Disclaimer: This is what worked for me. I am not a health professional and claim no particular understanding of the shoulder and how it works. I cannot promise that these methods will work for you. The most important thing to note is that my approach never caused pain greater than a 2 or 3 out of 10.
How I Healed My Frozen Shoulder
Quickly, painlessly, and without surgery...
My Timeline
Left Shoulder
- Early August 2022: start of freezing stage (Decreasing mobility and quite a bit of pain—especially those zingers which dropped me to the floor.)
- Early October 2022: start of frozen stage (Very limited mobility but no pain. I moved into this stage approximately 2 weeks after starting to use the Tens machine. I have no idea if there was a connection between the use of the Tens machine and the end of the painful freezing stage, or if I am just lucky that my freezing stage was much shorter than most.)
- October 2022-January 2023: months of not doing anything in particular to heal my shoulder—I was no longer in pain and life got in the way. I did some occasional hanging with a very sketchy set-up before I finally got around to installing a Swedish ladder just before going away for a month in mid-December.
- Mid-January 2023: start of daily hanging
- Early March 2023: functionally healed
It’s important to note that my dates are fuzzy because I wasn’t keeping track, and if a physiotherapist had tested my range of motion in early March 2023, I doubt I would have tested at 100%, but I was close enough that I no longer noticed any deficit in the course of my daily life.
Right Shoulder
In Summer 2024, my other shoulder suddenly started freezing. Life had been busy and I had not done my two daily hangs for about a month (I won’t make that mistake again!). I came home from a long walk late one afternoon and my shoulder was completely fine. After dinner, I noticed it was sore, and by the middle of the night it was waking me up whenever I moved. By the morning, I was in agony and had lost substantial mobility. See Arresting the Freezing Process below for how I managed to stop the process in its tracks.
My Methods
1. Hanging
I know that the idea of hanging seems ludicrous when you can barely lift your arm, but it is possible! I could not lift my arm to a 90 degree angle in front of me, let alone get it up and over my head. The trick is that you have to get your arm up to a bar and then lower into a hanging position, holding most of your body weight in your legs somehow.
A Swedish ladder is ideal because you can climb up to the hanging bar and hook your hand on the frozen side on to the bar, but you can use a chair or stepladder to do the same thing with any hanging bar. You will need a chair or ladder beneath you to hold much of your weight initially anyway. It took me a couple of weeks before I was able to take my feet off one of the lower bars on the Swedish ladder. My first unsupported hang probably didn’t even last for one full second, but once I could it, it only took me a couple of weeks to get to a point where I could hang for 30 seconds at a time.
I tried to hang 4-7 times/day with a 1-minute rest between hangs. At most, that added up to an investment of 8.5 minutes a day. On really busy days, I only did 2 hangs, which took a total of 2 minutes (2 x 30-second hangs, with a 1-minute rest between.)
I still do two 30-second hangs most days of the week because I’d rather spend two minutes a day looking after my shoulders than ever have to deal with a frozen shoulder again.
N.B.: If you’ve ever dislocated your shoulder, you should probably talk to a healthcare provider about whether or not hanging is safe for you.
2. Arm/shoulder strengthening
Prior to my shoulder freezing, I had already been in the habit of doing regular barre workouts using the Peloton app. I continued doing these classes after I started hanging. The arms sections of these classes took no more than 5 minutes and I didn’t use weights. Initially, I was barely able to do anything with my left arm, but I did what I could and I noticed that the more I hung, the more I could do.
In addition to barre classes, I also did yoga classes using the Peloton app. Again, there was a lot that I couldn’t do initially, but I did what I could and it was only a matter of weeks before I could do nearly everything in the classes.
My Tools
These are the tools I used to heal my shoulders. I have no connection to any of these people or companies other than having purchased their products for my own personal use. There is no benefit to me if you buy them.
Keep in mind that the biggest factor in whether or not you develop frozen shoulder is whether or not you’ve had it before—that is, once you have had one frozen shoulder, you’re at much higher risk of having another one (in either shoulder.)
Dr John Kirsch’s Book: Shoulder Pain? The Solution & Prevention
Everywhere I looked, I kept reading that it would take 18 months to 2 years for my shoulder to heal. I didn’t like that prospect, so I kept looking until I found someone offering a faster timeline—Dr John Kirsch.
Swedish Ladder
You don’t need a Swedish ladder, but it makes things a lot easier and if, like me, you are committed to never having another frozen shoulder, it might be worth the investment. If you’re handy, you can build your own like this guy did. But really, any hanging bar will do. Your local playground is likely to have something that will work. If you want something for your home, Wirecutter has these recommendations. You will likely need a chair beneath you to hold much of your weight initially.
For what it’s worth, I ended up buying a Swedish ladder when I realized that it was equivalent to the cost of only five or six physiotherapy sessions and that it would probably save me from needing physiotherapy treatment in the future.
The NOHRD Swedish Ladder that I used
Powerdot Tens Machine
When I was in the freezing stage and dealing with zingers and aches, a friend suggested I try her Tens machine to help with the pain. It quickly became my new favourite thing and after a couple of weeks I realized that I did not want to give it back. It really took the edge off the achiness, particularly on those nights when the pain was bad enough that I would have otherwise had trouble going back to sleep. There may be better options out there but I like this one because:
- It connects wirelessly to my phone.
- It is a small, low-profile device—you can put it on and go about your day (or night, if you’re using it to help you go back to sleep.)
- The battery lasts quite a while between charges.
I was told:
- Not to stick the Tens machine pads on my chest and back at the same time (it’s not a good idea to be passing an electrical current through your body near your heart.)
- I could use the Tens machine as much as I wanted/needed and I wasn’t going to do myself any harm.
- Setting the intensity to a mild buzzing is thought to have a pain relief effect only. It is not likely to help with healing.
- Setting the intensity to a level where you can see your muscle twitching may have a positive impact on healing.
Recoverytherm Cube
You don’t need this if you have ice packs and heat packs at home. However, my second shoulder started freezing when I was travelling and ice packs and heat packs were not viable options. This cube alternates between cold and hot and is rechargeable. The battery life is not great—you only get 3 x 20-minute cycles of cold/hot on a full charge, but if you have access to power (e.g. on an airplane or in a car), that’s not such a big deal. I am convinced this cube helped me arrest the freezing process in my second shoulder.
Peloton Barre and Yoga Classes
I already had a Peloton membership, so this was not something I paid for just to fix my shoulder. I am sure there are plenty of free options that would work just as well. However, if you already have a Peloton membership, or if you have access to a free trial, I highly recommend Hannah Corbin’s Barre classes. She has quite a few that have weightless arms sections that are no joke. When I started doing these, I could barely move my left arm. My “arm circles” on that side were hilariously small. But I just kept doing them as best I could in conjunction with the hanging. I think the hanging fixed my shoulder mobility, but doing these classes helped me regain strength in my shoulder and arm as I recovered my mobility.
Arresting the Freezing Process
In Summer 2024, I came home from a long walk late one Thursday afternoon and my shoulders were completely fine. After dinner, I noticed my right shoulder was sore, and by the middle of the night it was waking me up whenever I moved. By the morning, I was in agony and had lost substantial mobility.
The timing was not great—we were heading off on a trip and would be in the car for fours that day, followed by another four hours the following day, with no easy access to a hanging bar.
I had previously seen the Recoverytherm Cube online and thought it looked useful but had had no real need for it since we have both ice packs and heat packs in our house. Those are not much good on a long car trip, however, so I ordered the Recoverytherm Cube online and picked it up at a Best Buy as we left town. During the next two days in the car, I alternated between using the cube and the Tens Machine .
With the Recoverytherm Cube, I set it to the alternating cold/hot program and I rotated the cube around my shoulder somewhat randomly for each treatment. The alternating program is a 20-minute program: five minutes on cold, five minutes on hot, 5 minutes on cold, 5 minutes on hot. Sometimes I did an extra cold so that I could finish on cold instead of hot.
With the Tens Machine , I really tried to target the shoulder capsule, below the surface muscles. I thought that if I could hit it with enough stimulation, it might stop freezing up. The only way I could do that was by trial and error with the Tens Machine pad placement, and by paying attention to where the stimulation was happening. I cranked the level high enough to make my visible muscles twitch and I could feel the stimulation happening below the surface muscles. It wasn’t exactly pleasant but it wasn’t painful either.
By the time we arrived at our destination on Saturday afternoon, my shoulder was a lot less painful but my mobility was still restricted. I had access to a hanging bar, so I did four 30-second hangs every day, and continued using the Recoverytherm Cube (several times/day) and the Tens Machine (maybe once/day). By the following Friday, I could swim freestyle, which had been impossible earlier in the week (I had tried!)
I returned home at the end of the week, and I continued hanging daily, while still using the Cube and the Tens Machine as needed to help with soreness, and within a couple of weeks of getting home, my shoulder felt like it was back to 100%.
I suspect that hanging alone could have arrested the process, but 1. I didn’t have easy access to a hanging bar for the first two days and 2. the Recoverytherm Cube and the Tens Machine helped a lot with the pain.
Things That Made No Difference
I have had good experiences with other issues from physiotherapy, accupuncture, and massage previously, so they were the first things I tried. None of them made a noticeable difference and I feel lucky that my family doctor said to me early on, “Your shoulder will heal on its own in 18-24 months, regardless of what you do. Everyone likes to do believe that their various healthcare providers can help them but it won’t actually make a difference to the healing process and it will end up costing a lot of money for the same result.”
Physiotherapy
It was a physiotherapist who first diagnosed my frozen shoulder, but treatment was on the painful side and the exercises I was supposed to do at home were time consuming and very painful. I saw no positive result from physiotherapy.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture felt good but made no noticeable difference.
Massage
Massage felt amazing, but made no noticeable difference.
Occupational Therapy
I had never tried this before but a friend of a friend said it had helped with their frozen shoulder, so I went for one session. It was not painful or particularly unpleasant, but it wasn’t relaxing and it didn’t make any noticeable difference.
Hot Springs
I happened to be near some hot springs early in the freezing stage. It felt good to relax in the hot springs but it made no noticeable difference to my shoulder.