Tag Archives: smart phones

Smart Companions

smart monkeyNumb fingertips, cramp-y necks and para-spinals that feel like abandoned rock quarries. We massage therapists treat the injuries that computer technology can produce.

My smart phone just updated itself (can it reproduce?) revealing the phrase “Lifetime Companion” on the home screen. Really? This whole phone thing has gotten out of hand.

People are ruining their eyesight, developing dowager humps and filling up my schedule book from peering at tiny screens. Weren’t these things supposed to help us?

Device injuries have delightful names such as Pac Man Pinky, Smart Phone Presbyopia, and Blackberry Thumb. Let’s hear it for the names. But when are we going to get devices that do not turn us into garden gnomes?

I have been waiting…tap…tap…tap. Captain Kirk just had to ask the computer to do stuff, he dictated his log, and sometimes he would twist a little button on his communicator. The only repetitive motion he suffered was trying to do that funny split-finger salute when Spock introduced him to the fam.

The techies have been awaiting the Apple I Watch, a device that looks like we will all be hunching over something even smaller in the coming months.

We massage therapists can hear a “Ca-Ching!” in our futures. The devices are not getting better. They are getting us more work than we can handle. So much for getting to that seminar in Costa Rica this year….

Smart Phones and the Rectus Gang

Smart phones have created an endless employment opportunity for massage therapists – we can relieve the head and neck aches they foster and show clients how to reduce their sting.

At best the glare-y screens will make a users neck stiff and tight to flexion on the side holding the phone. So many people peer down at their screens for hours – often during their breaks from the big screen pc’s used for work – that the smart phone has its own “pathology” when it comes to massage therapy.

Addressing problems of smart phones requires a good touch on one of the neck’s most strident muscles – the rectus capitis and spinalis group.neckmuscles2

The rectus guys are holding the rappelling ropes of the cranium when people flex down to reduce smart phone glare. They work quite painlessly for hours until the ultimate protest – a tension headache spreading across the occiput and up over the ear and to the vortex of the skull.

A quick fix is to give a “thumbs-up” in the cranial vault. Fingers braced on the opposite side of the spine, thumb gently pressing upward at 45 degrees into the vault.

But the thumb can be an instrument of further strain if that is all we do. When prone, the upper regions of the capitis can be collected between thumb and forefingers and drawn lateral to open bunched fibers.

To use the natural relief of lymph flow, try massage cups from the vault to the thoracic vertebrae. This draws congestion from the occiput to a more forgiving landscape. I like to add the concentric circles of fingertips along the lateral sides of the rectus capitis.

There is a special place in heaven for therapists who take the time to try and convince people not to do the straight-down stare of cell phone addiction. I like to suggest people put the phone at least 15 inches in front of their face, with the phone centered just below the eyes.

We all await a redesign, of course, that will keep our heads from looking like flowers drooping in a vase. One wonders what is next. Projection cell phones? Just point it at a wall and read? Hmmm.