that your string and bracing muscles are out of balance. One of them has been fatigued by your activity, and the other is screaming at you. We must begin to realize that there is a chronically out-of-balance state (this entire book is about this chronic state) and an acutely out-of-balance state. In the chronically state, you have major work to do. In the acute state, you have to stop the string muscle spasm so that the balance returns. This acute state is sometimes found in the person who doesn’t have back pain and just over did it. But much more often it is found in the chronic back pain patient who is on the road to recovery, but just over did it. In these cases, I want to give you a plan to treat your acute pain so that you don’t think that this is a return to the pain you had.
Step 1: Hip flexor stretch. Lie on your back with your feet on the ground. Put a foam roller, or a balled-up pillow, under your low back. Let your arms rest out over your shoulders with your palms facing up, and just let yourself drape back over it. This stretches the upper hip flexors, where the psoas and the quadratus lumborum attach to the diaphragm. You can do this on the floor. On a bed or a table, with your feet down, you will get a bigger stretch. Breathe slowly and stay as long as it feels good.
Step 2: Gluteus ball release. Your gluteus muscles may be fatigued and in spasm. Because they are not doing their job in stabilizing the hip, the string muscles are forced to take over. The spasm of the gluteus muscles is very common when someone with chronic back pain tries to get back to activity too early. I want my patients to increase activity, so developing gluteus muscle spasm and throwing the Body Guitar off balance is probably the sign of a good thing.
The way I ask my patients to treat this is with a lacrosse ball, but almost any ball will work. Lie on the ball, or stand and pin it between your buttock and a wall. You roll the ball on the gluteal muscles until you find an area of pain. You increase the pressure, stay there until the muscle releases, and then move to find a new area.
Step 3: Psoas release. You have to assume that the psoas is in spasm. The psoas runs from your low spine, down through your belly, to the top of your thigh. The best place to work on it is from the middle of the muscle down. You can use a Thera Cane, or anything like it; even a golf club will work. Put the tip on that spot and gently pull so it presses straight down. Or lie with a lacrosse ball on that spot and let a dumbbell rest on top. The weight does the work.
Remember, your pushing on the psoas does not release it, and this is not massage. The pressure allows your brain to know that the psoas is tight so that you can consciously relax it. Then breathe slow and easy, let your diaphragm expand, and it relaxes. In my book, we mentioned numerous other treatments for the psoas, and I would recommend using any of them: chiropractic care, John Sarno’s protocol, an inversion table and others. They are a great way to stop string muscle spasm. All of these psoas muscle treatments are acute-state muscle treatments. They are misused as chronic-state muscle treatments, so we must understand the difference.
Step 4: Calm down. We must work on decreasing sympathetic tone. Breathe slowly and let your diaphragm expand, then go for an easy, relaxed walk. Explore many other possible sympathetic tone remedies.
If these don’t help, and a few days of treatment aren’t helping, contact your healthcare professional, as the chronic pain could be back. If the pain is severe, you may do that as the first step. I am trying to give you tools to manage your back pain on your own, but I am not asking you to use this book as a substitute for a health professional. Always use the advice given here as a supplement to advice from a qualified professional.