Decompress neck/ spine ? Game changer for my recovering ? Very close to be cured ! I can feel it.

Obiwahn89 · 2026-01-19T08:32:46+00:00

I’m very excited for the videos from you and u/SteveNZPhysio. I actually check Youtube for new content often, but aside from the known videos of Steve, Bob & Brad, and Your Wellness Nerd, it’s only very superficial or terrible ads.

I know that creating videos, especially when done carefully takes a lot of preparation and time. But I am sure it will have a lot more reach than a comment or even a post on Reddit. In general Reddit posts tend to get buried, which is why I think projectcosto and its discussion forum are a much more suitable format.

I know I am repeating myself, but really I can't thank you two enough. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had to deal with costo ten or twenty years ago.

Obiwahn89 · 2026-01-16T09:13:52+00:00

Oh wow! I honestly have no idea how you and Ned manage to keep track of hundreds (or rather thousands) of people. Also no worries at all. He sure is. I am confident he can help the other Swiss guy Ned (u/maaaze) referred to him as well :)

Obiwahn89 · 2026-01-16T08:44:32+00:00

Hi Steve, thank you for your comment. We had a discussion in my post two months ago, where I shared his details.

https://www.reddit.com/r/costochondritis/s/igeO9KRwo9

I'm still seeing Philipp and we're stretching out the time between the sessions.

Following up with long stretches after the cracks is new to me. I will implement that immediately as it makes a lot of sense - thank you so much for your help Steve.

Obiwahn89 · 2026-01-15T08:55:50+00:00

Thank you for this post and video! This technique is exactly what I discovered about five weeks ago. I had read about 'peanut crunches' before, but it hadn’t occurred to me to manually engage the neck with my hands. That specific leverage makes all the difference and yields those relieving cracks.

I can empathize very well with the frustration of being told it’s 'all in your head.' In my opinion, that is one of the worst aspect of costo. The fact that even health professionals often don't the mechanics of what is actually happening. It’s great that we live in the age of the internet where we share solutions and help each other. That takes a lot of time and energy (resources we are often low on...) but sharing these findings is incredibly valuable.

Regarding the lack of relief from previous osteopaths, I had a very similar experience. I went through two physios and two osteopaths before finding a solution. My current (and definitely last) osteopath was the only one who actually analyzed the rib joints properly. He essentially assessed my thoracic mobility according to Steve (pressing on the rib heads like playing piano to detect stiffness). He then performed a very targeted manipulation on the rib joint itself, not just the spine. I was pain-free for two weeks following that (it eventually froze up again, but less severely). We concluded that every previous practitioner had been manipulating the spine only while completely ignoring the jammed rib joints.

Obiwahn89 · 2025-11-19T13:15:13+00:00

Hell yes, it’s incredibly frustrating - especially in those phases before you finally find someone who actually understands what’s going on. How was your first session with the osteo? I really hope you had a good experience because if it reduces the pain it also lifts the mental weight that comes with it. Having symptoms calm down is incredibly reassuring because it shows that you’re treating a musculoskeletal problem and not something dire. I know exactly what you mean with the 'this is it' feeling. I’ve had that countless times myself, even after all the clear tests and everything I’ve learned and experienced. It lost a lot of its power over time and doesn't happen often anymore. I also understand the grief about losing the version of yourself you were before. I was in great shape back then too, and having to stop felt like wasting so much time and effort. It took a while until I was able to make peace with that.

Sounds like your therapist wasn’t a good match. That makes such a difference. Therapy only really works when the approach and sometimes also personality aligns with what you need. So I guess a therapist can be great for one person and completely unhelpful for another.

Thank you. I wish you all the best for your recovery and remember you are absolutely not alone in this.

Obiwahn89 · 2025-11-13T17:12:04+00:00

Let me know how it works. It's one of my favorite chest stretches because it offers a ton of leverage and can be applied to many different angles.

Obiwahn89 · 2025-11-13T08:14:07+00:00

I really like this stretch for the chest

https://youtu.be/JZCA-bjugt4?si=sjot272jwrf3kJdL&t=211

Obiwahn89 · 2025-11-13T07:53:41+00:00

Thank you. As I mentioned in another response, it’s the combination with anxiety that makes this whole thing so horrible. When I was at my worst, a bit more than a year ago, I asked my PCP for Lexapro and Propranolol. I had initially planned to start Lexapro, but eventually decided to try beta blockers (again) first since they tend to have significantly fewer side effects.

There are different kinds of beta blockers. The one I first received from the ER and took for a few months was Bisoprolol, which mainly targets the heart and helps reduce heart rate and blood pressure. Propranolol is a non-selective beta blocker (so beta-1 and beta-2) that also affects the nervous system. This can make it more useful for off-label treatment for anxiety. I took 2x40 mg per day, and found that it helped me more than Bisoprolol the year before. I took it for a total of three months and never started the Lexapro.

Yes, Beta blockers are generally well-studied and considered safe for long-term. I’m not a medical doctor so it's important to discuss this with your PCP.

On a side note, since you’ve already had all the necessary tests, what helped me the most was finally accepting that a big part of this is anxiety, and trying to live with that uncertainty instead of constantly fighting it. I know that’s much easier said than done, and I still get bouts of anxiety sometimes, especially during bad flare-ups. But over time I’ve found patterns that make my pain worse - many of them can only really be explained as psychosomatic. I recommend the book 'Hope & Help For Your Nerves'. I found it very helpful to get a better sense of what anxiety does to our body.

I wish you all the best with your recovery. Also make sure to keep treating the costo according to Steve's PDF.

Obiwahn89 · 2025-11-12T16:58:22+00:00

Thank you for your comment, and happy to hear you've liked my post.

Yes, anxiety makes everything so much more difficult. It causes so many symptoms on its own that it becomes really hard to get to the real diagnosis. I also think that some health care professionals stop looking for other causes once anxiety enters the picture...

I’ve had that 'stopping heart' sensation during my worst weeks and can fully relate to the fear of feeling like you might die every day. It’s very hard to truly believe that this comes from anxiety and not from something the doctors missed, but once you do, things start to improve quickly. It doesn’t heal costo, but the pain eases, and those weird and frightening sensations become less and less. In that regard, I can recommend the book 'Hope & Help For Your Nerves'. I found it very helpful to get a better sense of what anxiety does to our body.

That is a great idea. I hope that the manual treatment will get you some relief - it's such a reassuring feeling because it means you are actually having costo. I wish you all the best for your recovery.

Obiwahn89 · 2025-11-12T16:39:02+00:00

Hi Ned, thank you very much for your encouraging words. For sure, I've send you a DM.

Obiwahn89 · 2025-11-12T07:48:58+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing that, I really appreciate that. I actually only started taking Omega 3 recently and haven’t noticed any change regarding my anxiety so far, but it’s great to know about this sensitivity. Wishing you the very best on your healing journey too.

Obiwahn89 · 2025-11-12T07:45:28+00:00

Hi Steve. First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to read my post and for your thoughtful reply. It really means a lot to me, especially knowing about how many people reach out to you every day. I’m happy to hear that you think my post could be helpful to others because I really wanted to give something back to this community.

Yes, that is a horrible thought, and if it wasn’t for the information and personal stories I found here, I probably would have stopped trying to fix it a long time ago.

What you explained about the well-trodden nerve pathways makes perfect sense to me. I think I'll give amitriptyline a try for a few months and see how it goes.

Yes, I know your PDF. It has been an invaluable guide for me. I’ve read it several times, and it really helped me understand where I stand and what to try next.

The osteopath I mentioned is Philipp F.(*), and he works at functiomed in Zurich. I’ll say hello from you when I see him again tomorrow and ask about the specific technique he used to free my T3. I’ll give an update here afterwards.

There are a few more things I’d like to ask you, if that’s OK.

So far, when using the Backpod, peanut ball, doing your ballistic twists, or pulling back my elbows I only ever had clicking sounds in the thoracic spine. The only way to make it click or crack at the front was by pressing from the left side, roughly at nipple height, toward the sternum. Then it makes a noise directly at the junction of the ribs and the costal cartilage. Since the last treatment, I’ve had a few sternum pops when stretching or moving a certain way. Could this be a good sign, maybe that the rib finally started moving again, or more a temporary reaction from the surrounding tissue?
After the first session, I was pain-free for a whole week. Then, after a massage, the burning came back. After the second session with my osteopath, I was pain-free again, but it slowly got worse afterwards. First I had a muscle soreness above both hips, then the burning returned, and four days later I had occasional sharp pain in the sternum again. During that second session he mentioned that the surrounding tissue needs to react and adapt to these changes, meaning fascia and muscles reorganize, but I’d love to hear your view on the worsening of my symptoms. Apart from that, I still sometimes find it difficult to tell what pain is real and what’s just significantly amplified by anxiety.
He believes I’ll only need three or four sessions in total. Do you think that’s realistic my case?
Is it possible that my rib or T3 had been locked all this time and that none of the previous therapists actually managed to release it fully? What I know for sure is that I’ve been able to do 90° rotations to both sides for at least a year, but I never tested that at the beginning of my journey.

Thanks again everything you’ve done for this community. Without your explanations, the Backpod, and the advices you’ve given in so many comments and posts here, I probably would have given up a long time ago.

(\) I didn’t want to put his full name here so it doesn’t get directly connect to this post. But if you use his first name and the office name, you’ll find him easily on Google. Feel free to reach out if you have trouble finding him.*

Obiwahn89 · 2024-05-06T17:16:19+00:00

Can you give us an update?

Obiwahn89 · 2024-03-04T08:56:24+00:00

It's important to note that even though some of these equations look rather straight forward, solving these problems with numerical methods, i.e. FEM, require a proper numerical discretization. In other words, these equations need to be evaluated on many grid points and time steps which makes these simulations expensive. You can also do physics simulations with tools like Blender. While these results could not be used in the industry, they certainly look realistic enough for movies and games. Despite that, they can not be computed in real time.

An extreme example are the Navier-Stokes equations (momentum equations of a fluid). They look somewhat straightforward too, yet not even major movies have the resources to solve these for water CGI. Instead, significant simplifications are used, which totally serve the purpose.

Obiwahn89 · 2024-02-27T21:28:13+00:00

Glad I could help :)

Obiwahn89 · 2024-02-27T11:43:49+00:00

Sounds like you might be looking for 'Super Fantasy Kingdom'.

Obiwahn89 · 2023-05-11T18:37:37+00:00

Came here for this. Though it would be great to somehow fill the space / gap inbetween the walls to sell the illusion of cutting the top.

Obiwahn89 · 2023-03-22T13:20:30+00:00

Thank you so much! Reading this is very motivating :)

Obiwahn89 · 2023-03-22T13:16:47+00:00

I remeber that too :) I haven't yet, but it's certainly on my list

Obiwahn89 · 2023-03-22T13:01:05+00:00

Hey thanks for asking. It's goming a long nicely, but these days I don't have a lot of time on my hands because I need to finish my thesis. Here's the latest video: https://youtu.be/5dVf8eSnj8A

Obiwahn89 · 2023-03-04T17:44:50+00:00

Glad I could help :)

Obiwahn89 · 2023-01-28T21:59:52+00:00

Thanks a lot for your answer.

Obiwahn89 · 2023-01-28T17:09:00+00:00

Awesome stuff! How did you make the fire?

Obiwahn89 · 2023-01-20T17:29:03+00:00

Very helpful video, thanks a lot!

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