How To Fix A Painful Shoulder

I had a really painful shoulder recently. I don’t really know what I did. I think it was leaping onto the kitchen worktop and pushing a window out enough for Winniepuss to get out onto the patio. For patio, read: prison. We call Winnie ‘the inmate’. She’d always been an indoor cat before we adopted her and we live quite close to a busy road in our current rental, which makes me nervous for her as she has no knowledge of cars yet, so we try to keep her in.

Problem is that Winnie doesn’t KNOW that she is an indoor cat and loves being outside. And she is a regular HoudiniCat, it turns out, finding myriad ways of escaping our bamboo-fenced, strategic flowerpot-arranged, supervised patio. Honestly, it’s like The Great Escape!

Anyway, I digress. That’s how I hurt my shoulder. It has taken about 5 weeks to heal. I think I strained the rotator cuff. I know that as I used to be a remedial massage therapist eons ago – those of you who have followed me since our Uppermill natural health clinic days, will know that I wore naturopath, nutritionist and remedial massage hats interchangeably then.

So, in case you ever do the same – minus the window-shoving, or in fact football-saving which is how my sister did hers in recently – I saw my fave physical therapists Bob & Brad released this summary of how to fix a shoulder today.

They give a daily programme of what to do when your shoulder is painful, then different stretches when the range of movement is better, and how to maintain it. I was doing the W stretch quite naturally as it felt good to do it. I am now concentrating on strengthening my back, shoulder and arm muscles to stop it happening again.

Here’s their first video to get you going, but do follow the link for the daily schedule. And, of course, get it looked at by a good massage therapist, physio or your GP.

Hope it helps.