Better Bodies Through Shared Expertise.

Integrative Works is a resource
to help you get relief from pain
and improve your quality of life.

For individuals in pain, it helps them understand what they do to create or aggravate the condition. Additionally, there are safe, effective strategies for short-term and long-term relief. Additionally, posts discuss how to stay out of pain and create a body that is self-correcting. For massage and bodywork practitioners, it has useful insights into integrative treatment, anatomy for the bodyworker, and examples of traditional protocols.

Resources for People in Pain

Look up your pain pattern.

Most people suffer from some form of muscle aches and pain. Yet, most pain is part of a known pattern and seldom unique or mysterious. This blog helps you to identify patterns created by myofascial trigger points. For over fifty years, solid research continues to show the consistency of pain patterns and impaired activities that each trigger point creates. The site has simpler, easier to read versions of those clinical research texts.

Follow the links in these posts to strategies for quick relief, how to get lasting relief, and more…

Clinically Proven Strategies That You Can Use at Home

This section has guidelines for standard self-care activities like using an ice pack and how to stretch. Also, it contains common stretches and exercises. I have studied, written about, and practiced these self-care activities for more than 30 years. For this reason, these are the techniques that I use in my practice for safe, reliable results.

If you’re looking for specific suggestions that are related to a particular problem, look up the pain pattern. In each post, you will find a link to self-care that is specific to that pattern. In addition, you will often see links to the greater condition or syndrome and it’s self-care activities.

Collections of Posts Related to a Condition

This section discusses conditions and syndromes like; TMJ Syndrome, Frozen Shoulder, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, and more. Generally speaking, these collections have a brief description of the condition and a gallery of posts that are related to that condition. A link to self-care is found in each post that describes a pain pattern. When appropriate, these collections have a separate self-care section for the entire condition.

Resources for Massage and Bodywork

Treatment Notes, Protocols, and more…

Therapy Resources include treatment notes, anatomy, therapy concepts, a framework for therapy and more.

• Therapy Concepts: These posts include concepts and allegories about physiology, methodology, and a framework for therapy.
• Treatment Resources by pain pattern: Each pain pattern has links to Functional Anatomy and Therapy Notes. In turn, therapy notes offer ideas on treatment sequencing with links to the associated protocols. You can find pain patterns by region of the body here.
• Treatment Resources by Muscle: Each anatomy post for a muscle has a list of all of the associated posts for that muscle. You can look up muscles by region of the body here.

Functional Anatomy

This section lists anatomy, mostly musculoskeletal, for the bodyworker, by region. The illustrations focus on the attached bones and local joints. In addition, at the end of each post about a muscle, has a gallery of related posts. This gallery includes associated pain patterns, therapy notes, treatment protocols, etc.

Legends, Discoveries, and Clinical Experiences.

These posts explore a few different kinds of people and events. They explore a few of the people who had the vision and persistence that shaped the fields of bodywork. Also, they explore events that have happened in the therapy room, These events have reshaped the direction of my work. In addition, there are stories outside of the therapy room with colleagues and friends.

Weekly Featured Post

This post shows you how to press out the trigger points and stretch the infraspinatus muscle. It’s a small muscle on the back of the shoulder but creates a number of problems, including:

• shoulder pain when sleeping
• loss of grip strength
• upper neck pain
• pain along the inside edge of the shoulder blade

Tony Preston has a practice in Atlanta, Georgia where he sees clients. He has written and taught about anatomy, trigger points, and cranial therapies since the mid-90s.

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*This site is undergoing major changes. We are reformatting and expanding the posts to make it easier to read. The result will also be more accessible and
will include more patterns with better self-care. In the meanwhile, there may be inconsistency in formatting, content presentation, and readability. Until we get older posts updated, please excuse our mess.