The Tibetan Monk, Part II: Session Video and Notes

All of this happened a bit after the moments described in my last blog post, The Tibetan Monk, which began the contact with this man at the end of lunch before the students came back into the room. The recordings – the bristling cameras from every direction – started after I re-emerged.

He has numbness and pain down his left arm – you’ll see him wiggling his finger from time to time.

In the first section, I am opening the superficial tissues around the pectoralis and deltoid, and then into pectoralis minor, which I did (carefully) through the major, rather than attack his armpit.

But then I went ahead and came in under the joint using the axillary access, warning him it would be painful.

He had a collarbone break that had healed badly, so you can see me, about 5 minutes in, working the periosteum of the collarbone, combing out the scar tissue and calming the periosteum, after the manner of Sharon Wheeler (who will be teaching at our summer advanced courses in 2016).

Once I start working on his neck, we are able to remove the two books, or at least one of them, as his neck eases. Although the pain was down the arm, the problem was in the neck – not unusual – so I am spending a lot of time going from vertebra to vertebra, and easing the tissue around them so they can slip into place.

(And yes, all through the video, you can hear people coughing and snorkeling – this was the middle of the worst of the Beijing pollution.)

Unusual for me to work just one anterior scalene, but since it runs so close to the brachial plexus, it was called for.

At about 11 minutes we took off for the suprasinatus and the rotator cuff, given the difficulty in abduction. I love his distinctly Tibetan grunts, even if it means we’re not doing that well.

At 14 minutes, we get the story of his fall from the ladder.

And then the pelvic lift and backwork.

At 20 minutes we are working the shoulder joint capsule and ligaments. His flexion abduction is good, but his horizontal abduction showed only a small improvement.

And then we left him with homework.