Episode #63: Uncovering Hidden Causes of Chronic Pain with Julie Donnelly

Imagine curing your own debilitating pain and then teaching others to do the same. That’s exactly what Julie Donnelly did. Join me for an eye-opening conversation with this muscle therapy expert and learn how you can tackle your aches and pains head-on!

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Show Notes

• Introduction of guest Julie Donnelly

• Julie's background and experience in treating repetitive strain, chronic pain, and sports injuries

• Julie’s journey into becoming a muscular therapist

• Discussion on the importance of muscles in causing various pains

• Julie's innovative approach and methods for treating pain

• Explanation of the Jewel Stroh Method of Osteopathic Muscular Therapy

• Insights on the effectiveness of foam rolling and alternatives

• Tips for alleviating headaches and muscle tension

• Julie’s development of the Gel Straw System for carpal tunnel syndrome

• Julie’s personal story of overcoming carpal tunnel syndrome

• Importance of understanding muscle function and self-treatment

Key Takeaways

1. Muscles can cause a variety of pains, including headaches, back pain, and plantar fasciitis.

2. The levator scapulae muscle, known as the shrug muscle, can cause severe headaches when tight.

3. Foam rolling can be effective for quadriceps but is limited for other muscle groups.

4. Julie's method involves targeted muscle release and understanding muscle function.

5. Julie overcame severe carpal tunnel syndrome by understanding and treating muscle tension.

Transcript:

 Welcome back to Better Than A Pill. Today, I'm so excited to have Julie Donnelly on as a guest. And Julie is an international expert and sought after therapist in the treatment of repetitive strain, chronic pain, and sports injuries. She's been treating clients suffering from mystery pains ever since 1989.

She has worked with world class and Olympic professional athletes. And she's the author of 12 self treatment books and several DVDs. She's also the developer of the gel straw system for carpal tunnel syndrome. And she's written multiple self treatment books. So I'm so excited to have you on Julie and welcome. 

Thank you.  And today we're going to be talking about muscles and how they cause many problems. And I love this topic. You guys know that I love this stuff, all kinds of problems, low back pain, plantar fasciitis, headaches, other aches and pains. So we're going to, we're going to get started. And Julia, I just want you to tell us a little bit about you, you are not a physical therapist.

You are not a, so you call yourself a muscular therapist. Right. Yeah.  My license is as a massage therapist because you have to have a license to be able to touch people,  but I did massage probably for the first year after I graduated from school, and I haven't done massage since, so I haven't done a massage in probably 35 years. 

Something like that. Amazing. I know.  So tell me, tell us a little bit about how you got into doing your work and, and a little bit about that.  I got into it.  I fell into it, literally fell into it because  I was living in Hawaii at the time and we used to go sailing every Friday night. It was called the Friday Night Sailboat Races.

And they were big boats and that real pretty sail in the spinnaker. Yes. And that's a really, it's a difficult position anytime, but during a race, it's a really hard position.  And so we had gotten into the yacht club and  had put the boat, they call it, putting it to bed and  fixing it all up and then you're getting off.

And when we got off, the spinnaker, our spinnaker guy.  literally collapsed in the ground and he was in agony.  And  so everybody was passing by and nobody knew what to do, so they were just passing by.  And  I knelt down and I said, what can I do to help you? And he said, Oh, just rub my back.  So I started to rub his back. 

And I knew nothing. I knew nothing  about the body. I knew the Popeye muscle because of Popeye. I didn't call them glutes at the time. And that was about the extent of my knowledge.  And, but I was rubbing his back. And I would go over a bump, and when I went over this bump, he would jump like he was in pain.

So I kept my fingers on it, simply because I didn't want to lose it, and I didn't know how I found it in the first place. So, I kept my fingers on it, trying to figure out what am I supposed to do with this, because I realized it was causing him pain.  And then it just disappeared.  And when that happened, he just went like a sigh of relief. 

So I thought, that's pretty cool. So then I started looking for more bumps and I'd find another one. He'd jump, I'd hold it. He'd sigh with relief.  And we kept doing that. And eventually he fell asleep,  which was wonderful. So I went into the art club and he came in and he goes, Oh, Julie, thank you so much. I says, what?

Thank you. I at least get a dinner out of this. 

So he did. He bought me dinner. And so every Friday we'd go sailing, we'd get off the boat, he'd lay down on the grass, I'd work on his back, and he'd buy me dinner. And I thought it was a really good deal.  Oh, that's cute. And I was trying to go through some major life changes at that point, and I needed a new way to be able to support myself,  and so I was trying to figure out what to do. 

And then one day, people had started watching me just to see what it was I was doing that was helping Adam. And I said to this woman, " Do you think people would pay for this? And she says, getting them out of pain? Yeah, they'll pay for it. I said, I said, what do you think it is? She says, I have no idea  because I clearly was not doing massage, you know, what we all think of as massage.

So I, she said to me, when you get back to New York, cause I was being stationed back in New York again, she says, when you get back to New York, go to a massage school and ask them.  So I thought that was the weirdest thing in the world, that there would be a school for massage.  But I figured I'd have to learn it somewhere.

So when I got back to New York, I looked it up in the Yellow Pages, God bless the Yellow Pages.  And sure enough, there was a school for massage. So I went in and I told them what I was doing  and I showed it to them. And they said, well, you're not doing massage, but you do need a massage license in order to be able to touch people.

So that's how I went to massage school. Wow. So you went to the school, you showed them your method. You basically got, went to school to get a license to do what you were already doing with this. Right. Okay.  That's amazing. What do you, so what do you call this method? I call it the Jewelstone Method of Osteopathic Muscular Therapy.

Okay. Wow. Yeah, I know it's a mouthful.  Where did you come up with that? Jules Stroh stands for Julie Stroke. Like  Carrie Stroke. And my name is Julie, so it's Jules Stroh. Makes sense. When I got out of school, my first job was on a cruise ship. And Carrie, it was like you died and went to heaven.  It was so much fun. 

But you also work really hard on a ship. It's not eight to four Monday through Friday. So you work a lot.  And three weeks into it, I thought if I have to rub oil on another naked body, I'm going to jump over the side. It was so funny. I thought to myself, Julie, you just went to school for a whole year and that's what you've been doing for a whole year.

How could you think that it was going to be different?  And what I realized was that the difference was first of all, the class was all my friends.  And secondly, it was a class.  So, what I decided to do was create a class.  I called it the muscle of the day, very creative,  and every day I would, before the passengers would start coming,  I would  look in the books, so let's say biceps, because it's an easy one to explain.

So I'd look in the books and I'd see, all right, origination, where does it originate? Where does it insert on the inside of your elbow?  And what is the action you touch your shoulder and innovation and a few other things.  And I would write it in my notebook, which was also creatively called Julie's notebook. 

I've never said that I was creative that way,  and so I would write biceps, origination, insertion, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Then the passengers would start coming in, and I did half hour sessions,  but I worked six hours. So I saw 12 people a day,  right? If today's muscle was the bicep,  that means I saw 24 biceps today. 

Now your bicep is totally different from somebody who's really skinny, really chunky,  super muscular. Everybody's  biceps, they're more or less like, they originate and insert in the same place, but they're different. And if you have, let's say you have pain in your right bicep, which you rarely feel it by the way in your bicep, you feel it at your shoulder or in your elbow. 

Usually you don't feel it where it's happening.  And,  but if you had, let's say, shoulder pain and it was being caused by your bicep, that right one is going to feel different than the left one.  So even in a person, they can be different.  And what I would do is I would give what I very disrespectfully call fluff and buff  the whole rest of the body. 

And like I said, that's disrespectful, but it is what it is. You're honest.  I'm honest. And don't get me wrong, I love to go for massages. Sure. Massage. But, anyhow, so, I would do a relaxing massage everywhere else, but when I would get to the bicep, I'd go much deeper, and I'd go slower, and I'd really feel what I was feeling, and if I,  there was something that didn't feel like the rest of the muscle, I'd say to you, does that hurt?

And you'd say yes or no. And then sometimes you'd say, that's funny, you're pushing it there and I'm feeling it up in my shoulder.  I'd run over to my desk, remember I only had a half hour, I ran over to my desk and I wrote, pushed here, felt there. And then I kept going.  At the end of the day, I wouldn't leave the massage room until I figured out why if I pushed there, did you feel it somewhere else? 

After I figured that out, then that was fine. And then the next day I would do the opposite muscles. So if I did biceps today, tomorrow I would do triceps  because I wanted to see what was going on here.  And I was on the ship for a year and I was working 12 people a day. It was, yeah, it was, I saw a lot of people and a lot of muscles.

But I got really, what happened, and it actually changed my life.  It totally gave me direction. Because what happened was, in the very beginning, when I first started this muscle of the day thing, I started at the top of the head. Well, you don't have all that many muscles. So I had done here the temporalis and I did the muscle in your jaw, it's called masseter,  and I was down to a muscle in the shoulder and the neck, it's called the beta scapulae, and it originates on the cervical, 1, 2, 3, 4, it inserts on your shoulder blade. 

The nickname for the muscle is the shrug muscle because when it contracts you pick your shoulders up, you shrug. So I'm working with this first woman there and I used to have people start face up  and I had my hand under her neck and with my right hand, my left hand was under her neck, my right hand was working on this elevator scapulae muscle.

And since this was the muscle of the day, I was going slow, I was paying attention. I found a knot, I pressed on it,  And at the exact same moment, Carrie, that I felt that muscle just relax, she yelled out. She went, Oh my God. And I went, what? I got scared. It was like, what happened? Cause I knew that thing had just been released.

And she opened her eyes and she looked at me. She said, I've had a horrible headache for three weeks. It just this second went away. Very professional, very mature. I looked down at her and I went, wow. 

That's great. It was so exciting.  All rest of the day. I never had anything that dramatic happen, but I did have people get up and say, wow, I can really move my neck now  that in my notebook.  Anyway, I did that for a year.  And.  And it  seriously made me realize I wanted to  specialize in this. Because during that year, I had other people who came in, a man came in with sciatica, they brought him in a wheelchair. 

And I remember looking at him and thinking to myself, I only just graduated school, you want me to do something?  Yeah.  It worked. It worked. Yeah. And it kept working.  So then what happened after I got off the ship, I was living in St. Thomas,  and I had a client who was a retired osteopath. He quickly found out I knew more about muscles than most massage therapists, but that I wanted to learn more, which was really key.

I wanted to learn more than most massage therapists that he had met.  And so what we would do is I would go into their house, they had their own table, I'd work on him, he'd get off the table,  his wife would get on, I'd give her the massage, and then he would come back in and teach me an osteopathic technique that was valid with my license. 

That's great. Yeah. So it wasn't something that I would have ever learned in school because it was osteopathic. But you were allowed to perform it. I was allowed to. He would teach me only things that were valid with my license. Great. And that became that whole circumstance, the ship  and him teach me osteopathic  techniques.

That became pretty much who I am today.  That is so awesome. I love your story and it is very resourceful. You're on a ship and you're making use of the best use of your time. You've created a class yourself. You're learning about the muscles, but you're getting data. You're gathering data and then seeing what works.

And then you happen to meet somebody that can even help expand upon your skills. That's awesome.  Yeah. It was wonderful. I had, so we had that happen and then his wife would make us lunch. So the three of us would eat and then she would go off and do whatever she was doing. And he was so happy because he was retired and he loved what he had done.

And he was so happy to be able to pass this knowledge on. to someone else, that we would sit the whole rest of the afternoon and he would teach me why muscles do what they do, how they do it, complications, everything. We would just sit and talk for hours and he would teach me for hours.  And really, when you think about it,  he taught me the techniques.

I got lunch. And I got paid, but it was just the most incredible opportunity. Yeah. We can learn in so many ways. We can learn in so many ways. And I've found that to be true too. And I love that. I love that story. And you can, we've talked and I'm into pain free movement. This is what I do. And one important pillar is fascia release.

It's an extremely important pillar and so I, I want to ask you, so I, I use a lot of different tools in the work that I do.  One of the tools that I use is a foam roller, but not that much. I would say there are about five things that I have found to be effective using the foam roller. So I want to pick your brain and how do you feel about foam rolling to alleviate muscle tension?

What I found is foam rolling can be successful on your quadriceps. But as far as I'm concerned, that's the only place.  Because if you think about the pelvis and the All the nooks and crannies that are in the pelvis and with the thigh bone inserted in, and you're aware of all these, your audience may not be, but everybody's seen a skeleton somewhere, even if it was on Halloween.

Right. You see a skeleton and the foam roll is going to go over the outside, but it's not going to get into all those nooks and crannies. It can be relaxing, maybe on the glutes. Definitely, it works on the quadriceps.  But  the thing that I found that works way better is just that I have a special ball. I call it the perfect ball  And because to me it's perfect.

It's soft on the outside. It's solid in the middle and I teach people how to use the ball to treat basically their whole body. Yeah,  what I do for the quadriceps  is I use just a piece of PVC pipe, 12 inches long, an inch in diameter, and that's it. But I show them, don't roll it, just  press and slide. You're coming down like this and you go over a bump, that bump is the knot.

So then I teach them how to work that knot out so that it eventually releases.  Yeah.  Awesome. And people say, I stretch, that should do it.  And, but if you think about it, Carrie, if you took a rope that was 12 inches long and you tied enough knots on it to make it 10 inches long, and then you stretched it back out to 12 inches,  you could do it.

You might get it back to 12 inches, but what did you do?  You made the knots tighter, and you overstretched the fibers that are not in the knot, and in the body, the two ends of that rope are attached to a bone,  right? But if you untie the knot first, and then stretch, you're golden.  So what you're saying, and what I believe to be true, is that stretching goes hand in hand with things like fascia release, there when, yeah, and that's, you can't just stretch, you can't just, they're both.

important. And that's what I teach and preach. And I don't use the foam roller for the quadriceps. I'll tell you, I do use something else. I use different balls. I studied under a woman named Yamada Zeki. I think balls and different textures for different muscles. I do the foam roller for realigning the spine.

I like it for several other things, but I get what you're saying in a nutshell. It's, you can't be targeted. You can't be targeted with your work. And that's what I found to be true. I think that the foam roller gets all this press when you really can't do that much with it. There's only certain things, but I'm curious to hear a little bit about, cause you talked about the headache.

So what, cause I know a lot of people out there that are listening right now are struggling with headaches, what muscles are causing them and what can we do right now to help that? Tell us Julie. So the muscle I was mentioning to you before. The nickname is called the shrug muscle. So the real name, in case anybody wants to look it up, it's called levator scapulae.

It's L E V A T O R S C A P U L A E.  And they can look it up. And when you look it up, you're going to see that it originates on cervical one, two, three, four, and then it comes down and inserts on the shoulder blade.  And that's why it lifts your shoulder up when it contracts.  The problem is, when the muscle gets tight  at your shoulder, and, and it's every time you're carrying heavy groceries, you're carrying the baby, you're carrying whatever those muscles are, you're under tension and we automatically just lift our shoulders up. 

And so the muscle shortens. Then you go to bring your shoulder down, except the muscle's too short. And so what it's doing is it's pulling your cervical vertebra to the side and down.  As it's bringing it to the side and down, it's stepping on the discs as it's being pulled down.  It's impinging the nerves that are coming out of the side of the vertebra. 

And if you think about it, your brain goes into your spinal cord. It goes through the middle of the vertebra.  But now that vertebra is being pulled to the side. Which means the opposite side of the bone is pressing into your spinal cord at the base of your brain.  And that's why it causes horrible headaches.

And that's why that woman was relieved. When I released the tension in that muscle,  the bone just slid in on its own. Because it has, if it comes out nice and straight, when you release the muscle, it'll go back in. If it comes out and then it twists,  when you release the muscle, it can't get in because it's twisted.

All right. And so then you need a chiropractor,  and I'm not a chiropractor, I don't do that. But the thing is, I do release the muscle. And then people go from me to the chiropractor and the chiropractor loves it because for them, it's like putting a knife through hot butter because the muscle is nice and relaxed.

And so the bones just slide in where they belong.  So in addition to that, that totally makes sense. And that's awesome that you can pinpoint that one area that's causing a lot of headaches. In addition to that, do you find that there are any areas on your skull or face that also can contribute to headaches?

And is there a simple way for people? Cause I know  in my own exploration, I've been able to help people with migraines or things like that. Just the skull is yeah.  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, if you put your fingers, like your three middle fingers right onto your temples,  and then clench your teeth.

You're going to feel the muscle pop out.  So just clench your teeth, release, clench, release. You'll feel the muscle coming in and out. Yes. That muscle comes down and goes into your jaw.  So when you're under tension and or people who say they clench their teeth.  Yes. This muscle is getting repetitively strained  and it can cause headaches.

There's wonderful charts that show exactly like this pinpoint sends the headache here, this pinpoint sends it there. But just know that between them, they cover pretty much your whole head, not the very top of your head, but up to,  I don't know,  the edge of the head, whatever. Think of how to describe this area. 

At the top of your skull, like the happiest. Yeah.  But all you have to do is put your fingers on both sides. Now you're only going to press in on one side at a time. So you're never going to press on the two.  So  find that clench your teeth so that you know, you're right on top of the muscle.  And now let's say with the right hand, so we're on the same page, you press in as hard as you can tolerate it and then just You're not sliding in your skin, you're just bringing the skin up and down as far as it'll go  before you slide,  okay?

And  you do that maybe five or six times, then stop. Keep your fingers where they are, but take the pressure off. Go on the left side, do the same thing, just go up and down  and  again, you're not sliding on the skin. You're just taking the skin with you. And you're putting pressure in while you're doing that and also closing your jaw. 

Relax your jaw. Oh, relax the jaw. Okay. The jaw. All right. And so now, and then you're going to go back and forth. So you have to do the right side again, you do the left side and go back and forth and back and forth. And then you can take your fingers and just feel around the whole temple area. And if you find a point where it hurts, well that's a spasm. 

Just put your finger on there and do the same thing. After you've done all that, you can hold onto it and just open your jaw as far as you can.  And now you're stretching the muscle.  But the other thing, Carrie, is,  I don't know, when I was a child, and I don't know maybe when you were a child, you had taffy and you made little taffy jump ropes,  right? 

We always played with our food when we were kids, right? So you're holding this taffy jump rope and it's nice and straight, and somebody comes and puts their fingers in the middle and pushes down. Now your taffy jump rope looks like a, a V.  So the only way to make it straight again is to move your hand.

And now it's straight. When you're pressing on the muscle, like I was pressing on Adam's back, or how we were just now pressing on the muscle in the temple, you are stretching it. Mm hmm.  So, gently, but you are stretching it. That's awesome.  Yeah. That's really awesome. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

And you know, just before we finish up, this has been great having you on. You've already shared a wealth of knowledge. Tell us about specifically your method, the Joel Stroh system for the carpal tunnel. I'm just curious. I'd love to hear about that a little bit. The way that it all came about was I ended up with carpal tunnel  and it took two years from the beginning of the first pain to finally being at a point where it closed my therapy practice down.

I could not use my left hand. Oh my goodness. I couldn't take my hand from the flat on the desk. I couldn't bring my thumb up to two o'clock and I couldn't have picked up a pair of eyeglasses. The pain was excruciating. It was terrible. It would wake me up in the middle of the night crying. Wow. It was so bad. 

And so I had to shut down my therapy practice and I was going on welfare because somebody had to pay the rent. I'm single and if I'm not working, nobody's paying the rent.  So  welfare was the only option. And what I ended up realizing at the time was welfare is made for people like us. because we're not making a career decision to go on welfare.

We just need somebody to give us a hand while we figure out what's the next step. What can we do next?  You're not, you're not abusing the system. This is not a, there's a difference. And it's there for a good purpose. It helps people.  So the night before, I was going on welfare. I was in the apartment and I was crying and I was saying, how could this happen?

I was helping people, blah, blah, blah, blah.  And I went to sleep crying.  I woke up in the morning with, you know how you wake up and you know you're awake, but  nobody knows you're awake. You know, you're awake. And my mouth was saying out loud, my mouth was saying, the problem is the muscles that cross over the median nerve. 

So I knew I said something important.  But I said it like a dream,  and so I repeated it, and then I sat up and I went, Oh, the problem is the muscles that cross over the median nerve.  Now here, I had been a therapist at this point for nine years. I knew my stuff.  I had this carpal tunnel situation going on for two years.

I had no idea where the median nerve started. I had to get up and go look in books, find out where the median nerve starts. It starts in the middle of your, at the very top of your shoulder.  And  so I looked in these research books that I have about trigger points. And I treated every muscle that crossed over the median nerve, and within an hour, I had no pain,  but my hand was numb.

It still was numb, but I could work with numbness. I can't work with pain. So then I got a little,  we'll call it woo, massage therapist, you're allowed to be woo.  Okay, we'll let you go ahead. And  so I'm holding this research book and I said, I know the answers in this book and I don't know where it is. And I'd really appreciate it if you'd show me where it is.

And Carrie, I opened it up to exactly the right page. I didn't have to turn not even one page. It was right. It's, if you had a long drop earring on,  a real long drop earring, exactly where it would land on your shoulder, just above your collarbone, that's where it is.  And it's called the brachial plexus,  and there's a muscle that goes over it, that's called the scalenes.

And the scalenes, they have to do with bringing your head down. But when they're tight, they're pressing on the brachial plexus, which is the beginning of  the bundle of nerves that ultimately, at the top of your shoulder, become the median, the ulnar, and the radial nerves that go to your hand.  And so when I pressed on it, it was like I had put my arm into a barbecue pit. 

It burned like I couldn't believe it.  But I knew that had to be it. I had found it and I just kept, I'd hold it. And then I would let the pressure off simply because it was so painful. I had to let the pressure off. I breathe a little bit and I go back. And what I noticed was every time I would let go and then go back,  it hurt less and less and less.

And then eventually, no matter how hard I pressed, it didn't hurt at all.  Amazing. So you cured yourself and were you able to practice again and didn't have to go on welfare? Yeah, I called them all my clients and I said, because I had told them all, I said, go find another therapist because I can't work anymore.

So I called them all up. I said, I'm back. I'm back. You don't have to find anyone. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. And then, but since then I've been teaching people and that's way too long a story to get to, but I've been teaching people ever since that was  1997. Yeah. and I have a whole system and people can buy it.

I ended up creating a tool because I only had it in one hand. If you have it in two hands, you need the tool. Awesome. Whoa. Thank you for sharing this first of all, and thank you for coming on here. We're going to be including the link to your website in this episode so that people know how to find out more about all of your work.

And also you'll have information about what you described there too. So that's awesome. Wow. Thank you again and your awesome story and yeah, amazing. You are meant to be doing this work a hundred percent. Yeah, I believe that God given that's what I'm seeing. And that's awesome. And everybody remembers we do new episodes every other week on Wednesday, and I look forward to having you join me then.