You wake up in the morning and realize that your shoulder hurts. Racking your brain, you try to remember what you've done in the last few days to make it sore. You try stretching the shoulder out or icing it, but it still doesn't go away. It doesn't hurt bad enough to go to the doctor so you just live with the pain. Or you go to a doctor who prescribes eight weeks of physical therapy, which may or may not relieve the pain. Sound familiar?

Shoulder pain is one of the most common reasons a patient sees a doctor with a joint complaint. There are serious conditions that cause shoulder pain, such as rotator cuff tears joint disease and even heart issues if it's left shoulder involvement. Often, though, shoulder pain conditions are diagnosed as tendinitis, impingement syndrome, bicipital tendonitis, or bursitis.

One pain relief specialist, John Iams, M.A., P.T., believes that the real cause of shoulder pain is often mislabeled and misunderstood in these diagnoses. Iams, a pain therapist who maintains his own practice, has discovered that tension in the jaw muscles ramps up tension in the rotator cuff muscles.

"What is often missed with these conditions, is the presence of sustained muscle activity in the rotator cuff muscles," Iams says. "Tender knots in muscles are traditionally called trigger points. Trigger points in the jaw muscles refer pain to the shoulder; this connection usually goes undetected in the shoulder-pain patient."

In addition to identifying the jaw-shoulder connection, Iams spent years developing a way to release the tension in the jaw, allowing rotator cuff muscle tension to dissipate, and thereby relieve the shoulder pain. Iams discovered that dramatic improvement in shoulder pain is often realized when the jaw muscles are deprogrammed using his Primal Reflex Release Technique™. The benefits of his maneuver are often noticed within seconds and can create lasting pain relief.

While the jaw maneuver is helpful in many cases of shoulder pain, it will yield no benefit if the source of pain is structural in nature, i.e., a tear in the rotator cuff tendon, Iams cautions.

Fortunately, the maneuver takes only seconds and will either yield relief immediately or show that the jaw muscles are not related to the shoulder pain. "Adding the maneuver can speed recovery in ways we never considered in the past," he says. To learn more about the Primal Reflex Release Technique™, visit www.thePRRT.com and www.JohnIams.com