The joke was that one actually encounters repetitive strain when one
attempts to recount all the various terms for the numbness and shooting
pain in the hands and forearms that formally was only associated with
carpal tunnel syndrome. Nowadays its just as common to refer to
cumulative trauma disorder (CTD), occupational overuse syndrome, work
related upper limb disorder (WRULD), Tenosynovitis, computer vision
syndrome, trigger finger (the non-itchy kind), or even non-specific arm
pain. Whew! If I wasn't strained before, I am now officially in search
of a sling to rest my tongue on.

Anyway this syndrome originally burst onto public awareness when the
use of keyboards and mouse became widespread in the workplace decades
ago. Because the original symptom package was tingling, numbness and
pain in the hands, the initial cause was thought to be the median
nerve becoming compressed in the wrist, at the site of the carpal
tunnel.

Eventually though the pain reporting began to include the elbows,
shoulders, neck and back, and implicating the carpal tunnel
exclusively failed to account for the expansion in areas afflicted. At
this point it became clear that various repetitive workplace tasks of
many different sorts were causing soft tissue injuries like nerve
spasms and cramping, and workplace ergonomics became identified as a
primary culprit.

Back in 1997 I was associated with a clinic that featured workstation
ergonomic assessments, and made recommendations for correction; along
with providing physical therapy and my area of specialty, biofeedback.
Most of the people I ended up seeing in those days suffered from garden
variety stress-related health disorders, however I would occasionally
see a member of this growing group of RSI sufferers, which included a
smattering of computer animators from nearby Industrial Light and
Magic, then located in San Rafael, California. I always enjoyed
treating those computer wizards, because they were fun to be around as
a group, and had interesting stories. Plus, you never knew if you might
receive a special invitation to visit Lucas Ranch, home of Skywalker
Sound as I once did, by one of the animators apparently happy with the
relief the treatment provided him. Here you could view Indiana Jones's
famous whip and hat inside a glass case, or soak up the force emanating
from the robes of Yoda. I remember secretly wondering whether Jedi
knights ever suffered from repetitive strain injuries from too much
sword play with their light sabers.

I'm guessing that positive feedback about these early cases must have
leaked out into the computer animation field, because one day in 1998
we began seeing an animator from nearby Pixar who was afflicted with
the same RSI symptoms. I was pulled aside by our case manager and
informed that achieving results with this individual was important,
because he was being used as a test case to determine whether we could
impact his RSI discomfort. Evidently, some kind of RSI epidemic was
beginning to brew over at Pixar in the midst of a major project that
was effecting their production schedule.

During the course of seeing this individual over several weeks, I
learned that Pixar was working on a film called Toy Story II, and
apparently our treatment was sufficiently successful that a half a
dozen more Pixar animators showed up in a relatively short amount of
time. My impression was that this second wave served as a sort of pilot
probe to see whether we could replicate our results over a wider
population. Well, things must have gone fairly well, because over the
next couple of years my schedule became flooded with Pixar animators,
all suffering from repetitive strain that was being exacerbated by
their increased production schedule demands.

Just about all these individuals were diagnosed with thoracic outlet
syndrome (TOS), a condition produced by compression of nerves or blood
vessels (or both) because of inadequate passageway through the thoracic
outlet located between the base of the neck and the armpit. Many were
also diagnosed with dystonia, which can cause involuntary muscle
contractions. As biofeedback specialist my job was to measure the
shoulder tension, and show people how to reduce it if the tightness was
excessive. Well, sure enough, the average amount of neck and shoulder
tension of the entire group of animators was so pronounced that I
noticed the skin in the shoulder areas had a certain feel to it when I
attached the electrodes that all the various sufferers shared in
common, kind of like the tight skin that was stretched across a drum.
This had a dull sort of texture, not as vibrant as the surrounding skin.

I also measured the shoulder tension when the animators were using the
keyboard, and found that virtually universally the animators were able
to show normal muscle tension levels when the keyboard was close in at
their waist levels. No other keyboard position was able to produce low
or normal tension levels.

So, after the workstation keyboard positions were subsequently
adjusted, and the RSI sufferers learned how to release their thoracic
outlet syndrome, production was able to continue, and Toy Story II
managed to be completed on schedule. And that, as it turned out, was
health care "Way beyond infinity" according to Buzz Lightyear as
represented by one of the 50 animators who signed the Toy Story II
poster that now sits in my private office.

Please contact Peter Behel, MA, BCIA Certified Biofeedback Practitioner at
(707) 579-7982