Muscular Retraining for Pain-Free Living: A Practical Approach to Eliminating Chronic Back Pain, Tendonitis, Neck and Shoulder Tension, and Repetitive Stress Injuries »

Craig Williamson, MSOT, is an occupational therapist who treats patients with persistent pain problems. He is the pioneer of Somatic Integration (www.somaticintegration.com), an approach to muscular pain relief that includes muscular retraining techniques and specific, targeted exercises. He lives and practices in Portland, Maine.

Here's an innovative and practical approach to eliminating chronic muscle pain, written by a popular occupational therapist with thirty years of experience freeing people from the discomfort of tendonitis, lower back pain, and neck and shoulder tension. These types of chronic pain can be caused by a number of factors, including old injuries, habitual movement patterns, problems with body alignment, psychological causes, and inability to sense your own body movements accurately. Muscular Retraining for Pain-Free Living clearly and concisely explains the causes of persistent muscle pain and offers a therapeutic exercise program to address these problems and end pain.

This book explains the basic principles behind Williamson Muscular Retraining, a pain-relief discipline, in a way that is practical and easy to understand. The problems of poor posture, muscle tension, and stress-caused pain are corrected by seeing them through the lens of kinesthetic awareness. Normal kinesthetic awareness is lacking in much of the population and typically overlooked by health care practitioners. Muscular Retraining for Pain-Free Living presents case examples of how people have used kinesthetic awareness and exercises to change how they think of their bodies and to end pain.

Beth Hill - Library Journal

Athletes can be in phenomenal physical shape but still out of touch with their bodies. This lack of "kinesthetic awareness" happens in average people, too, so that a "dysfunctional movement pattern" (DMP)-in which a muscle works too hard or not hard enough and becomes habitual-can develop. Injury, repeated motions and postures, and emotional stress can all contribute to DMPs, but a "repatterning" can take place with the therapeutic exercise program delineated here by occupational therapist Williamson. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in massage therapy, training in other body therapies, and courses in psychotherapy, Williamson presents movement awareness exercises as part of the conceptual background in Part 1 and alignment exercises for changing patterns of movement in Part 2. Williamson's true gift is guidance in understanding the connection among body movement, self-awareness, and relaxation. Highly recommended for public and consumer health libraries and of interest to practitioners who care for those with chronic muscular pain.