15 minutes of pain free breathing!

I stopped in to see an old friend at EMU who is also an atheltic trainer.  For the past 3 months I've had a shooting pain near my spine.  I thought it might have been a pulled muscle so I've been stretching it out and hoping for the best.  Up until now, all my injuries have simply healed with time and gone away in a reasonable amount of time.  This issue seems to be lingering longer than I would think it would take to heal.  After a 30 minute session of stretches and deep massage on my middle back, he tried some deep pressure points.  It was looking like nothing would help until he directed me to slump over forward while sitting in a chair so my chest was on my thighs.  He found the exact place just to the side of my spine which was giving me the shooting pain.  Some heavy pressure on this muscle combined with simultanious stretching was just what I needed.  The pain went away in 10 seconds.  I could finally breathe heavy for the first time in months without any of the pain.  I'm very grateful for his help and expertise.  We discussed some methods for stretching that area of my back including the sitting and leaning forward one.  Others included finding a golf ball and laying on top of it (padded floor/carpet only) and using it to apply pressure to this area.  I left a happy client and couldn't thank him enough.  He warned that the pain would probably return and I would need to do these stretches daily for a while.  I'm already sore from the deep massage around my spine.  Hopefully it doesn't take a toll on my swimming performance this weekend.

Shortly after leaving the clinic the pain returned.  I probably got 15 mintues of glorious breathing out of it all.  It was worth it.  Thanks Steve!