One of the gals in the class had carpal tunnel, she was probably in her early thirties, she was a bus driver and later on she explained it to me. She had had surgery on both hands. I don't know what occupation she was before bus driver, I never thought to ask. I'm thinking, "why in the world do you want to be a massage therapist? You've had carpal tunnel surgery on both hands." That instructor showed us a bunch of different stretches to keep our own body in shape.

One day our hands-on class had been cancelled and I hadn't heard about it, so I showed up. Me and one other person were there, so we decided to practice on each other. Well, this gal came in who we'd never seen before and she was confused because there was supposed to be a massage class there. She wasn't in our class, and what she wanted was, she wanted to do a trade, she had a massage table that she would trade for three massages.

So I agreed. It turned out that she had been a massage therapist in California, and as she put it, she had to quit because she blew out her wrists. Well, here I am trying to create a new career, and this obviously got my attention. By the way, it was a handmade folding massage table which was very heavy, but it was my first massage table.

In the various classes as I took them, the study of anatomy, and the study of muscles and all that, I'd hear carpal tunnel, carpal tunnel, carpal tunnel. I was pretty anal when it came to studying, meaning I learned everything I could that was in all the different textbooks that we had about carpal tunnel, primarily for my own use, so I wouldn't get it.

So once I'm out in the real world, one of my first clients I'm working on, says he's thinking he's getting carpal tunnel. So I tested him with the test that I knew about, and I said you don't have carpal tunnel. He didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything more, because we both knew he had a problem, but I didn't know what it was.

Fast forward, years later I'm working at a resort, I'm very busy, and I start developing some problems with my own hands, and sometimes I'd have the symptoms of carpal tunnel, and sometimes I didn't. They were just different symptoms. I found that the stretches I learned in massage school weren't helping really very much. About the only thing that was helping was ice.

So I'm reading different books and different articles, and they're very informative and explain a lot, but not really very helpful, except for describing how to work more ergonomically. I turned to the internet, which wasn't nearly as huge as it is now and found one article that changed everything.

It was from a very unlikely source. It seemed that these guys on a rowing team were developing numb hands, and they developed this technique to treat themselves using their thumbs.

Well, here I am a massage therapist, and I use my thumbs way too much to begin with, so I modified their technique in a way that doesn't have to use my hands, since my hands were already being overused. Not only that, I expanded it using my technique to treat the hands, the wrist and the forearm. Most of my problem was actually coming from my forearms. It worked beautifully and I totally stopped using the ice.

But then I had another problem, see at the resort, we'd do reflexology once in a while, and I really didn't like doing it because my hands would go to sleep. Now with reflexology you work on the feet. I'm sitting low, working my hands about shoulder height and my fingers would always go to sleep, very quickly actually.

So most of the time I'm doing either a twenty minute, or a fifty minute treatment, most of the entire session my fingers are numb. And when it was all done, and I'd put my hands down, I'd have no more numbness. I could work with my hands down doing massage the whole day, but within a few minutes of doing reflexology my fingers would be numb. I was still able to work them, I still had full motion in my fingers, I just, they were numb.

So I worked on my forearms more, I did more and more of my self-treatment on the forearms, but it didn't make any difference. Not only that, I was finding that when I was using my computer, I started to get numb hands, when I was driving I'd start to get numb hands, and when I rode a bicycle I was getting numb hands.

Then I took a continuing education course and the instructor was showing how to massage the pectoralis minor muscle and just in passing, as kind of an aside, he mentioned that if the pectoralis minor muscle is tight, it sometimes gives a false carpal tunnel.

Aha. So I worked out a technique where I could work on my own pectoralis minor muscle, and like magic, just a few treatments in one day, each treatment about a minute at a time at the most, and wow, problem solved. I continued to work on them over the next few days, but no more than 5 minutes total. Maybe once a month I'll work on them a little bit just to keep them nice and loose, but they're not bothering me.

Funny thing is, I went and looked back at my textbooks and I looked back at the books I had gotten on carpal tunnel, and not one of them, not one mentioned that the pectoralis minor muscle could do that. As I mentioned, the techniques I developed were just for me to work on myself for my own problems, and to allow myself to continue to do massages. I would show the techniques to clients when they were having problems, but I really couldn't do much of that when I worked at the resort because it was fifty minute massages, boom, boom, one after another.

And the most frustrating thing for me was when I'd hear somebody say, "yeah, my hands are going numb, but I'll just wait til it gets so bad that I have to have the surgery." 

I want to scream at them, "NO! You can reverse this, it's not like having your appendix out and then you're fine and then you never have to worry about it again, no. Recovery time can take weeks or months, the surgery doesn't always work out well, but the main thing is if you keep doing things the way you have been, without changing anything, it's going to come back. Statistically it's going to come back in 2 years, 4 years, 6 years. You can stop this."

But sadly, I didn't say anything. Now that I'm in private practice, I can take the time.
It's funny, I'll ask people, "how are you feeling?" They'll say, "oh, I've got a kink in my neck," or "oh, my low back is hurting." I'll ask them, "do you have any numbness in your hands?" and they go, "well, yeah" and the reason they don't tell me is they don't think I can do anything about it.

You see, I've learned more and more over the years and it's just fascinating to me how many different places can cause the similar symptoms in the body. When a person says they have numb hands, it's a challenge for me, a delightful challenge to figure out where it's coming from, and just in one session they're going, "wow, I can feel now, it's better than it's been in a long time."

But very seldom do people feel pain in the areas that are causing the problem until I push on them. These areas can be rather painful to have massaged. I tell my clients, "if I work on this for very long, you'll hate me." I prefer to teach people what they can do for themselves, so they can work on themselves a few minutes at a time, every day until the problem clears up and they can just work on it once in a while to keep the problem at bay. That's why I developed this course.

There's so much misinformation out there and not so much misinformation as just lack of good information.

So if you're having problems due to your occupation or hobby, whether you're a plumber or a hair dresser or a grocery bagger or a dog groomer or whatever, of course computer users which are the big ones, do yourself a favor and don't wait any longer. If you wait it will just get worse. 

This is for less than the price of a doctor visit, less than the price of most massage visits, certainly less than the price of a physical therapy visit, and this is something you can use on and on and on and there is a 60-day money back guarantee. Take a look at the sample video, then decide if this is for you. Thanks.

Hilma Louise Volk, LMT