Self-Healing Shoulder and Arm Arthritis

I wrote about my calcific periarthritis of the shoulders in July. Globs of calcium crystals build up in the shoulder joint, gradually destroying the joint and limiting movement. What's worse, symptoms of pain and immobility spread down the arm, all the way to the wrist. Yikes! 

The only relief beyond heavy painkillers is surgery requiring months-long recuperation with severe pain (my physical therapist - who's birthed two kids and worked with patients after this surgery - says the pain levels seem comparable). But that's actually an improvement. Untreated, the pain has driven me into seizure.

That low point was six months ago, and the experience focused my attention wonderfully. Necessity mothered invention, and I seem to have fixed it. Against all odds and every medical expectation, I've been nearly symptom-free for half a year (my doctors tell me it's a medical impossibility). And I'll explain my bag of tricks for any sufferers stumbling in.

I've drawn on yoga positions, but you won't find this routine in yoga books. It's a fresh solution - based on 50 years of yoga practice and working around physical challenges - to a terrifying condition. And much of it applies to any sort of shoulder or arm arthritis.

I've had many breakthroughs with self-healing (here are all postings on the topic). Decades of avid hatha yoga (the bendy/stretchy part of yoga, though I practice the rest, too) has fostered deep body awareness and a creative, intuitive approach to working around physical problems.

Unfortunately, the better I get at self-healing, the more problems get thrown at me, like a factory worker manning a wildly accelerating assembly line. What's more, self-healing, like hatha yoga, is not one of my natural facilities. With this stuff I am slow and gluey and dumb. But as I've written, the most remarkable results seem to come from diligently plying weakness - congenital weakness, not just underdevelopment. The realms where you've never sped up and never will. Our bad sides, with courageous persistence, produce more fruitfully than our good sides.

The following is my most remarkable self-healing result. Happy to share. Maybe you'll improve on it!

Arm/Elbow Arthritis The condition spurs arthritis down the arm in a chain reaction as biceps try to compensate for immobilized shoulders, and then elbows try to compensate for immobilized biceps. It took a few years to figure out what was going on, and a few more to experiment with fixes. Forced by horrendous circumstance to conjure up a miracle, I've eliminated most pain and restored my range of motion. It's not a cure, though. I need to recharge twice daily via the routine below. But it sure beats surgery! I beat the rap!

While these poses are normally supposed to be practiced with straight arms, that part is much more important for this purpose. Focus on maximally straightening your arms....or at least intending to, which is just as therapeutic. It's the intention that counts; trying to go from a 15° bend to a 14° bend, if that's the most you can do, is an act of straightening! The following will only improve your arthritis insofar as you apply effort to keep your arms as straight as possible. Think of all these exercises as "straight arm therapy under duress". Every extra iota of straightening yields disproportionally more therapeutic effect.

Now that I've beaten this critical point to death, here are two easy tricks for quick relief before we get to the more deeply healing moves.

  Trick One: Hand Extension and Rotation
This provides instant but temporary and limited relief of arthritis pain in the bicep, elbow, and wrist.

Keeping (or intending to keep) your arms incredibly straight, and elbows locked (or intending them locked), extend your fingers like this:

Now push your palms forward 90° to make (or intend to make) a right angle with your forearms. If you hear cracks and pops (from you arms, not your shoulders), that's good! Now rotate your wrists slowly and sensitively in both directions, while keeping/intending your arms and elbows fiercely straight and stable. As you rotate, you'll find spots that are less comfortable (though nothing should seriously hurt). Hunt for these spots, and work them the most.

Important: all rotation should be from the wrists, not the arms. Elbows are locked to prevent arm rotation in the shoulder socket.

Now reverse the hand position. With fingers still extended, push the backs of your hands toward your arms, making/intending the opposite 90° bend. Rotate wrists, again maintaining/intending arms straight (and elbows locked) as your top priority. It's not the hand motion that helps you, it's the arm straightness.

Then flip between the two hand positions with wrists rotated this way or that. Experiment like a curious child, hunting for less comfortable (not painful) spots to work. Lock at the elbows, so you're not torquing anything near your shoulders.

This offers immediate relief which lasts for a surprisingly long while. You'd never imagine that such a simple action could have such profound effect. It will feel scary at first - it's the last thing you'd think to do with arthritis pain - but it shouldn't hurt (if you feel any sharp or alarming sensations, stop immediately).

Self-healing is always like this. It's hard to straighten your arms? The cure is to...straighten your arms! Self-healing is the move you don't want to do. You must fly into the eye of the storm - always with careful attention to your body's signals.

Trick Two: Shoulder Rolls

Shoulder Rolls, aka Circular Shoulder Shrugs, are an easy move we all learned in grade school - where it felt ridiculously pointless. Well, now you actually need it!

As you do shoulder rolls, you'll feel and hear tendons plucking against each other, like guitar strings. This is incredibly beneficial. It is more therapeutic for a tight muscle to have its associated tendons plucked than to work the actual muscle directly, and shoulder rolls pluck many tendons en masse with hardly any effort.

Do five or ten rolls forward and then an equal number backward, slowly and sensitively. Make this your warm up and warm down for any of the moves suggested below, and it's also something you can do throughout your day, especially if your shouders smart a bit. Stop if there's the slightest bit of real pain!

I'll keep saying two seemingly contradictory things: 1. all this stuff is uncomfortable - they're the actions you don't want to do with arthritis, but 2. stop at first sign of pain.

The issue is with the word "pain". Distinguish between destructive pain and the mild discomfort of stretching tight parts; swollen parts; unhappy parts. Don't overthink it! Pain is like pornography: you'll know it when you see it. Take heed when your body hollers HOLY CRAP DON'T DO THAT!, but ignore minor moans and complaints. These aren't particularly fun things to do with arthritis, but trepidation is a different thing than pain. The correct mindset is one of stoic gumption.

Ok, onward to the heavy stuff.

Step One

Maximally straighten your arms before you lift them over your head, and diligently maintain that as you gradually bring them up. You can ignore the Sanskrit names, but FWIW, this one's called, ridiculously, "Tadasana Urdhva Baddhanguliyasana."

It's best to consult with a yoga teacher to guide/check your alignment. I'm not providing instruction, essential safety info, warnings, etc. Plus, all these (stolen) photos suck and shouldn't be closely followed. They just offer a general idea. This isn't a yoga lesson, it's the key to fixing your painful condition.

  Step Two

This flips the arm-straightening the other way. The counter-stretch, if you will.

If you're older and inflexible and in arthritis pain, you'll obviously need to work up to this gradually with a good teacher (I recommend Iyengar system; start your search here). If you're younger and/or healthier, practice this so it is available when the need arises. It will also stave off the arthritis itself....if you don't stop practicing when it's sore (there's the rub)!

Drawback: any Iyengar yoga teacher will have their own firm advice for arm arthritis. Try their approach if you'd like, but also make sure they teach you these poses. They are working from theory and dogma, while I've developed this approach from personal experience.

FWIW, this one's called Baddha Hasta Uttanasana. Remember to breathe. I practiced it for 35 years before noticing I always hold my breath.

Step Three

This one (Parsva Urdhva Hastasana) doesn't do a ton, but it's a helpful add-on, and the easiest of all. Be particularly gentle here, though - easy moves tend to provoke carelessness.

Arms straight! If they're not either straight or intending diligently/sensitively toward straightness, you will not get benefit.

It helps to do this one in front of a mirror. Notice that you're forming your body - from the soles of your feet to the tips of your fingers - into the letter "C". If you stay cognizant of that broad arc (plus straight arms), your form will be correct.

If you've done all this stuff, congrats. Your arthritis is much better. Keep practicing twice daily to discover how good it can get. Perfection may not be possible, but if you practice diligently, you should recover a full range of motion, and even be able to sleep on the bad shoulder. Note that I have quite an advanced case (every doctor who's seen my MRI has winced in sympathetic pain).

Shoulders
The preceding healed the arthritis. Now comes structural help for your shoulders. Behold my favorite yoga pose, pincha mayurasana:

This pose might seem intimidating, but you can work up to it with a few years of yoga experience. Ideally, you'd balance freely (come up with toes against the wall, and then pull them an inch away) because the dynamic micro-corrections required for free balance provide much of the therapeutic benefit. But even with toes remaining against the wall, the position will still help your shoulders.

Practicing this twice weekly is sufficient, though more is fine. But be cautious and gentle while entering and exiting the pose, as crashing might worsen your shoulders. Proceed as if you were old and sick!

I realize this pose is a very tough sell for a rigid, elderly person with bad shoulders (though an Iyengar system teacher can coax almost any body into position using belts, chairs, and other props). But if you start working on it earlier, you'll "own" it when you need it. Just don't stop once you start. I suspect my shoulders began to calcify when I stopped after many years of daily practice.

On days when you practice pincha mayurasana, do the above arm movements afterwards....with shoulder rolls liberally added in-between.

Wrapping Up These are all well-known moves. But nothing someone with calcific periarthritis of the shoulder would imagine doing (just as meditating is not something you'd do while suffering with a hangover, though it's magical, per this link on self-healing repeated from above). That's why no one's tried it, and that's why the idea went unknown until I stumbled upon it.

Something to bear in mind: none of this will actually repair your shoulder damage. You'll be aware of that damage by the clicks and pops you hear whenever you move your arms. But it eliminates the inflammation which causes pain and limits motion, potentially avoiding surgery.

My shoulders still cycle between good and bad, but at worst they're mildly sore (certainly no seizures!) and at best they're a joy. I enjoy full range of motion. I’ve achieved what seemed impossible, and I hope this routine helps you find relief, too.