Frozen Shoulder

What You Can Do About It

Nancy Hausauer, LMP
706 Sixth Avenue * Tacoma, WA 98405 * 253-686-1214
Massage, lymphatic massage, and energy healing serving Tacoma, Seattle,
Federal Way, Puyallup, Lakewood, Olympia, and the Puget Sound region

Frozen shoulder is a tricky ailment that can be hard to treat. However, massage often helps. I usually use a combination of techniques to relax and soften tight muscles in the shoulder, back, neck and chest, along with specific treatment work to the shoulder muscles, trigger point treatment to the rotator cuff and chest muscles, energy work, and other techniques as called for. I have good results with this protocol.

What Is Frozen Shoulder?.
The term "frozen shoulder" is used to describe a variety of conditions that cause pain and stiffness in the shoulder. Learn more about what it is here.

Suspected Causes
The cause isn't known, but it often seems to be accompanied by a rounded shoulder/forward head posture. It also seems to correlate with shoulder dis-use or immobility (e.g. after an injury), and certain medical conditions. Learn more about frozen shoulder causes and risk factors here.

Common Treatments
Massage and acupuncture are two therapies that often have good results.

Other commonly prescribed therapies include physical therapy (which has mixed results), corticosteroidal injections, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen. Sometimes doctors inject sterile water into the joint capsule to stretch the tissue; manipulate the shoulder under anesthesia (you, not them!) to help loosen it; or in cases where nothing else will help, perform surgery to remove scar tissue and adhesions in the joint.

But what can you do to help heal yourself?

Self-Treatment for Frozen Shoulder

Trigger Point Massage
Trigger points are hyper-contracted, hyper-irritable muscle "knots" that often refer pain elsewhere in a muscle. Trigger points can cause or contribute to frozen shoulder.

Trigger point massage can be very helpful in resolving shoulder pain and stiffness. You can treat it yourself. It can also be helpful to see a massage therapist who is knowledgeable about trigger points and how to treat them. (If you are in the Tacoma, Seattle, or Olympia area, I can provide this treatment for you.)

Heat and Cold Therapy
You can try cold to help with shoulder pain, and/or heat to help with the stiffness of frozen shoulder. However, because the first, painful phase of is an inflammatory condition, ice is usually the treatment of choice for the first phase. During the frozen and thawing phases, heat is usually best. However, you should use what works best for you.

Mobilization
Use the shoulder as much as you can, without causing further pain. Anytime something hurts, our unconscious tendency is to stop using it. Consciously make sure that you continue to take it through whatever pain-free range of motion you have.

Visualization
I have no scientific proof that this works, but it just makes sense to me that visualizing yourself moving your shoulder easily and painlessly through its entire range of motion would be good for it. Do it several times a day for a week--longer if you see any improvement as a result.

Acupressure
Acupressure is an easy form of self massage. Learn the technique and some shoulder acupressure points that may be helpful here.

Prevention
Although there is no definitive cause for frozen shoulder, a couple of preventive steps just make sense, and are good for you in any case.

Keeping your shoulders moving through their entire range of motion, every day, is important.

The second preventive step is to look at your posture. Are your shoulders rounded forward? If so, try to correct that, both siting and standing. Correcting posture can be hard. (But it can be done!) Thinking about it and willing yourself to do it only go so far. You'll also need to stretch the muscles in the front of your chest, and strengthen the muscles between your shoulder blades in the upper back, as well as the and the external shoulder rotators, infraspinatus and teres minor.

I wish you ease and comfort and full range of motion in your shoulder, and I am confident that you will be able to feel better.

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