So thank you very much for taking the time to listen a little bit about the introduction video of who I am and how I ended up with the material that you're going to be working with over this next little while on how to get rid of your mid and upper back pain. Essentially, you could tell there in an introductory video that I came to a lot of this conclusion looking at structural patterns in the body. Just like in this image here, you see on the screen, that if we are out of balance through that way, then we're going to start to see effects and pain and the pain is a symptom to the cause and the cause is a miss structural and Miss alignment. Now some of us we might have a disease or a condition that we just have to keep working with them. It's not so much but there is a lot of evidence out there that shows us Much of what we're experiencing pain wise is not actually the body's for.

So I call it a user error. For those of you that work in the tech world, especially software development, I think you're appreciate that one, that we're not using the body the way we should be. And then we call getting pain as a symptom of that. So what we're looking to do is bring realignment to the body with the idea, then the body doesn't have to do this contortionist act in order to survive on a day to day basis. And then those of you that like to go to the gym and exercise, you could imagine that you're taking a lot of these tension patterns that you are creating during the day. And you're passing that into your exercise.

And that's going to have a negative impact on your exercise. And then we get a sports injury. And we think that we're trying to work with a sports injury, we can't run for a lot of us that stress relief. We can't do it anymore because of the stupid injury. But in fact, the cause actually wasn't the exercise or the body. It's how you were using your body during the day and the biomechanics.

That you're using with that. So get rid of your mid and upper back pain, a lot of this is going to be focused around the shoulders. So those of you that might have done my get rid of your neck pain, we're going to repeat some of the shoulder stuff in through here, because that is part of this whole kind of mid upper back pain tension pattern that we see. And we're also going to be looking at shoulders rounded forward, which is a lot of us. So let's delve into this a little bit more since there's going to be a short video just as kind of a prelude to the exercises that you're going to be doing here real soon. So just like I mentioned before, highlighted for typical patterns, we're going to be focusing on number two and number three today, which is shoulders raised up and shoulders rounded forward.

So when looking at shoulder raised up how this is going to work with kind of upper back and neck pain. You can see in the image here that all this tissue is connected up here, up into the back of the neck, up into the shoulder there. So if you Those of you that experienced that kind of knowledge That's coming in through there, a lot of that can actually be that levator scapulae, or that you're experiencing that discomfort when you raise that shoulder up chronically for long periods of time, the fascia and the connective tissue. Same thing have to tighten attention around that in order to support the pattern and good phrase to remember a structure leads to function. So if you're stuck in this positioning for a while, the body kind of has to work overtime in order to maintain that positioning. Even though it's actually a dysfunctional pattern for the body.

It's actually trying to help you. It's not trying to go against you an interesting observation with tennis players is you can tell which arm a tennis player uses in a MRI result because you're actually going to see a denser layer of connective tissue be laid down on the arm that they're using. Notice that I'm pointing to my right arm because I'm right handed. It's interesting how we do some of this stuff subconsciously. So you could imagine that if you're raising the shoulder up like that, that's creating a lot of tension up in through this area here. upper trapezius Levine.

Scapular that you can see in the image there. So what we're looking to do is to be able to release the tension in that tissue, restructure the structure. And then you're also going to look to correct the biomechanics so you don't recreate that tension in the first place. I mentioned before that climber come see me, we do some bodywork, structural or Clinical Massage. They leave feeling amazing. Two, three days later, I get a telephone call my pains come back.

Why is that? Well, it's because you've not addressed the cause in the first place, you're only symptom treating an important thing to start to get our head around. So if you are somebody that's raising your shoulder up typical symptom patterns for that, there's going to be pain running up the back of the head and neck pain at the base of the skull because a lot of that tissue is connecting in through there that you could see in the previous image, temporal and frontal headaches. The reason why we can get headaches is if you look at this guy here. A lot of this is kind of more than new science and professional lines, Tom Meyers anatomy trains, the tissues running up the back into the back of the neck there. So if you have issues going on in this area, you're going to feel it at the base of the skull as it connects through through that area there.

And a good example is with a band like this, that here you can see that the tissue if it's connected into the back through here, if I'm leaning forward, you could imagine how that's gonna strain a lot of that tissue as you work through there, and then a lot or a trigger point at the top of the shoulder blade which Aveda scapular is, is a notorious in a in the field of therapeutic massage, it gets road tire road, dense connective tissue through there so it's something that you really want to start working with for that. So then the second component that we're gonna be looking at in this series is going to be shoulders rounded forward, and you can see in these two diagrams here are highlighted for you Number one, he you can see that the shoulder is forward, the scapula, which is the shoulder blade is frayed out through the back there.

That's how I can tell if someone's doing that, which is going to cause mid and upper back tension just through doing this. Again, you could imagine that if the tissue and this is kind of hard for you guys to see, but if the tissue is here, and it's a natural length through this final round the shoulders, you can see what that does to that tissue all through the back. So we've got this situation where we're lengthening and tensing all this tissue. So when I'm working with people, I'm trying to take the tension pattern back this way, I'm trying to move all this factual tissue back through that way. And then if we're rounded forward like this, or this tissue gets shortened from shore, in through the front here and tight in through the shoulders, so we're looking to do the opposite of that. We're trying to open up the chest So we're trying to bring the shoulder blades down and back to try and help correct that tension pattern.

You can see as I stand to the side, if you forget for a second that we have a so called front of the body, and a so called back of the body, and you just think of it as a tube as a, yeah, just a tube that you're running up in through the body. There's this relationship that's going on in through the front and back. So you can't affect one side of that tube without having the other side of the cylinder. So I was looking for there's going to be a relationship between the two. So although it seems very basic, this concept of having the shoulders rounded forwards and back, you can see here and Arnie Who was that? Who was the governor of California, and a good one that if he was tight through there, the PEC tissue which we're going to go through, connects down through this way.

Pec major goes across the chest like that, pec minor comes comes Cross the body this way like this. So what happens is pec major pauses inwards like this. And then pec minor. pauses down like that actually attaches to the top of the scapula in through here. So we kind of get this kind of positioning through there and explains a lot of the pain and discomfort that we're experiencing a lot of the time as a result of that. And that's why when someone says you need to improve your posture, you need to sit up straight.

Well, that's the most unhelpful thing we can think about because your body is doing this. And now you're trying to sit up straight, and that's why people push their chest forward like that, when they try and have good posture. Because they're not trying to have good posture. They're trying to counteract this tension pattern that's going on through the chest, and the sticking points in through the back as well. So important for you guys to get your head around that relationship so you can get a better understanding about pain. typical symptoms, if you're doing this kind of shoulder rounding is some shoulder pain because if we're like this, now, we're trying to move From this positioning and that's going to overload the deltoid and the joint here, in through the shoulder, tight chest.

Don't get confused. Those of you that might be having some kind of a heart attack or something, definitely call your emergency services, if that's going on they're tingling and numbness down the arm. And that's because we can get something called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome has a lot of nerves and blood endings. arteries that are running through this way. If you're clamping down with this tissue across through here, that pins down on that system that's running out into the arm there. And then you can get some tingling numbness down into the arm as an example of what's going on with the shoulder rounding.

And then upper middle back pain. You can see now if I'm doing this, and then we get my skeleton here for you guys to really see. Ideally, we're looking a little bit more like this as a vertebrae. So notice how it's building blocks. It stacks on One on one on top of one another. In free the front here, it's pretty nice symmetrical distance include equidistant space in between the vertebrae.

Now, if we do this, and we do this, now see how that opens up a lower space in through the back of the vertebrae, just seeing this is painful, right? We're putting a lot of space in through here that's pushing. It's putting pressure on the discs going one way, and then we're shortening and collapsing through the front. I'm not gonna go into it now. But when we look at things like myofascial work, like Tom Myers, the deep front line, this is way too much, but just bear with me, runs up the up in through here. So there is a shortening that goes on in through the connective tissue in the front of the body.

I want you to see what we're doing to the vertebrae. It seems so innocent, I've got bad posture. I sit at a desk all day. And we're really talking about some serious conditions here that's going to affect you. I want you to start thinking less about your body now, and more about Where's your body It could be 30 or 40 or 50 years from now, what position do you want to be in? Do you want to be a brain in a jar hooked up to a computer, like a lot of my software developers will be happy with that.

But we do have these bodies, it's a reality that we have to use them, you do have to go up and go take a bathroom break from time to time. So this is a reality that we need to start addressing the structure of the body in order to avoid this long term pain that we're experiencing, and all the other side effects that go along with it. So kind of a brief run through there of what's going on. With the body. Now we're going to be looking at the five key components that I find work so effectively with getting better posture. Number one is awareness or improving your awareness around what's going on with the shoulder so that you can avoid it.

On the long term basis. We're not just talking here about treating with the symptoms, we're looking at a solution, long term solution to your problem, not just a short, quick fix. You invest a bit of time and then it doesn't mean anything to you from that. We're talking about the time that you're doing in this course here is actually going to be lifelong education for you. awareness, strength component, stretching, self massage restores my favorite and a mobility component and the first exercise we're going to be looking at awareness. So thank you for taking the time to listen to this introduction.

And what we're going to be looking at over this next series of exercises and why you do the exercises.