BPL21: Ortho-Bionomy with Vienna Dunham Schmidt

SHOW NOTES
Ortho-Bionomy with Vienna Dunham Schmidt.
As a teenager, Vienna was diagnosed with mild scoliosis.
Back pain became more of a problem as she transitioned into adulthood.
Late nights studying to meet college deadlines made matters worse.
Later in life, pregnancy and looking after young children also exacerbated her back pain.
Impressed by her own recovery from back pain following Ortho-Bionomy therapy, Vienna decided to train in the discipline and go into practice herself.
“In just about every case that I see. It’s now completely pain free to the touch. It’s very striking. Clients look at me with wide eyes and go ‘What just happened?’”
Excerpts from the show
Vienna explains how tight muscles are often central to chronic pain conditions.
Restricted blood flow leads to “wrung-out” muscles.
They don’t get enough oxygen and waste products hang around, instead of being safely borne away.
In time, a vicious circle of pain and tension can develop.
We talk about different ways to improve the circulation to tense muscles.
Today’s Guest
Experienced massage therapist, and author of Stop the Pain: Your Hands-On Manual for Neck and Back Relief, Vienna Dunham Schmidt
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Tight Muscles and Chronic Pain
- One thing we need to know about these tight muscles is they are wrung-out muscles with very little blood flow
- Without blood, the muscles functionality drops dramatically and some pain can set in. So now where’s the oxygen and the nutrients and the toxin relief, you know, that comes with adequate blood flow?
TRADITIONAL METHODS TO INCREASE BLOOD FLOW
- So we seriously need to get some blood flow in here. So one of our common tactics for getting blood flow in his heat … that only goes down two to three centimetres
- One of the other strategies we often turn to is stretch – I’ve seen it turn bad … that muscle is threatened

Hi, I’m Iain Barker creator of Back Pain Liberation.
I got back pain young and it got worse over time. Like many others in this situation, I saw plenty of doctors and therapists – all to no avail.
In the end self-help worked best – it often does for bad backs. Now I train regularly, focus on what works, and don’t get back pain.
My goal is to share what I learned. To help you find a more effective way when treatment doesn’t hit the spot.
Ortho-Bionomy Therapy
In Ortho-Bionomy therapy a different approach addresses the root cause of the pain.
Instead of trying to increase blood flow by applying heat or stretching, a muscle release technique is applied.
- (after a stressful event) Most of the muscles in the body get the message that the emergency’s over…but you may have one…that got stuck and then we have to deliver that message by hand
- That’s the purpose of the muscle release techniques
In other words, Ortho-Bionomy works by simply putting the muscle at rest.
As the tension goes, so the muscle fills with blood. Normal function returns and the pain recedes.
- (we need) something … that will finish the job and get the muscles completely engorged and ready to go back home. So what seems to me to work the best is to put a muscle at rest
Vienna experienced at first hand how effective this method can be.
An Ortho-Bionomy practitioner was able to, very quickly, release a tense muscle.
The pain that had been troubling her stopped there and then.
- That was so convincing to me. And at that moment, I said, ‘If I ever get to have formal training, it’s going to be in Ortho-Bionomy’
- I decided to take a class in it; it was everything I’d hoped for and more
ORTHO-BIONOMY SELF-CARE
Vienna’s book, Stop the Pain – Your Hands-On Manual for Neck and Back Relief, guides readers through the process of Ortho-Bionomy self-care.
- It applies over the whole body
- It’s actually a counter-stretch. So find a stretch and go, whoo, that’s tight, and then do the exact opposite. And then you’re putting the muscle slack, it’s filling with blood, in 20 to 45 seconds, it will be full

If you prefer video, she shows you how to do it on her website
Stress, Mindfulness and Breathing
- What I have found helpful, though, for that tension, whether it’s reading a book writing a book, you know, deadlines, is some mindful breathing. And I’ve really appreciated an app called Headspace
- Just stop and breathe and be in the present moment. Because stress is often related to past regrets or future fears. If I can breathe and be right here, right now I stand a lot better chance of coping with what’s going on
- People who are in chronic pain … just for sanity sake, they have to block some of the messages
- We may also be blocking the messages that would be helpful
Thanks for Listening!
How did you stop the pain? To share your experience of ortho-bionomy, or any approach that worked for you, leave a comment below.
To help out the show, click a link to iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn:
- Subscribe.
- Leave an honest review.
Thanks to Vienna Dunham Schmidt for joining me this time and explaining ortho-bionomy.
Best,
Iain
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BPL21: Full Transcript
Hi, Vienna, how are you?
Doing well, how about yourself?
I’m great. Thank you. Yeah. So you worked out the time difference correctly then?
Oh, yay.
We weren’t quite sure about that.
I was not. I have friends in Colorado and friends on the east coast. And I routinely mess that up. I’m glad I guess, spatially or math wise, I have some challenges.
Don’t we all. So you’re six hours behind me. In Kansas, isn’t it?
That is correct.
Okay. But it all worked out very nicely. And I can hear you loud and clear.
I’m so glad. Good. Good.
You can hear me all right?
Perfect. I loved all your suggestions, like, plugging in the computer to the router, to avoid every problem we can.
Exactly. Yeah,
So I was busy today reading your book, because I haven’t had it for that long, right. And I have to admit, I didn’t really get a chance to look at it at all. Until this morning. So I’ve been going through it. It’s been fairly intense today. But yeah, it’s a good read. I really enjoyed it.
Very good. It’s thankfully it’s mercifully short. I tried to keep it to the, to the facts.
I think that’s a really good idea. Because it’s very easy, if you’re so passionate about a subject, to try and include every detail.
Exactly! On and on and on…..
It’s a balance, though, isn’t it? A balance, because you don’t want to dumb it down too much.
Exactly. I wanted for chiropractors to be able to read it and think they could find a benefit in it. But also not to put it out of the range of children if they, you know, were so inclined.
Obviously it appealled to the inner child in me, because I really liked the style of the book.
I originally started – I was only going to do the children’s story that’s in chapter three. And I saw – Difference Press that published it. I got on what do they call it? ‘Master Class’ for that. And in the middle, they said, you know, ‘We don’t do children’s books, we do non-fiction, and specifically self-help’. And I was like, ‘Ah’, so disappointed. And then, by the time the end of the master class came. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I need to write a big people book’. So here’s the big people book.
So this masterclass, this was a writing class, is that right?
That’s correct.
Okay, chapter three in your book, which I’ve read, but I imagine my listeners won’t have done yet. Or our listeners. This is chapter is called home where I belong. And it’s a theme that is throughout the book. So maybe we could go into that a little bit deeper,
I thought maybe that would be perfect to just tell the story.
Everything in your body has a home. And in that home a comfy chair, where it really likes to sit. And before you were born, everything was in its comfy chair. And then the bumps and bruises of life, maybe an accident or two. Something came out of it’s easy chair, maybe even out of its home. You might even find it in the backyard in the rain crying. Well, then the neighbors here the commotion, and they come running to their back doors. ‘Is everything okay out there?” No, I hurt’ ‘We’ll stand with you till help comes’. Well, that’s very neighborly. And it feels like tension, because now nobody in the whole neighborhood is in their comfy chair. It goes, it goes on long enough, those neighbors might tell their neighbors who might tell their neighbors and pretty soon, your little problem has become a much bigger problem. One thing we need to know about these tight muscles is they are wrung out muscles very little blood flow. And without blood flow, what are we lacking? Well, oxygen, nutrients and somebody to take out the trash. Okay, so now we’ve got some toxins building up. So we seriously need to get some blood flow in here. So one of our common tactics for getting blood flow in his heat. And we know it works, because when you pull off your heat source, lo and behold, it’s red. Bingo, blood came in. I was feeling pretty good about that until a nurse came along and said, ‘You know, that only goes down two to three centimeters’. ‘Oh,’ I said ‘You’re right’. So we’ll keep heat. And we’ll add a strategy for deeper tension. So one of the other strategies we often turn to is stretch. And I’ve seen a family member jump up out of bed in the night, crank their heel to the floor, lean into the wall and do a really strong, fast, hard stretch. And I’ve seen it turn bad. That muscle is like threatened. It’s like ‘Hello. I could tear!’
Especially if it’s from rest.
Yes. Exactly. from cold that can be a bad situation. So that can tighten down harder. So stretch done with warm muscles slow and gentle, has a place. And yet I find for people on the table, you know that I’m working on, it can be the case that a muscle will get more blood in but not necessarily enough to go all the way home. Like it has to be full.
Sorry to interrupt you. We haven’t really given your your background and your backstory. You’re a massage therapist. You have been for a long time. So when you say you’ve got someone on the table, and you’re working on them, that’s the context. Sorry to interrupt you, carry on.
That is perfect. Thank you. So stretch does bring in some more blood that we want it to be able to get all the way back to the easy chair. So yes, let’s use stretch, gentle, slow warmed up muscles. And let’s find something else that will finish the job and get the muscles completely engorged and ready to go back home. So what seems to me to work the best is to put a muscle at rest. I like to compare it to a sponge. So if you squeeze a damp sponge in your hand and stick your hand in a bucket of water and you don’t let go, nothing changes. But if you were to let go, that sponge fills and fast. Why? Because it can. Because nature abhors a vacuum by design. And if there is space, it will fill. And that’s the purpose of the muscle release techniques. Once the muscle is filled with blood, it’s pliable enough to reach all the way back to the easy chair. And then a little circling motion helps to integrate that change. It tells the neighbors I’m heading home and you can too. So that’s my story.
Okay, that was that was a nice story. So when you talk about a part of the body not being home, particularly a muscle being being tense and tight. Is it physically displaced? Or is it in a state that is not comfortable being in? Or is it both?
That is a great question.
Thank you!
Iain – a man of great questions – and answers I read some of your website too!
Okay, thank you. That’s very kind of you to say so.
So I think it’s probably on a continuum. Okay. And if we’re at a place where we can listen to the messages, when they’re whispers, then it never has to get any further than, ‘hey, I need help over here’. You know, gentle. And then if we ignore that, because we’re busy.
Or I also find that people who are in chronic pain … just for sanity sake, they have to block some of the messages. It’s like we put up with that all the time. 24 seven. So we don’t actually get to filter which ones we block. We block everything, right?
Yes, maybe with some kind of pain medication or alcohol or something like this.
Exactly. Exactly.
Or maybe just blocking it out mentally.
So if we’re blocking the bad messages, we may also be blocking the messages that would be helpful.To hear something before it got too far down the road. And once it gets to that point, maybe we’ll call it in the middle. Where, yeah, it’s got your attention most of the time. And at that point, tension can pull something out of position. Before it was just tugging on it. And then at some point, you turn a certain way, all the neighborhoods gone.
Yes. I know what that feels like.
yes. And then the messages get increasingly strong from there because your body is a good communicator, and it will do what’s necessary to get your attention and get you to act.
So this is when you throw your back out, for example, and you know, you can’t stand up straight.
rolling around on the floor, thinking I think I’ve just broken my back. Something terrible’s happened. This is the muscles going into spasm, just locking up basically.
Yes. And they have come to stabilize the situation. It’s actually mercy. But
yeah, it doesn’t feel like it.
No, no severe mercy, we’d have to call that.
Yes, indeed. Yeah. So an interesting observation, I’ve made that blood flow and tension are mutually exclusive, and inversely proportional. So a muscle contracts, or, you know, maybe the car in front of you stops, and you have to slam on the brake. And you know, that so many muscles are contracting to save the day and great, you don’t hit the car, but the blood is wrung out of those muscles. And without blood, the muscles functionality drops dramatically and some pain can set in. So now where’s the oxygen and the nutrients and the toxin relief, you know, that comes with adequate blood flow. So then, we might even find that all the muscles, say most of the muscles in the body get the message that the emergencies over we didn’t actually have a car crash. But you may have one like a hip flexor, that got stuck. And then we have to deliver that message by hand.
So as my grandfather would have said, ‘I got a hitch in my get along.’
Okay. So you write a bit about your family and your childhood in the book. So your father or your mother or both of them? Were they vets?
My father’s a veterinarian? He’s retired now.
I read that you’d been working in your family’s veterinary clinic from the age of 12. So what kind of vets was it? Was it farm animals or pets?
We did small and large animal. Not too much exotic. Small animals would generally be brought into the clinic and then my dad would do calls to the outlying areas. So people wouldn’t bring the sick big one in.
So from kind of early age you are interested in in healing and problem solving in this way?
That’s exactly right.
And you were diagnosed with mild scoliosis yourself when you were young?
That’s right. In my early teens. And I, we didn’t know what the ramifications would be of ignoring that, you know, it wasn’t a severe pain all the time. Money was tight. So we just kept kept rolling with it. And I’d stretch or do whatever I could. And then along in college, when I really got to some long studying hours and sitting without getting up to take appropriate breaks…
And it’s stressful as well, isn’t it? You’re thinking I have to pass these exams…
Exactly. . Ambient stress. Yeah. rolling around in the body stress hormones on high alert most of the time, especially near a deadline.
Exactly. Stress and muscle tension, they go hand in hand,
Oh, my goodness, I am convinced I became an adrenaline addict at that point. I got to the point where I could hardly kick it into high gear, until the deadline. So I sabotaged myself routinely.
Why do we do that to ourselves?
I really think it became an addiction problem of, I had to have the shot of adrenaline. And it was only the deadline that could get me there. When it was looming in front of me. So I’ve been taking steps to try to get myself out of that mode. But I won’t say I’ve arrived yet.
Yeah, me too. I know I’ve got to do something, by a certain deadline … like your book, I knew that I was gonna be speaking to you today at this time. And I left it to this morning ..I thought ‘I have to do this now!’ And so I’ve had my head in your book all day? Instead of spreading it over a couple of days.
I wish I could say it hadn’t been written in a similar manner. But it was!
Thankfully, the company gave me short intermittent deadlines. So I could not be slammed all at the end.
I’m sure plenty of people do this. Procrastination, basically. Yeah.
Truly you know what I have found helpful, though, for that tension, whether it’s reading a book writing a book, you know, deadlines, is some mindful breathing. And I’ve really appreciated an app called headspace.
And you mentioned the app in the picture few times headspace. I’ve not come across it before.
Yeah. It’s just amazing, I think he puts it so clearly. Another grandparent quip was ‘put the cookies on the bottom shelf, so that anybody could reach them’. And I’ve actually recommended it to my children and lots of other people. And really, it doesn’t matter what you’re using, just do it. You know, just stop and breathe and be in the present moment. Because, stress is often related to past regrets, or future fears. If I can breathe and be right here, right now I stand a lot better chance of coping with what’s going on.
Yeah. Yeah,that’s so true. And when you were talking about studying, and there’s a line in the book, you said, often attempt 10 o’clock in the evening, when the library close, you’d have a line,a queue as we call it in the UK. A queue of people at the door of your dorm room with neck and back pain. So they’re obviously all doing the same thing. You were using your healing hands to massage them? Is that right?
That is correct. And it was humorous, in retrospect, because at the time, you know, I was in school and trying to figure out, where’s my niche? What was I born for? You know, I wanted to find my destiny. And here I was doing that. But at the time massage, therapeutic massage was not really a thing in Kansas, Maybe other places in the world. Not there, right then. So I was missing that opportunity, you know, to turn that into a career until I was actually in my mid 40s when I found a way to help friends and family with it. But then I didn’t get the formal training till mid 50s. So there’s always hope if you’re listening and you’re older.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you mentioned , talking about formal training, a term I’ve not come across before, in fact, a couple of terms I’ve not come across before. The first one was ‘ortho-bionomy’ if I’m pronouncing it correctly.
Yes, you did it perfectly. I found that through a chiropractor, she had heard about it, you know, in a day seminar during her training, and she said, ‘watch this’ like the muscles on the front of my neck, which when she said it, ‘the front of your neck muscles are tight’ I was like, ‘what I have muscles there? Oh, yeah, I guess so or my head would be flopping around. Okay.’ And she tried to put her fingers in behind my collarbone. And there was no place
I’m doing that now.
I actually have been aware for some time that I’m prone to tightness down the front of the neck. I, if I’m aware that there’s tension in a particular part of my body, I focus on that, and work on relaxing it. I think I’m in pretty good shape there now. Although I still felt the need, when you said that, to start jamming my fingers in there just to make sure! What used to happen to me actually, is, you know, when you’re driving?Sometimes you have to look right over your shoulder to check for traffic. And sometimes I would just turn my head quickly to look and I’d feel a click. You know, just by the collarbone. It was just from excess tension.
You are exactly right. So her answer to that, for me was to just, I’m laying on my back on her table, and she just lifts my head, and she’s feeling along that muscle behind the collarbone. And when she feels it go slack or limp. She says ‘okay, now I’m going to hold this for 30 seconds’. And I’m like, ‘okay, and this is doing what?’ you know. And she said she actually felt a pulse as the blood came in because that muscle was now slack. And then when she put my head back down, it was completely relaxed. Like she could push her thumb down behind my collarbone. Now, I said, Oh,
So you felt the difference there and then?
Instantly, 30 seconds
I said, you know, ‘Do the other side!’
Otherwise you’d just be looking right all day!
Exactly.
Nothing wrong with looking right, but if it’s your only choice. It’s harsh.
So that was so convincing to me. And at that moment, I said, if I ever get to have formal training, it’s going to be in ortho-bionomy
Right. So that was a bit of a kind of light bulb moment for you. ‘Wow, this is really something!’
Yes, exactly. So I decided to take a class in it. And it was everything I’d hoped for and more. And it applies over the whole body. So that is actually the basis for a lot of these techniques, the ones that involve putting a muscle at rest. And it actually was founded from positional release techniques. And that takes three minutes, if you can get into a comfortable position. And it’s actually a counter-stretch. So find a stretch and go, whoo, that’s tight, and then do the exact opposite. And then you’re putting the muscle slack, it’s filling with blood, in 20 to 45 seconds, it will be full because as the sponge, it doesn’t have a choice. It fills because there’s no vacuum here. And then release it, it takes three minutes, if you’re doing it just with positional release. If you add a little press into the joint, then it only takes 20 to 45 seconds. So that’s what the training is. How to figure out how to compress into the nearby joint.
So this is something that someone could do for themselves. Having read your book?
Exactly.That’s what I love about it. Because, you know, what? Maximum in my life I’m going to be able to get my hands on some thousands of people. I, the way I find the number of people in pain, I don’t know what your stats are there. You may know them. But in the United States, they’re saying 80 to 90% of adults will have back pain sometime in their life. Staggering. And, and yet I took a lot of heart, I made reference in my book to Esther Gokhale. And I’ll just put in a plug for her because it’s it’s profound. She went and did research 30 years ago before there was internet. So she was a serious researcher, and to Burkina Faso and a couple other places where she had found that there was a less than 5% instance back pain among adults. And so she studied how they move and how they sit and stand in lay. So I, I’ve ordered the book, it hasn’t come yet. But I intend to be learning from Esther how to have good posture.
I’ve never known how to pronounce her name. But now I do.
Exactly. I had to hear it on on YouTube where she was training Google employees and someone introduced her.
Okay. Yeah, well as that sounds like a reliable source. I always thought it was ‘go-car-lay’. But that’s not right apparently. She came up with this idea of the J shaped spine, didn’t she?
Yes.
This is her
Exactly.
Yeah,interesting stuff. So you’ve got a little sort of diagram in the book. And I think it ties into what you’ve just been talking about. So there are two phases.
Yes.
There is the prepare phase and the release phase.
Yes. And so I don’t know if you can put that. I saw that you put notes from the interviews from the podcast onto your blog?
Yeah, I can put a diagram on the blog. If you want me too? Yeah ,no problem.
Feel free to do that, so people know what we’re talking about. And then actually on the website, for the book, it’s mentioned.
So what’s the web address please?
Yes. https://www.stopthepainbook.com/. And at the front, the homepage is actually a place to get a download of the book. And I’d like to offer that to all you listening.
Yeah,I saw that. It surprised me because the book is on sale on Amazon, isn’t it?
Right. But I just, it’s my opinion. And the the publishers that I worked with, they only take people who are determined to be of service to humanity, and want to get their message out as far and wide as possible. So our strategy is give the book away as often as you can.
Fantastic. Yeah.
Because it’s about helping people. So if you add /videos, you will find. There’s actually a video that explains that diagram.
Okay.
I know, you’ve kind of touched on it already. But could we talk a little bit more about those those two phases?
Yes. So the first is preparation. And then you go through and you’re taking note of what’s going on, in your body,
Literally, literally with a pen and paper?
Exactly. People can download, you can go out and get a body medical body image, you can Google that and print one off. And then you can circle on this little body image where it is. So you don’t have to describe the location.
Why not? Definitely.
Yeah,I think that’s a good strategy. And then, as you go on around, and I don’t actually have that in front of me, the book is an E book. And I don’t have a print copy in front of me right now. So would you read the four steps if you’d like to?
Of prepare? Yeah, so the first one is sit. The second one is breathe. The third one is scan.
And then the fourth one is note
Perfect. So obviously sit and breathe we’re doing right now. But it’s about really doing it intentionally. So now I’m going to, I’m going to breathe and I’m going to scan the body. So that involves like thinking from the head on down. It’s fairly quick, you know, the whole thing may take about 30 seconds. And you just take note of ‘What do I feel? Do I feel tension in my neck? My scalp? Where exactly?’ you know, on down through the chest, ‘what do I feel as I breathe?’ and then really focus on breathing, ‘Are my ribs expanding, as I breathe?’. And so just go on down to the feet. And then just take note of those and then you can go through and I think it’s in the next section that you put a little pain scale on it. So that helps you to prioritize what to work on first.
So in the next phase, which is release, the first part is assess.So this is assess how bad the pain is?
Exactly.
And then determine
Yes that’s making your decision. And I’m going to say, ‘Mmm..between my shoulder blades, that’s the stabbing pain I want to address first.’
So you pick one area to address?
Exactly.
Or release. The next stage is release
Yeah
Okay, I get it. Yeah.
And then the last one. So,
So release, this is what you were talking about earlier. So
Yeah
Do you apply pressure with your fingertips?
Exactly. You get onto the sore area. And just, I picture a compass, Iain, when I’m doing this, so I go ‘North or South, which has more comfort? More freedom of movement?’. And that is so counter to what we typically do, where we’re used to thinking – and the only time you’ll hear me talk about, ‘think about the pain’ is when you’re assessing, and determining. After that I ask people to turn their attention to comfort. And the reason is … when I’m walking down the sidewalk, I usually wind up in the direction I’m facing, or else I’m walking backwards. And there’s inherent risk with that.
People are coming to you to this podcast, because they’re looking for comfort. Yes, they might say ‘I want to stop the pain’ and yet the destination really isn’t just neutrality. It’s ‘I actually want to be in comfort … I want to go beyond tolerable recovery’.
Yeah.
So that’s the goal.
And this is an actual movement of your fingers, you’re moving towards
Exactly
Where it’s away from the pain towards the more comfortable
Exactly. One of my clients calls it ‘the path of least resistance’
Yeah, okay
Thats’s where you’re going and you’re touching with enough pressure, not to cause pain, but enough pressure to take a little bit of the tissue with you. Because tht’s how you put the muscle at rest. And you hold it 20-45 seconds. and you circle around. That’s like the change of address form. You tell the neighbours ‘I’ve headed home and you can too’
I understand that’s the release phase.
Yeah. And that was north and south, and then east and west. If you touch it, and there’s still tenderness, then you’re going to go find another direction on the compass, another axis of movement. And then once you have that side released, you can recheck because perhaps there was 50 decibels siren off over this direction, and only 25 over here, but you wouldn’t have heard this 25 until the 50 was quiet. So I always go back and recheck because it may need to go the other direction now. And then if there’s still tenderness when I touch, not to worry, because I have north, east, south, west, and northwest southeast, I can still go to. And typically by the time all of those eight directions four axes of movement are comfortable, you know, there’s they’re all released, they’re balanced. Now the muscles, the opposite muscles are pulling equally and appropriately. And then there, there will be no more pain, even though it felt like a terrible bruise to start with. In just basically every case that I see. It’s now completely pain free to the touch. It’s very striking. Clients look at me with wide eyes and go ‘What just happened?’
Well, that’s what you want, isn’t it? So for people who may be finding this hard to picture, there are videos you’ve mentioned already, but just to make sure that people get this. There are videos where you can see this being done, on your website.
Exactly. I’m teaching it to a young person.
BPL21: Ortho-Bionomy with Vienna Dunham Schmidt

SHOW NOTES
More Podcast Episodes
Ortho-Bionomy with Vienna Dunham Schmidt.
As a teenager, Vienna was diagnosed with mild scoliosis.
Back pain became more of a problem as she transitioned into adulthood.
Late nights studying to meet college deadlines made matters worse.
Later in life, pregnancy and looking after young children also exacerbated her back pain.
Impressed by her own recovery from back pain following Ortho-Bionomy therapy, Vienna decided to train in the discipline and go into practice herself.
“In just about every case that I see. It’s now completely pain free to the touch. It’s very striking. Clients look at me with wide eyes and go ‘What just happened?’”
Today’s Guest
Experienced massage therapist, and author of Stop the Pain: Your Hands-On Manual for Neck and Back Relief, Vienna Dunham Schmidt
Excerpts from the show
Vienna explains how tight muscles are often central to chronic pain conditions.
Restricted blood flow leads to “wrung-out” muscles.
They don’t get enough oxygen and waste products hang around, instead of being safely borne away.
In time, a vicious circle of pain and tension can develop.
We talk about different ways to improve the circulation to tense muscles.
Tight Muscles and Chronic Pain
- One thing we need to know about these tight muscles is they are wrung-out muscles with very little blood flow
- Without blood, the muscles functionality drops dramatically and some pain can set in. So now where’s the oxygen and the nutrients and the toxin relief, you know, that comes with adequate blood flow?
TRADITIONAL METHODS TO INCREASE BLOOD FLOW
- So we seriously need to get some blood flow in here. So one of our common tactics for getting blood flow in his heat … that only goes down two to three centimetres
- One of the other strategies we often turn to is stretch – I’ve seen it turn bad … that muscle is threatened

Hi, I’m Iain Barker creator of Back Pain Liberation.
I got back pain young and it got worse over time. Like many others in this situation, I saw plenty of doctors and therapists – all to no avail.
In the end self-help worked best – it often does for bad backs. Now I train regularly, focus on what works, and don’t get back pain.
My goal is to share what I learned. To help you find a more effective way when treatment doesn’t hit the spot.
Ortho-Bionomy Therapy
In Ortho-Bionomy therapy a different approach addresses the root cause of the pain.
Instead of trying to increase blood flow by applying heat or stretching, a muscle release technique is applied.
- (after a stressful event) Most of the muscles in the body get the message that the emergency’s over…but you may have one…that got stuck and then we have to deliver that message by hand
- That’s the purpose of the muscle release techniques
In other words, Ortho-Bionomy works by simply putting the muscle at rest.
As the tension goes, so the muscle fills with blood. Normal function returns and the pain recedes.
- (we need) something … that will finish the job and get the muscles completely engorged and ready to go back home. So what seems to me to work the best is to put a muscle at rest
Vienna experienced at first hand how effective this method can be.
An Ortho-Bionomy practitioner was able to, very quickly, release a tense muscle.
The pain that had been troubling her stopped there and then.
- That was so convincing to me. And at that moment, I said, ‘If I ever get to have formal training, it’s going to be in Ortho-Bionomy’
- I decided to take a class in it; it was everything I’d hoped for and more
ORTHO-BIONOMY SELF-CARE
Vienna’s book, Stop the Pain – Your Hands-On Manual for Neck and Back Relief, guides readers through the process of Ortho-Bionomy self-care.
- It applies over the whole body
- It’s actually a counter-stretch. So find a stretch and go, whoo, that’s tight, and then do the exact opposite. And then you’re putting the muscle slack, it’s filling with blood, in 20 to 45 seconds, it will be full

If you prefer video, she shows you how to do it on her website
Stress, Mindfulness and Breathing
- What I have found helpful, though, for that tension, whether it’s reading a book writing a book, you know, deadlines, is some mindful breathing. And I’ve really appreciated an app called Headspace
- Just stop and breathe and be in the present moment. Because stress is often related to past regrets or future fears. If I can breathe and be right here, right now I stand a lot better chance of coping with what’s going on
- People who are in chronic pain … just for sanity sake, they have to block some of the messages
- We may also be blocking the messages that would be helpful
Thanks for Listening!
How did you stop the pain? To share your experience of ortho-bionomy, or any approach that worked for you, leave a comment below.
To help out the show, click a link to iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn:
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- Leave an honest review.
Thanks to Vienna Dunham Schmidt for joining me this time and explaining ortho-bionomy.
Best,
Iain
Find more episodes of the Back Pain Liberation Podcast here
BPL21: Full Transcript
Hi, Vienna, how are you?
Doing well, how about yourself?
I’m great. Thank you. Yeah. So you worked out the time difference correctly then?
Oh, yay.
We weren’t quite sure about that.
I was not. I have friends in Colorado and friends on the east coast. And I routinely mess that up. I’m glad I guess, spatially or math wise, I have some challenges.
Don’t we all. So you’re six hours behind me. In Kansas, isn’t it?
That is correct.
Okay. But it all worked out very nicely. And I can hear you loud and clear.
I’m so glad. Good. Good.
You can hear me all right?
Perfect. I loved all your suggestions, like, plugging in the computer to the router, to avoid every problem we can.
Exactly. Yeah,
So I was busy today reading your book, because I haven’t had it for that long, right. And I have to admit, I didn’t really get a chance to look at it at all. Until this morning. So I’ve been going through it. It’s been fairly intense today. But yeah, it’s a good read. I really enjoyed it.
Very good. It’s thankfully it’s mercifully short. I tried to keep it to the, to the facts.
I think that’s a really good idea. Because it’s very easy, if you’re so passionate about a subject, to try and include every detail.
Exactly! On and on and on…..
It’s a balance, though, isn’t it? A balance, because you don’t want to dumb it down too much.
Exactly. I wanted for chiropractors to be able to read it and think they could find a benefit in it. But also not to put it out of the range of children if they, you know, were so inclined.
Obviously it appealled to the inner child in me, because I really liked the style of the book.
I originally started – I was only going to do the children’s story that’s in chapter three. And I saw – Difference Press that published it. I got on what do they call it? ‘Master Class’ for that. And in the middle, they said, you know, ‘We don’t do children’s books, we do non-fiction, and specifically self-help’. And I was like, ‘Ah’, so disappointed. And then, by the time the end of the master class came. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I need to write a big people book’. So here’s the big people book.
So this masterclass, this was a writing class, is that right?
That’s correct.
Okay, chapter three in your book, which I’ve read, but I imagine my listeners won’t have done yet. Or our listeners. This is chapter is called home where I belong. And it’s a theme that is throughout the book. So maybe we could go into that a little bit deeper,
I thought maybe that would be perfect to just tell the story.
Everything in your body has a home. And in that home a comfy chair, where it really likes to sit. And before you were born, everything was in its comfy chair. And then the bumps and bruises of life, maybe an accident or two. Something came out of it’s easy chair, maybe even out of its home. You might even find it in the backyard in the rain crying. Well, then the neighbors here the commotion, and they come running to their back doors. ‘Is everything okay out there?” No, I hurt’ ‘We’ll stand with you till help comes’. Well, that’s very neighborly. And it feels like tension, because now nobody in the whole neighborhood is in their comfy chair. It goes, it goes on long enough, those neighbors might tell their neighbors who might tell their neighbors and pretty soon, your little problem has become a much bigger problem. One thing we need to know about these tight muscles is they are wrung out muscles very little blood flow. And without blood flow, what are we lacking? Well, oxygen, nutrients and somebody to take out the trash. Okay, so now we’ve got some toxins building up. So we seriously need to get some blood flow in here. So one of our common tactics for getting blood flow in his heat. And we know it works, because when you pull off your heat source, lo and behold, it’s red. Bingo, blood came in. I was feeling pretty good about that until a nurse came along and said, ‘You know, that only goes down two to three centimeters’. ‘Oh,’ I said ‘You’re right’. So we’ll keep heat. And we’ll add a strategy for deeper tension. So one of the other strategies we often turn to is stretch. And I’ve seen a family member jump up out of bed in the night, crank their heel to the floor, lean into the wall and do a really strong, fast, hard stretch. And I’ve seen it turn bad. That muscle is like threatened. It’s like ‘Hello. I could tear!’
Especially if it’s from rest.
Yes. Exactly. from cold that can be a bad situation. So that can tighten down harder. So stretch done with warm muscles slow and gentle, has a place. And yet I find for people on the table, you know that I’m working on, it can be the case that a muscle will get more blood in but not necessarily enough to go all the way home. Like it has to be full.
Sorry to interrupt you. We haven’t really given your your background and your backstory. You’re a massage therapist. You have been for a long time. So when you say you’ve got someone on the table, and you’re working on them, that’s the context. Sorry to interrupt you, carry on.
That is perfect. Thank you. So stretch does bring in some more blood that we want it to be able to get all the way back to the easy chair. So yes, let’s use stretch, gentle, slow warmed up muscles. And let’s find something else that will finish the job and get the muscles completely engorged and ready to go back home. So what seems to me to work the best is to put a muscle at rest. I like to compare it to a sponge. So if you squeeze a damp sponge in your hand and stick your hand in a bucket of water and you don’t let go, nothing changes. But if you were to let go, that sponge fills and fast. Why? Because it can. Because nature abhors a vacuum by design. And if there is space, it will fill. And that’s the purpose of the muscle release techniques. Once the muscle is filled with blood, it’s pliable enough to reach all the way back to the easy chair. And then a little circling motion helps to integrate that change. It tells the neighbors I’m heading home and you can too. So that’s my story.
Okay, that was that was a nice story. So when you talk about a part of the body not being home, particularly a muscle being being tense and tight. Is it physically displaced? Or is it in a state that is not comfortable being in? Or is it both?
That is a great question.
Thank you!
Iain – a man of great questions – and answers I read some of your website too!
Okay, thank you. That’s very kind of you to say so.
So I think it’s probably on a continuum. Okay. And if we’re at a place where we can listen to the messages, when they’re whispers, then it never has to get any further than, ‘hey, I need help over here’. You know, gentle. And then if we ignore that, because we’re busy.
Or I also find that people who are in chronic pain … just for sanity sake, they have to block some of the messages. It’s like we put up with that all the time. 24 seven. So we don’t actually get to filter which ones we block. We block everything, right?
Yes, maybe with some kind of pain medication or alcohol or something like this.
Exactly. Exactly.
Or maybe just blocking it out mentally.
So if we’re blocking the bad messages, we may also be blocking the messages that would be helpful.To hear something before it got too far down the road. And once it gets to that point, maybe we’ll call it in the middle. Where, yeah, it’s got your attention most of the time. And at that point, tension can pull something out of position. Before it was just tugging on it. And then at some point, you turn a certain way, all the neighborhoods gone.
Yes. I know what that feels like.
yes. And then the messages get increasingly strong from there because your body is a good communicator, and it will do what’s necessary to get your attention and get you to act.
So this is when you throw your back out, for example, and you know, you can’t stand up straight.
rolling around on the floor, thinking I think I’ve just broken my back. Something terrible’s happened. This is the muscles going into spasm, just locking up basically.
Yes. And they have come to stabilize the situation. It’s actually mercy. But
yeah, it doesn’t feel like it.
No, no severe mercy, we’d have to call that.
Yes, indeed. Yeah. So an interesting observation, I’ve made that blood flow and tension are mutually exclusive, and inversely proportional. So a muscle contracts, or, you know, maybe the car in front of you stops, and you have to slam on the brake. And you know, that so many muscles are contracting to save the day and great, you don’t hit the car, but the blood is wrung out of those muscles. And without blood, the muscles functionality drops dramatically and some pain can set in. So now where’s the oxygen and the nutrients and the toxin relief, you know, that comes with adequate blood flow. So then, we might even find that all the muscles, say most of the muscles in the body get the message that the emergencies over we didn’t actually have a car crash. But you may have one like a hip flexor, that got stuck. And then we have to deliver that message by hand.
So as my grandfather would have said, ‘I got a hitch in my get along.’
Okay. So you write a bit about your family and your childhood in the book. So your father or your mother or both of them? Were they vets?
My father’s a veterinarian? He’s retired now.
I read that you’d been working in your family’s veterinary clinic from the age of 12. So what kind of vets was it? Was it farm animals or pets?
We did small and large animal. Not too much exotic. Small animals would generally be brought into the clinic and then my dad would do calls to the outlying areas. So people wouldn’t bring the sick big one in.
So from kind of early age you are interested in in healing and problem solving in this way?
That’s exactly right.
And you were diagnosed with mild scoliosis yourself when you were young?
That’s right. In my early teens. And I, we didn’t know what the ramifications would be of ignoring that, you know, it wasn’t a severe pain all the time. Money was tight. So we just kept kept rolling with it. And I’d stretch or do whatever I could. And then along in college, when I really got to some long studying hours and sitting without getting up to take appropriate breaks…
And it’s stressful as well, isn’t it? You’re thinking I have to pass these exams…
Exactly. . Ambient stress. Yeah. rolling around in the body stress hormones on high alert most of the time, especially near a deadline.
Exactly. Stress and muscle tension, they go hand in hand,
Oh, my goodness, I am convinced I became an adrenaline addict at that point. I got to the point where I could hardly kick it into high gear, until the deadline. So I sabotaged myself routinely.
Why do we do that to ourselves?
I really think it became an addiction problem of, I had to have the shot of adrenaline. And it was only the deadline that could get me there. When it was looming in front of me. So I’ve been taking steps to try to get myself out of that mode. But I won’t say I’ve arrived yet.
Yeah, me too. I know I’ve got to do something, by a certain deadline … like your book, I knew that I was gonna be speaking to you today at this time. And I left it to this morning ..I thought ‘I have to do this now!’ And so I’ve had my head in your book all day? Instead of spreading it over a couple of days.
I wish I could say it hadn’t been written in a similar manner. But it was!
Thankfully, the company gave me short intermittent deadlines. So I could not be slammed all at the end.
I’m sure plenty of people do this. Procrastination, basically. Yeah.
Truly you know what I have found helpful, though, for that tension, whether it’s reading a book writing a book, you know, deadlines, is some mindful breathing. And I’ve really appreciated an app called headspace.
And you mentioned the app in the picture few times headspace. I’ve not come across it before.
Yeah. It’s just amazing, I think he puts it so clearly. Another grandparent quip was ‘put the cookies on the bottom shelf, so that anybody could reach them’. And I’ve actually recommended it to my children and lots of other people. And really, it doesn’t matter what you’re using, just do it. You know, just stop and breathe and be in the present moment. Because, stress is often related to past regrets, or future fears. If I can breathe and be right here, right now I stand a lot better chance of coping with what’s going on.
Yeah. Yeah,that’s so true. And when you were talking about studying, and there’s a line in the book, you said, often attempt 10 o’clock in the evening, when the library close, you’d have a line,a queue as we call it in the UK. A queue of people at the door of your dorm room with neck and back pain. So they’re obviously all doing the same thing. You were using your healing hands to massage them? Is that right?
That is correct. And it was humorous, in retrospect, because at the time, you know, I was in school and trying to figure out, where’s my niche? What was I born for? You know, I wanted to find my destiny. And here I was doing that. But at the time massage, therapeutic massage was not really a thing in Kansas, Maybe other places in the world. Not there, right then. So I was missing that opportunity, you know, to turn that into a career until I was actually in my mid 40s when I found a way to help friends and family with it. But then I didn’t get the formal training till mid 50s. So there’s always hope if you’re listening and you’re older.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you mentioned , talking about formal training, a term I’ve not come across before, in fact, a couple of terms I’ve not come across before. The first one was ‘ortho-bionomy’ if I’m pronouncing it correctly.
Yes, you did it perfectly. I found that through a chiropractor, she had heard about it, you know, in a day seminar during her training, and she said, ‘watch this’ like the muscles on the front of my neck, which when she said it, ‘the front of your neck muscles are tight’ I was like, ‘what I have muscles there? Oh, yeah, I guess so or my head would be flopping around. Okay.’ And she tried to put her fingers in behind my collarbone. And there was no place
I’m doing that now.
I actually have been aware for some time that I’m prone to tightness down the front of the neck. I, if I’m aware that there’s tension in a particular part of my body, I focus on that, and work on relaxing it. I think I’m in pretty good shape there now. Although I still felt the need, when you said that, to start jamming my fingers in there just to make sure! What used to happen to me actually, is, you know, when you’re driving?Sometimes you have to look right over your shoulder to check for traffic. And sometimes I would just turn my head quickly to look and I’d feel a click. You know, just by the collarbone. It was just from excess tension.
You are exactly right. So her answer to that, for me was to just, I’m laying on my back on her table, and she just lifts my head, and she’s feeling along that muscle behind the collarbone. And when she feels it go slack or limp. She says ‘okay, now I’m going to hold this for 30 seconds’. And I’m like, ‘okay, and this is doing what?’ you know. And she said she actually felt a pulse as the blood came in because that muscle was now slack. And then when she put my head back down, it was completely relaxed. Like she could push her thumb down behind my collarbone. Now, I said, Oh,
So you felt the difference there and then?
Instantly, 30 seconds
I said, you know, ‘Do the other side!’
Otherwise you’d just be looking right all day!
Exactly.
Nothing wrong with looking right, but if it’s your only choice. It’s harsh.
So that was so convincing to me. And at that moment, I said, if I ever get to have formal training, it’s going to be in ortho-bionomy
Right. So that was a bit of a kind of light bulb moment for you. ‘Wow, this is really something!’
Yes, exactly. So I decided to take a class in it. And it was everything I’d hoped for and more. And it applies over the whole body. So that is actually the basis for a lot of these techniques, the ones that involve putting a muscle at rest. And it actually was founded from positional release techniques. And that takes three minutes, if you can get into a comfortable position. And it’s actually a counter-stretch. So find a stretch and go, whoo, that’s tight, and then do the exact opposite. And then you’re putting the muscle slack, it’s filling with blood, in 20 to 45 seconds, it will be full because as the sponge, it doesn’t have a choice. It fills because there’s no vacuum here. And then release it, it takes three minutes, if you’re doing it just with positional release. If you add a little press into the joint, then it only takes 20 to 45 seconds. So that’s what the training is. How to figure out how to compress into the nearby joint.
So this is something that someone could do for themselves. Having read your book?
Exactly.That’s what I love about it. Because, you know, what? Maximum in my life I’m going to be able to get my hands on some thousands of people. I, the way I find the number of people in pain, I don’t know what your stats are there. You may know them. But in the United States, they’re saying 80 to 90% of adults will have back pain sometime in their life. Staggering. And, and yet I took a lot of heart, I made reference in my book to Esther Gokhale. And I’ll just put in a plug for her because it’s it’s profound. She went and did research 30 years ago before there was internet. So she was a serious researcher, and to Burkina Faso and a couple other places where she had found that there was a less than 5% instance back pain among adults. And so she studied how they move and how they sit and stand in lay. So I, I’ve ordered the book, it hasn’t come yet. But I intend to be learning from Esther how to have good posture.
I’ve never known how to pronounce her name. But now I do.
Exactly. I had to hear it on on YouTube where she was training Google employees and someone introduced her.
Okay. Yeah, well as that sounds like a reliable source. I always thought it was ‘go-car-lay’. But that’s not right apparently. She came up with this idea of the J shaped spine, didn’t she?
Yes.
This is her
Exactly.
Yeah,interesting stuff. So you’ve got a little sort of diagram in the book. And I think it ties into what you’ve just been talking about. So there are two phases.
Yes.
There is the prepare phase and the release phase.
Yes. And so I don’t know if you can put that. I saw that you put notes from the interviews from the podcast onto your blog?
Yeah, I can put a diagram on the blog. If you want me too? Yeah ,no problem.
Feel free to do that, so people know what we’re talking about. And then actually on the website, for the book, it’s mentioned.
So what’s the web address please?
Yes. https://www.stopthepainbook.com/. And at the front, the homepage is actually a place to get a download of the book. And I’d like to offer that to all you listening.
Yeah,I saw that. It surprised me because the book is on sale on Amazon, isn’t it?
Right. But I just, it’s my opinion. And the the publishers that I worked with, they only take people who are determined to be of service to humanity, and want to get their message out as far and wide as possible. So our strategy is give the book away as often as you can.
Fantastic. Yeah.
Because it’s about helping people. So if you add /videos, you will find. There’s actually a video that explains that diagram.
Okay.
I know, you’ve kind of touched on it already. But could we talk a little bit more about those those two phases?
Yes. So the first is preparation. And then you go through and you’re taking note of what’s going on, in your body,
Literally, literally with a pen and paper?
Exactly. People can download, you can go out and get a body medical body image, you can Google that and print one off. And then you can circle on this little body image where it is. So you don’t have to describe the location.
Why not? Definitely.
Yeah,I think that’s a good strategy. And then, as you go on around, and I don’t actually have that in front of me, the book is an E book. And I don’t have a print copy in front of me right now. So would you read the four steps if you’d like to?
Of prepare? Yeah, so the first one is sit. The second one is breathe. The third one is scan.
And then the fourth one is note
Perfect. So obviously sit and breathe we’re doing right now. But it’s about really doing it intentionally. So now I’m going to, I’m going to breathe and I’m going to scan the body. So that involves like thinking from the head on down. It’s fairly quick, you know, the whole thing may take about 30 seconds. And you just take note of ‘What do I feel? Do I feel tension in my neck? My scalp? Where exactly?’ you know, on down through the chest, ‘what do I feel as I breathe?’ and then really focus on breathing, ‘Are my ribs expanding, as I breathe?’. And so just go on down to the feet. And then just take note of those and then you can go through and I think it’s in the next section that you put a little pain scale on it. So that helps you to prioritize what to work on first.
So in the next phase, which is release, the first part is assess.So this is assess how bad the pain is?
Exactly.
And then determine
Yes that’s making your decision. And I’m going to say, ‘Mmm..between my shoulder blades, that’s the stabbing pain I want to address first.’
So you pick one area to address?
Exactly.
Or release. The next stage is release
Yeah
Okay, I get it. Yeah.
And then the last one. So,
So release, this is what you were talking about earlier. So
Yeah
Do you apply pressure with your fingertips?
Exactly. You get onto the sore area. And just, I picture a compass, Iain, when I’m doing this, so I go ‘North or South, which has more comfort? More freedom of movement?’. And that is so counter to what we typically do, where we’re used to thinking – and the only time you’ll hear me talk about, ‘think about the pain’ is when you’re assessing, and determining. After that I ask people to turn their attention to comfort. And the reason is … when I’m walking down the sidewalk, I usually wind up in the direction I’m facing, or else I’m walking backwards. And there’s inherent risk with that.
People are coming to you to this podcast, because they’re looking for comfort. Yes, they might say ‘I want to stop the pain’ and yet the destination really isn’t just neutrality. It’s ‘I actually want to be in comfort … I want to go beyond tolerable recovery’.
Yeah.
So that’s the goal.
And this is an actual movement of your fingers, you’re moving towards
Exactly
Where it’s away from the pain towards the more comfortable
Exactly. One of my clients calls it ‘the path of least resistance’
Yeah, okay
Thats’s where you’re going and you’re touching with enough pressure, not to cause pain, but enough pressure to take a little bit of the tissue with you. Because tht’s how you put the muscle at rest. And you hold it 20-45 seconds. and you circle around. That’s like the change of address form. You tell the neighbours ‘I’ve headed home and you can too’
I understand that’s the release phase.
Yeah. And that was north and south, and then east and west. If you touch it, and there’s still tenderness, then you’re going to go find another direction on the compass, another axis of movement. And then once you have that side released, you can recheck because perhaps there was 50 decibels siren off over this direction, and only 25 over here, but you wouldn’t have heard this 25 until the 50 was quiet. So I always go back and recheck because it may need to go the other direction now. And then if there’s still tenderness when I touch, not to worry, because I have north, east, south, west, and northwest southeast, I can still go to. And typically by the time all of those eight directions four axes of movement are comfortable, you know, there’s they’re all released, they’re balanced. Now the muscles, the opposite muscles are pulling equally and appropriately. And then there, there will be no more pain, even though it felt like a terrible bruise to start with. In just basically every case that I see. It’s now completely pain free to the touch. It’s very striking. Clients look at me with wide eyes and go ‘What just happened?’
Well, that’s what you want, isn’t it? So for people who may be finding this hard to picture, there are videos you’ve mentioned already, but just to make sure that people get this. There are videos where you can see this being done, on your website.
Exactly. I’m teaching it to a young person.