Hola, hello from Peru!! Some people think I came here to see Machu Picchu but no, I came here to blog.

UCSF Physical Therapy offers an ingenious program where they engage their ergonomics staff in some very helpful side jobs. At Bakar Gym just past the weight area they have a fully decked out physical therapy room complete with funny looking exercise machines. Weird straps make the machines look like torture devices. Anyway, stop by from 5-7pm for a free consultation. After the consult I signed up for four one hour sessions at the ridiculously low price of $140 (total). Given my experience with wrist, knee and now cervical (uh … neck) pain, I was easily willing to pay five times that amount. Stefanie, the physical therpist, has 30 years experience in physical therapy.

This service from UCSF is more or less perfect for me: I need someone with some occupational experience that can tell me what I’m doing wrong and what exercises I can do to fix my problems. I’ve got a set of six neck stretches that are helping my undo 10+ years of bad posture.

• turn head to the left as far as you can, hold for 30 seconds. Repeat towards right. Repeat 3x, both sides.
• lean head left, ear towards shoulder. Repeat towards right. Repeat 3x, both sides.
• This is harder to explain, but a great stretch. Lean head forward, while forward lean head left 50%, now while holding all that rotate head left 50%. My PT describes this as “putting your beak beneath your wing like a bird” … repeat on RHS, repeat 3x.
• Anterior Scalene: lean ear towards shoulder, now rotate your head so you are looking at the ceiling. Repeat RHS, repeat 3x
• Posterior Scalene: lean ear towards shoulder, now rotate head so you are looking at the floor. Repeat RHS, repeat 3x.

So doing all of that is going to take about 15 minutes. But if looking over your shoulder has gotten annoyingly painful, it’s totally worth it.

I also received some useful suggestions for wrist stretches and strengthing muscles around my knee to keep the patella up off of the knee joint area. Yay for UCSF!!

Link to UCSF Physical Therapy

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