Julian Levene: Three Year Agony of Shoulder Pain

"The thing that separates Shmuel and his staff from chiropractors and physical therapists is the way they treat your body and your problems as an individual case."

Twenty-seven year old Julian Levene is professional dancer. He is energetic and vivacious and has the stamina to study ballet 15 hours a week on top of working over 40 hours a week in a hair salon. But when Julian came to Body Tuning he was at the end of his rope, having suffered from chronic pain and immobility in right shoulder for three years.

He had injured his shoulder by pushing himself up off a couch too quickly. It hurt, but he thought the pain would go away. Over the next few weeks he noticed that basic movements like crossing his arms or turning his head were becoming more difficult. His shoulder began to tighten and constrict when he was dancing, his fingers began to get numb, and gradually he noticed he was loosing sensation in his forearm.

Julian sought professional help for all these symptoms. Over three years he went to four chiropractors, a neurologist, and orthopedic surgeon, and two physical therapists. None of them, he says, could help him with the pain. Many didn’t even believe the source of the problem was his shoulder. He was told bu some doctors that the disorder was in his spine, one even suggested the pain was a result of a bunion on his foot.

His dancing suffered. The way he moved was changing as his musculature worked to compensate for the lack of mobility in his shoulder and arm. Finally, his ballet teacher Gabriella Taub Darvash at the Broadway Dance Center said it was time to try another approach. She suggested he go to Shmuel Tatz for Body Tuning at Medical Arts at Carnegie Hall.

Julian says Shmuel immediately focused on his shoulder maneuvering the joint in every direction, examining the whole are to see what kind of damage had occurred. The mental relief in this alone was significant. Finally, someone believed him when he said the problem was in his shoulder. Physical relief took longer, but after three or four months the pain began to go away. Julian had a lot of work to do. His whole muscle system had adjusted itself to compensate for the pain and lack of mobility in his shoulder and he had to go back and work on realigning his body and re-training it to move the way it had prior to the injury.

He believes the most important thing that separates Body Tuning from chiropractors and Physical therapists, is the way Shmuel Tatz and his staff treat his body and his problem as an individual case. For therapeutic exercises, Julian says he had become used to being handed diagrams photocopied out of a book. At Medical Arts, a member of the staff would design an exercise specifically for him. They would examine his shoulder, then feel and manipulate their own joints to develop an exercise which was right for his particular stage of recovery.

He says the staff always listens carefully to the problems he describes. Often they ask very specific questions and use his answers as a guide to the bodywork they do in the session. “Most of the physical therapists I saw,” Julian says, ”would just pick up where they left off from our last session.”

Julian works with three members of the Body Tuning team, each fo which he describes as using a very different technique or approach to his treatment. Shmuel Tatz, he says, does most of the fine tuning, working on pressure points and spinal alignment. He describes a tremendous sense of trust and communication when he works with Shmuel. Mariyus Talochka, on the other hand, uses his physical strength and does a lot of joint manipulation and resistance exercises. As a dancer, Julian says he needs this king of stretching, pulling and limbering. He also works with Roberst Godberg for therapeutic massage.

Julian says he knows he will always feel tension in his injured shoulder. But, he says Body Tuning has taught him ways to alleviate the strain. He says he is more constantly aware of his posture and what he can do to minimize further problems and get on with his busy life.