Vicki Tate’s 5 Day Freedom from Pain Workshop – A Review

As a mature aged female, participating in this workshop has to be THE BEST decision of my life!

A little bit about my health dramas to date

I won’t go into every health issue I have, because that can fill a book. So, I’ll just mention what I’ve been dealing with since turning 50 almost a decade ago (I’ve just recently turned 58, so this still covers a decent amount of time).

I have IBS which is something I’ve had since almost birth (this one especially could feel that abovementioned book, so I’m just lightly touching on this one as it doesn’t take the main stage for this particular review, but it’s still in the sidelines.

The next body drama to introduce itself was my right arm. After jarring my arm twice, once trying to protect my two small shih tzu crosses from an overly boisterous mostly grown husky puppy that I didn’t know was friendly at the time, and the second time catching myself from falling due to having BPPV (Benign Positional Paroxysmal Vertigo) which basically means my balance is shot to hell, it left my right shoulder feeling permanently out of alignment. Not dislocated, because I still have relative full range of movement, just not quite right either. But X-Rays, MRIs, Cat Scans and Ultrasounds showed no actual injury per se.

Over time, the fall out effect for this meant that tendonitis developed in my right arm to a stage so extreme that I was beginning to question whether my shoulder joint was still connected to my body the way doctors claim. This became so severe that my arm was waking me up nights and I hardly got any sleep, and trying to make a coffee was a nightmare from attempting to pick up a kettle with boiling water to just taking my cup of coffee to my desk.

Don’t even get me started on the times when all I wanted was to simply feed my dogs, or carry my senior blind dog to the backyard from her corner of the house, terrified that I would drop her in the process.

Over time, my left side decided to show empathy with my right side. By now, my right shoulder was diagnosed with bursitis as well, so of course, both my left shoulder and arm also developed both tendonitis and bursitis with me having no clue what I did to them.

This was bad enough, but by the end of my 57th year, my back had gone out on me for the umpteenth time causing me paralysing pain. This was eventually diagnosed as arthritis of the lower lumbar region; from memory, L4-S1. There was a revelation of a slight scoliosis in my spine also.

I don’t know if it’s because of my spine or body weight or me favouring one side over the other when I walk, especially when I’m attempting to walk in excruciating pain, but I also developed bursitis in my left hip. Shortly after, my right hip began to mimic my left.

I later asked my doctor, “am I imagining things or is it possible for one side of the body to mimic the other when it comes to bursitis/tendonitis. She confirmed it’s very possible.

Now in my youth, I found it cute that I had a brain that liked to equal things out. I’m naturally left-handed when writing, so of course my right hand was able to learn as well. I can use a scissors, chopsticks, and anything else, yes, even cutlery with both hands with ease.

When I had multiple fractures in one leg when I was aged around 10, my other leg glued itself to the broken one, acting as a splint. They literally had to put me to sleep to get my legs to separate as well as putting the broken leg in traction.

When my right knee dislocated, it took me all my power over the next few decades to stop my left knee doing the same.

When I was diagnosed with lymphoedema in one leg, (this condition now gets an honourable mention as it also benefitted from this 5 day challenge), the other leg mimicked it so all my OT and I can presume is that one of my legs is lipedema and the other being the officially diagnosed lymphoedema, but they look so much alike, I can’t remember anymore which is which. The image of the legs is not my own leg, but it comes pretty close to what my own legs look like and you can see how, due to the size of the legs, it can force the feet out from under them hence why my feet mostly walk on their insides.

An honourable mention also goes to my ankles. Because of my legs being not the normal shape, they’re meant to be, it causes me to walk like I have a very mild case of spina bifida where my legs go outward for a bit, so my feet turn inward which means after a period of walking, I’m in a world of pain with what feels like sprained ankles.

With all that’s happening, I no longer see what my brain is doing as cute anymore. It’s no fun when one side of my body betrays me and the other side wants to copy in sympathy.

I will also give one final nod to the fact that I’m suspected to have fibromyalgia which means that when inflammations cause my body to flare up, basically everything hurts (and if you have had experience with fibromyalgia, you’ll know that’s not the only issue with it, just one of countless many).

Now onto the reason why this post exists…..

My experience in the 5 day challenge

Day One

We learn that this healing method (because it’s more of a healing method than a treatment method as we’re working WITH the body, not against it), is called Ortho bionomy which is a branch of Osteopathy.

Vicki shares her own challenges with her own body, and her own experiences with Ortho bionomy which is why she decided to study it and become an advanced practitioner in Ortho bionomy.

Vicki then explains as to how chronic pain comes about, the things that lead up to chronic pain and what can aggravate it. For example, we all know that old injuries from any time in our past will come back to haunt us, maybe 1 year or multiple years down the track, and something she also mentioned, I can relate to as I’ve recently learned about is certain foods that we eat can cause inflammation in our body causing those past injuries to flare up (but I’ll go further into this in another post when I go into great detail about what foods I’ve learned that I’m sensitive to). These are just a couple of factors mentioned, but Vicki mentions other reasons why we develop chronic pain.

She then touches base on what happens to us when chronic pain occurs. What goes on in the health care system, how the cycle begins and how that cycle doesn’t exactly help, and in fact sometimes hindering, the chronic pain issues that we have.

Vicki then goes into how ortho bionomy works by helping us get our body into alignment, thereby allowing our body to heal itself, and we can do this through very gentle movements. I, personally, wouldn’t even call them exercises as they’re not the exercises that one would see in a gym, however if you see it as exercises as in homework, things we can do whilst talking to people, at church, on a zoom meeting, and no one would even notice that you’re doing anything at all, then yes, you can sort of still call it as exercise.

As one dear friend said who has done Vicki’s 12 week challenge, she could be doing a subtle shoulder movement and people think she’s just fixing her hair, that’s how quick the movement is.

But the best way to describe it is gentle movement that works WITH the body, avoiding ALL pain and discomfort entirely (yes, this is surprisingly possible) and yet, it still provides amazing, even if subtle, results. But it’s the results that you realise, over time, “Oh wow, that doesn’t hurt anymore when I do this or that,” kind of realisation which, if you suffer with chronic pain, you’ll know that any small relief is a major blessing.

She then went into some simple, very gentle, neck movements, that help ease tension in the neck that occurs when you’re trying to move your head in various directions whether it be from side to side, ear to shoulder, forward or back.

She then shows some gentle shoulder movements which help minimize pain in certain shoulder/arm movements.

After these simple movements, I realised my neck didn’t tense as much when moving my head side to side. I had more freedom of movement when moving my head forward and back, and also when moving my head ear to shoulder on both sides.

Day Two

Day 2 touched base to see what we all learned from day 1, and bringing to light again how one of the things that can negatively affect our chronic pain is our emotions. I’m reminded of this when every time I have a panic attack, everything that can hurt, will hurt thereby enhancing my panic and making me feel like I’m dying each time which, as you can imagine, can be very scary. And all it is, is that my emotions are aggravating all the issues in my body, which then echoes back the issue, thereby creating a negative form of catch 22.

We are reminded again that when doing physio, we really shouldn’t be pushing past the pain because that more so aggravates the issue and hinders it more than helps it.

She then focused on the nervous system and showed what gentle movements we can do to help with the nervous system.

Vicki had previously explained to us that the nervous system is linked to every single part of our body. It controls everything in our body from our tears, saliva, digestive system, basically every single thing in our body. She then went on to explain about the vagus nerve and it’s duties.

She then showed us a simple breathing exercise, basically box breathing, but with a distinct and beneficial difference.

We were tasked to do this for a few minutes. As soon as I started this breathing exercise, I noticed immediate changes in my body.

I had been dealing with a pain in the area of my stomach, just below my breastbone, but above my stomach (refer torso pic with red mark below). The pain there has been intensifying. I had been blaming Ozempic (as I take this weekly), or food, stress or even my heart. But no matter what I did to try and solve it, from minimizing trigger foods to skipping meds, to meditation, nothing stopped this pain. It was getting to the point that I was considering seeing the doctor about it, worrying that it might be the start of stomach or bowel cancer, or a heart issue or a tumour… I just had no clue what it was and yes, I was beginning to catastrophize it.

But after a couple minutes, I realised the pain that had been tormenting me for weeks was suddenly gone. You can see in the image where I’m smiling, the moment I realise that pain is no longer tormenting me.

Since doing this simple breathing exercise, that pain, for the most part, hasn’t returned, and when it tried, all I had to do to control it was performing the simple breathing exercise again and the pain would dissipate.

She also showed a simple hug-like movement to help release some tension in the ribs. It works beautifully, but I wouldn’t recommend doing this on your own without Vicki showing you how to do it first as you can easily overdo it, and she will show you the right way to do it so that it helps your body.

Day Three

On day 3, Vicki focused on some remedial work for the shoulders, but first recapping on previous days where we were shown ways to soothe the nervous system (i.e, breathing exercises, gentle hugs).

This day was more focusing on how to get our body in alignment as Vicki stressed that before people can do strength exercises, they first need to get their body into alignment, because trying to do strength exercises when the body is out of alignment can only cause more problems and anger those areas that are already in chronic pain.

She also stresses for us to be mindful in our bodies so that we can know what, in our body, needs help and what’s not really ok. She also lightly touched on how high insulin can also cause problems in regard to the body adding calcium to areas where calcium shouldn’t be added to. From personal experience, I know that high insulin can also greatly magnify inflammation.

She showed us how to comfortably sit in a chair to ease pressure on our back and shoulders. Then Vicki went into some gentle shoulder movements with the shoulder blade. Again, I stress, these weren’t even exercises. These are only subtle movements, so subtle, that if someone was watching you, they probably wouldn’t even notice you doing them. She also showed us how to place our pillow so that we can make our arm more comfortable if the pain is a combination of shoulder and arm.

It was around this time that I realised, since starting this 5-day challenge, the “dead hands” that I’ve been experiencing have not been happening. What I call “dead hands” is when my hands get so number that I can no longer feel them, they feel like someone else’s hands, not my own. My hands have a habit of going to sleep, it doesn’t matter what I’m doing, playing on my mobile, crocheting, knitting, typing, sleeping, my hands will just randomly numb out, and I have to do something to get the blood rushing back into them and make my hands useful again.

Adding to this, since correctly placing the pillow when sleeping, I haven’t had any more issues with “dead hands” which is quite pleasant.

By doing the gentle shoulder movements, I also noticed that my shoulder no longer clicked when I moved it in certain positions, and again, this was fixed just by very subtle, gentle shoulder movements. The movements, themselves, were almost meditative in their process, that’s how relaxing and calming these movements were. There was nothing strenuous or painful in any of the movements Vicki showed us, and that went for every one of the sessions.

Day Four

Once again, the meeting started with a recap of the past 3 days, and also sharing our experiences on how our bodies have reacted after what we’ve learned, and in my case, it was all positive results. And listening to the other members, there were positive results with everyone.

We were lucky to hear a testimony from another individual who has participated in Vicki’s 12-week program, and how through the program and Vicki’s coaching, her life is greatly improved through the gentle movements, appropriate exercises and the right food choices.

We were then shown a few more subtle moves to release the tension in our shoulder blades and neck.

Vicki then recapped how the healing process works, and that we need to avoid the landmines, those positions that cause us pain because trying to move into those painful positions only serve to aggravate the pain. We need to find the comfortable positions in our body and by doing subtle movements with those, then, and only then, our body will be able to heal itself.

Day Five

Day 5 became an unexpected 1 on 1 zoom meeting when I was the only one to show up for it. But in the defense of others, with it being Good Friday, it’s clear many had other activities, either religious based or family based which drew their attention away from the zoom meeting.

I almost didn’t show myself as I was thinking about going to Good Friday service, but then I decided that God would forgive me. I had already planned to worship on Saturday with the Seventh Day Baptist community, and God knew how much I needed this help with my body.

So, Vicki and I had a wonderful session where we were able to recap some of the gentle movements that would best work for me personally and things I can also do to alleviate the tendonitis pain in my arm.

We discussed dietary and exercise issues that can help me with my lymphoedema and ankles on top of everything else, and I have to admit, this spontaneous one on one session that I got to experience with Vicki was literally the icing on the proverbial virtual cake that was the 5 Day Freedom from Pain Workshop.

In summary

I highly recommend this to anyone who experiences anything in their body from neck and back issues to tendonitis or bursitis in their shoulders and/or arms.

As Vicki has stated a few times, this 5-day workshop is NOT a cure all, but it gives you just a tiny taste of how she can help in the 12-week workshop where she CAN guarantee results.

She admits there’s no guarantee with the 5-day workshop as she only shows a few of the generic exercises that can possibly help everyone in subtle ways. Vicki clarifies that everyone is different so many will need special movements for their own personal issues, and on the 5th day, I got to experience what it’s like getting some personalised movements that help me even if they might not help anyone else.

I disagree with Vicki that there may not be positive results. I witnessed it in other participants where even the simplest movements helped them immensely, and in my own body, the pain and discomfort that I’ve been dealing with for weeks on end was basically halved (at least) to a more tolerable level so they’re no longer at the point of driving me to distraction.

The 5-day Freedom from Pain workshop is an introduction to what Vicki can do for you in the 12 Week Program, where you see in the images below what Vicki has to offer.

I can’t stress any more than what I have, visit Vicki’s FB group: Freedom from Pain

Follow and subscribe to Vicki Tate on YouTube or Facebook

If you’re tired of being in constant pain which doctors can’t give you an answer for, then it’s time for you to take that first step.

What are you waiting for?

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