Order Book
flash3mc
flash4mc
flash2mc
flash1mc
212.877.5028
Welcome
About Ming
Testimonials
Ming Method
Order Book
Products
Media
Contact
This is a text box which has a scrollbar enabled.As you add text longer than the box size the scrollbar will appear.Double click here to edit and add your own text.
This is a text box which has a scrollbar enabled.As you add text longer than the box size the scrollbar will appear.Double click here to edit and add your own text.
PHYSICAL THERAPIST SOFT TISSUE SPECIALIST
MING CHEW, PT, P.C.
EXCERPT FROM THE PERMANENT PAIN CURECHAPTER ONEIn 2003, National Basketball Association (NBA) star Jason Kidd injured his left knee. For five months, the New Jersey Nets sent him to various specialists, who all failed to help. Kidd was facing knee surgery at the end of the season. Then his agent heard about me and the Ming Method. Willing to try even a weird alternative therapy if it could save him from the knife, Kidd came to my office, just before play-off time. After one treatment session, his knee was 70 percent improved. After a second session, his knee was fixed, and he was back on the court. Before this treatment, Kidd had been afraid his season was over. But, he said later, "With the procedures Ming used I was able to play and help my team in our play-off run that season. I had never experienced the things he did with me, and I know they were cutting-edge techniques. He really helped me." Kidd then sent me New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi, who told the New York Times, "My legs felt really dead, and when I came out of there, my legs felt good." And when I healed Men's Health writer Lou Schuler's shoulder problem dating back to a high school injury twenty-six years before, he claimed he'd been both witness to and beneficiary of a miracle. So am I a miracle worker? Not really. My work is based solidly in science. But I routinely heal injuries, aches and pains that most medical professionals believe can be fixed only by medication and surgery. I do this by treating a little-known tissue that's almost completely ignored in medical schools and physical therapy training: a type of connective tissue called the fascia, which envelops every muscle, nerve, and organ in the body. In fact, the biggest difference between what I do and traditional orthopedic medicine and physical therapy is that they don't address the fascia. As a result, countless injuries that could be completely cured through releasing contraction and tightness in the fascia are treated incompletely with pain medication, muscle relaxants, and surgery. Not just physicians and physical therapists, but many other professionals who work with the body know little about the fascia. Most traditional chiropractors, for example, don't address it at all, which in my opinion is a serious mistake. Adjusting a section of the spine without first loosening up the fascia is actually dangerous, because whenever there's an injury, the fascia adheres to itself and to other soft tissues, and administering a sudden twist can cause all these tissues to tear. More modern chiropractors do prepare the fascia before making adjustments, and in that case the treatment is likely to be safer and more effective. Most massage therapists understand the importance of the fascia. But in order to make the kind of changes in the body structure that can really heal an injury, the fascia must be actively stretched, and in massage therapy the patient doesn't move. Though massage can help stretch the fascia, on its own massage has only a limited effect. I see it rather as a perfect adjunct to the program this book offers. Alternative-therapy techniques, such as acupuncture and shiatsu, open up the energy flow in the body but do not address contraction and tightness of the fascia. I believe that these treatments would work better if the fascia were released beforehand. Since most personal trainers are unfamiliar with the fascia and thus unaware of the major role it plays in movement, their clients miss out on the tremendous benefits of fully functioning fascia for both performance and injury prevention. And while yoga and Pilates training stretch the fascia, most instructors do not make this a focus of the practice. In any case, the work in yoga and Pilates generally is not detailed enough to address specific parts of the fascia, so there are many body problems that these disciplines can't resolve. All of these treatment modalities have value. But none create permanent change, since the fascia can be effectively healed only by stretching, proper nutrition, and being supplied with adequate water (hydration). Very few people have the skill of releasing the fascia specifically. It is an art form, so little known that it's almost uncharted territory. But I was trained by the experts who created this art form. For twenty years, I have worked on all kinds of people and seen every soft-tissue injury known to humankind. I have successfully treated injuries whose causes ranged from weight lifting, jujitsu, and basketball to sitting long hours at a desk hunched over a computer all through manipulating the fascia. The work I did on Kidd and Giambi involved using my hands to release scar tissue in their fascia that prevented their muscles and nerves from functioning properly. But what I will give you in this book is a self-therapy method that enables you to release your own fascia. You will be doing the same program, minus the hands-on treatment. The Ming Method has seven components, all essential for maximal results: 1. Hydration: drinking enough water to fully hydrate the fascia2. Anti-inflammation diet3. Supplements to support fascial health4. Spinal decompression stretches to separate the vertebrae, releasing pressure on compressed nerves so they can stimulate muscles to function fully5. Fascial stretches to release individual contracted areas that cause pain6. Strengthening exercises to make fascial releases permanent7. Self-therapy techniques to do on yourself to facilitate stretching and strengtheningUsing the individualized programs I provide in Chapter 9, you determine which stretches and self-therapy techniques you need for your particular problem. Then you can do them all in only fifteen minutes a day. This self-help version of the Ming Method takes somewhat longer to produce results than if you were getting hands-on therapy, but it works for the great majority of injuries, even so-called serious problems such as a slipped disk and long-term problems that have resisted treatment for decades. David's Self-HealingIt was David who first made me realize the Ming Methods potential as self-therapy. At thirty-eight, he was a highly successful real estate developer, lean and athletic, an avid jujitsu practitioner and kickboxer. Yet he had suffered from severe lower-back pain for ten years. Every day he lived with pain at a level of 4 to 7 on a scale of 10. The pain prevented David from sleeping on his back. It increased with stress and when he intensified his workout. He was crazy to work out with that back, but being strong-minded, he persevered. He believed in that old chestnut no pain, no gain, plus his martial arts trainer told him to train through the pain. So he medicated it with ibuprofen and iced his back every night. Meanwhile, he consulted three different doctors who diagnosed a bulging disk in his lower back and told him his only options were a pain-relieving prescription drug then and spinal surgery later in life when the pain got worse. Then David heard about me from a colleague of his whom I had treated successfully. He showed up in my office despondent over the thought that back surgery lay in his future. In my eyes, he wasnt even close to that; he had at least ten options to try before even thinking about surgery. During his first session, I worked on him with my hands and then gave him a regimen to get his fascia in better shape. I instructed him to drink at least two quarts of filtered or bottled water a day. To decrease inflammation, he was to reduce his four to eight glasses of wine a week to two glasses and minimize his intake of sugars and foods containing trans-fatty acids (e.g., cookies, cakes, and fried food). Finally, I gave him a list of supplements to support joint health, reduce inflammation, and soften up scar tissue. You will be doing this same preparatory program, described in Part 2 of this book. By his third session with me, David's fascia was ready for the Ming Method stretches. I gave him three spinal decompression stretches and six fascial stretches, targeting specific areas, to do once every day. He could do light weight training at 50 percent of his previous level, but no kickboxing or jujitsu.At that point, business took David out of town, and he couldn't come in for two months. He just continued with the stretches. By the fifth week, he saw dramatic change; the pain that had been at level 4 was now at level 1. After eight weeks, he was pain free. Once his pain was reduced to level 1, David was ready to begin strengthening exercises. Now that his fascia and associated muscles were released, they had to be trained to increase their mass (the extra bulk would act as a shock absorber) and to make them strong enough to maintain correct posture. Over the phone, I gave him an exercise to strengthen his lower back as well as his gluteus (buttock) muscles and upper hamstrings (back-of-thigh muscles), the major stabilizers of the back. I told him to do 2 sets of 12 reps, three times a week.After two weeks, David noticed that his posture was more erect, and he could bound up stairs with ease and a new sense of well-being. Strengthening was the final component that locked in David's healing, because it enabled his muscles to hold the released fascia in place. From this point on, his pain was essentially gone. He sometimes experienced a ghostly feeling of his old pain, but it never reached even level 1. And he stayed pain free because he stuck to his program of water, anti-inflammatory diet, and supplementation along with stretching two or three times a week. For me, the aha moment came about six weeks into David's program. While still out of town, he went skiing. He fell down hard in the ski run, and his back went into spasm. He called me in a panic: You're not here to fix me, what do I do? I told him to take a bath with Epsom salts and just keep doing the stretches. He did, and the next day he was fine. Before the Ming Method, he'd have been flat on his back, his trip ruined.Some time later, I met Danny, a young trainer at my gym. Danny was an amateur boxer with a lot of fights under his belt, ready to turn pro. But he had chronic, incapacitating lower-back pain, severe enough that he couldnt train, even though he took large doses of prescription painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs. A doctor had diagnosed a narrowing between two vertebrae at the base of his spine, which caused the pain by compressing nerves there. The doctor said Danny would need back surgery in a couple of years, threatening his dream of being a great fighter. I taught him four stretches and told him to drink a gallon of water a day and take fish oil, an anti-inflammatory supplement. I never laid a hand on him, but within two days, his back was 40 percent better. Two weeks later, his pain level was down to 2. Six weeks later, he was completely pain free and remained that way after six months. His career was saved.David's and especially Danny's experiences showed me that the stretches could work on their own, without hands-on treatment, as long as the person kept up the hydration, diet, and supplementation along with them. It made sense, since the stretches create the same type of release that I perform manually. And you don't need a gym or equipment they're with you wherever you go. So I decided to offer them to everyone. Where did these magical stretches come from? They originally were created by Guy Voyer, a brilliant French osteopath, specifically to release the fascia. In my eyes, Dr. Voyer is the worlds foremost expert on fascia. Some of the stretches in this book are his (offered to you with his kind permission), while the rest are my own invention, based on myofascial principles.Origins of the Ming Method. The Ming Method has its roots in my own experiences. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, the only Chinese-American boy in my neighborhood, and I was constantly getting picked on by other kids. Then in 1977, when I was fourteen, I saw a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the book Pumping Iron, by Charles Gaines and George Butler, and it changed my life. I said to myself, Wow, if I looked like that, I'd never get picked on again!Bruce Lee was also popular back then. He was Chinese-American too, and he fought people with his fists. So I thought, what better way to protect myself than to build up my muscles so people would fear me and I wouldn't have to fight them? I started to train. By the time I was sixteen, I had gained 40 pounds of muscle, and all the tormenting stopped. Suddenly I had new friends, the same guys who used to attack me, full of questions about training. And I never had to fight anyone.I became a bodybuilder and won many titles, including Mr. Teenage New York, Mr. New York, and Mr. Empire State. I was ranked nationally and featured on magazine covers. In 1984, I graduated from Columbia University with a chemistry degree. Initially I planned to go to medical school, but I realized that my passion was to work with my hands on people's bodies. Bodybuilding had given me a good understanding of how the human body worked. I was intrigued by the body and wanted to make it stronger and better. So I went to New York University Physical Therapy School and in 1987 began working as a conventional physical therapist. But all the time I knew in my core that something was missing.In 1991, I retired from bodybuilding. My next idol was Renzo Gracie, a Brazilian jujitsu black belt and no-holds-barred fighter, and I started training under him in 1996. While trying to escape an arm bar (a submission hold) during a competition, I twisted my left shoulder and injured the rotator cuff so badly I thought it was irreparably damaged. I had standard physical therapy for it, but the results were terrible. My arm was so weak I could barely move it. I had pain in the front of my shoulder, I couldnt sleep on my side or lift weights without pain, and I was pretty depressed. I tried ultrasound, electric stimulation, ice packs, and ibuprofen, exactly what doctors recommended and what I advised my patients to do. But nothing worked. At the time, I didnt know any better. Eight months after the injury, I visited a friend in Toronto. He introduced me to a chiropractor who said, I can help your shoulder in a few sessions. Naturally, I laughed. I believed my doctor, who had said I needed surgery. But I let the chiropractor give me two twenty-minute treatments. In two days, the shoulder was significantly betteran improvement I hadn't been able to produce myself in all those months.What the chiropractor did was treat my fascia. It was a real epiphany: I saw that the worst thing that ever happened to me was actually the best thing that ever happened, because it opened my eyes to the benefits of myofascial therapy.For the next ten years, I studied forms of myofascial therapy, and I still study it. I dropped ultrasound, electrical stimulation, ice, hot packs, and Thera-Band exercises in favor of myofascial release techniques targeting specific areas of the body. When I was doing just physical therapy and patients got better, I was never sure whether they improved because my work cured them or simply because time, rest, and nature did their own healing. But once I began practicing myofascial release, the changes were so dramatic, taking only one to four weeks and sometimes less than a single session, that I knew it was my work that was so effective.Over the years I have modified what I do to the point where it barely resembles what I was originally taught, but my work still follows the basic principle of releasing fascia. I'm confident that it can fix almost all types of injury.
Order the Book
Amazon.com
Barnes and Noble
Copyright 2009 All Rights Reserved Ming Chew, PT, P.C.
Welcome
About Ming
Testimonials
Testimonials2
Ming Method
Products
Newsletter
Contact
The Imperative
Keeping Your Fascia Young
Sports Fascial Injuries
Ease Low Back Pain
10 Things About Your Fascia
Injuries
Repair
Appts
Causes
Policies
