How Active Release Techniques Can Help With Shoulder Pain

By: Aatif Siddiqui D.C.

Are you feeling some pain in your shoulders, where your arm is attached to your body, rotator cuff pain? This is the most common type of shoulder pain that people experience. They usually feel pain when they try to reach behind their heads and do other motions involving the affected arm and shoulder. There are times that the pain is so intense that a person cannot perform his tasks such as lifting an object above his head, or reaching for an object overhead. This problem can be effectively treated with the application of Active Release Techniques.

What is Active Release Technique?

Active Release Technique also known as ART is a form of therapy that is designed to treat nerves, muscles, tendons, fascia problems and ligaments by way of management of the soft tissues of the patient’s affected body parts. It is certainly able to treat shoulder pain brought about by a wide variety of causes.

It is a form of manual therapy that was developed by Dr. Michael Leahy, a chiropractic doctor practicing his profession in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He also is an aeronautical engineer. With his engineering background and comprehensive knowledge about the human anatomy, he was able to develop several methodologies on soft-tissue treatment. This led to the development of the unique and very effective Active Release Techniques. ART is designed to correct soft-tissue and muscular problems caused by the development of adhesive tissues which are brought about by cumulative trauma, or overuse.

Adhesions of muscles and tissues should be treated since they are the major causes of shoulder pain and results in inflexibility. The problem occurs because injuries and overuse lead to scar tissue build-up within the soft tissue surrounding the shoulder. The problem is: when the scar tissue is being laid down, it is done haphazardly and not in an organized manner. This causes adjacent tissues to stick to one another. The result is: one muscle gets stuck with another muscle. Thus the patient will experience dysfunction in his or her biomechanics, and this will cause shoulder pain.

How ART Can Cure Shoulder Pain

Like any type of soft tissue therapy, ART aims to bring relief with every motion that is done by the NYC chiropractor to the patient. During the therapy, the patient is required to move along the different positions and in accordance to what the chiropractor is doing. The Active Release NYC therapist will move the patient’s shoulder through different positions which are designed to free up the nerves, tendons, ligaments and muscles within the shoulder. This is done so that the shoulder will regain its normal flexibility. Additionally, these series of movements and changes in positions encourage better blood circulation which greatly aids in releasing the tensions in the patient’s muscles and tissues.

The shoulder area of the patient is worked on by the chiropractor not just to see where the problem lies, but more importantly to improve its condition. He applies different amounts of pressures on the shoulder area to induce quick healing and to break down the muscle and tissue adhesion in the shoulder of the patient.