A few months ago, I did my back in. It presented like sciatica and I went to a chiropractor on several occasions, but aside from temporary relief, it did not help.
My doctor suggested I try Airrosti, which is a new-ish therapy from a company based in San Antonio, TX, although they have treatment centers all over Central Texas. It's based on muscle fascia manipulation; the idea being that if you can loosen the sheath (facia) that surrounds a muscle, it loosens everything else up as well. It's used for fixing soft tissue and muscle injuries; a lot of sports injuries would come under this.
I read around on the internet to find out what I could about Airrosti. Pretty much every blog I came to went on about how painful it was. Everything ranging from 'pretty damn uncomfortable' to 'really excrutiating'; or variants thereof. This wasn't a great advertisement, but being fed up with constant back pain, I decided to give it a go. And this is why I'm writing this post; to redress the balance a bit.
My practitioner couldn't have been nicer. He diagnosed that I may have had a spinal disc poking out a little and pressing on a nerve, which was the cause of the pain. He also said my hamstrings were super tight; probably due to the body trying to protect the nerve. And then he went to work...
It's a very deep tissue massage, basically. The actual technique is proprietary to the Airrosti company, and all their practitioners are licensed chiropractors. As far as I could feel, he follows along nerves and around the edges of the muscles. You can definitely feel the poking and prodding; it stings a bit when he's right on the nerve, but it's not nearly as painful as I was lead to believe. You're pretty bruised the next day, but a day or two after that, everything loosens up and suddenly you feel better. They give you very specific, targeted exercises and stretches to do as well, which also help.
They say it takes an average of three treatments to fix someone. I took six, but holy cow, do I feel better for it now. Got a soft tissue injury? Go to Airrosti.
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