In your spare time, you enjoy writing about your life story, or you enjoy writing fiction about others, you may like to grab a paintbrush, and on a blank canvas, begin painting. You do this to soothe your passion while relieving all of that built up stress and tension.
While doing so, at times, your arms and shoulders may become tense or get numb. You begin feeling that all too familiar tingling sensation in your muscles, along with a bit of pain or weakness while using your arms and hands.
Once this happens, it then becomes yet another form of ART. Art as in Active Release Technique, which is a treatment which you can receive to relieve lingering muscular tension or injury.
Active Release Technique
Active release technique is a relatively new method which utilizes movement as well as deep pinpointed pressure which effectively treats the pain that’s within the soft tissue. The layman’s definition includes tendons, muscles, fat, nerves, ligaments, and fascia.
What Is Scar Tissue
We often hear scar tissue but are not quite sure what it means. Scar tissue refers to what the body uses to repair the damaged soft tissue in the body. What it does is it grows where the injury is, and then glues all of the damaged tissue with the neighboring tissues together. This can often produce pain as well as dysfunction in that area.
Scar tissue can be viewed as slabs of meat at the neighborhood butcher shop. The cheaper and as a result chewier cuts of meat contains a lot more of this scar tissue, when compared to the much pricier Filet Mignon.
What the Active Release Technique does is it specifically targets this resident and specific scar tissue clusters to eliminate it.
A treatment of Active Release involves examination and then the treatment itself. Someone who is qualified and experienced in this technique will effectively use their hands to assess the tightness in the muscles, as well as the texture along with the alignment of the soft tissue.
The Treatment Which Involves ART
What the actual treatment involves is, the qualified ART technician will apply direct pressure on the injured area while using specific movements. There is a warning that being treated by Active Release Technique may sting a bit. It may at times even be a bit painful on the injured area during the process, but it should be well worth it.
It’s not extreme severe pain, however, the patients describe it as a “good” kind of pain which usually comes from knowing that your body and that area is receiving the proper treatment that it needs to heal.
The ART technique was developed by a chiropractor who’s had training in soft tissue injury. As a result, he has a concise understanding of the bio-mechanic processes which are involved, while also knowing how muscle strain can affect the human body.
The Active Release Technique is usually a lot more involved than just a regular massage which just usually focuses on the kneading of the dysfunctional scar tissue. ART actually has over 500 different protocols, and each of the treatments are tailored to suit the patient’s particular muscle problem.
Athletes Are The Most Susceptible
Athletes along with the weekend warriors are usually the ones who benefit from this type of hands-on specialized care. The majority of us, however, who happen to be living in the industrialized world could also benefit from this type of muscle repair technique as well.
In fact, it’s the regular everyday individuals who will sustain those seemingly innocuous injuries, such as for instance, performing repetitive boring tasks at work or at home, are the ones who require this type of treatment.
Others affected could be from repetitive computer usage while sitting behind a desk, or repeatedly holding children on one hip, or constant and steady postural tension resulting from sitting in one spot for too long.
They are all habitual based behaviors which are now becoming an epidemic in our fast moving society, which causes the body to respond by it eventually producing scar tissue.
So anyone who suffers from muscle pain, such as, stay at home moms, office or stationary factory workers, to those who run marathons, can all benefit from the ART treatment.
Is ART For You
Unless there’s more of a severe, or a serious problem which is the cause of the body pain problems, such as, neuropathic pain which occurs in diabetics, heart disease, or hypothyroidism, Active Release Technique should work for you.
The ART technique is most commonly administered by your local chiropractor, while the technique may also be provided by massage therapists, physiotherapists or kinesiologists.
So do you suffer from body and/or muscle pain? If your efforts to correct the pain has resulted in less than desirable results, and if you’re willing to go through a bit of the “good hurt,” then trying Active Release Technique may be for you.