MusiCares' Healthy Essentials Program — a series of medical clinics providing free healthcare services of all kinds to music industry professionals — is the heart of the organization's preventative care services. Throughout the year, MusiCares partners with medical providers of all kinds to bring these services to music people nationwide. These providers often generously offer their services to MusiCares at a reduced rate, out of their kind hearts, allowing MusiCares to serve even more music people in need.
One of those providers is Janice Ying, PT, DBT, of Opus Physical Therapy and Performance. She works with MusiCares to provide physical therapy focusing on repetitive stress injuries and other music industry related maladies.
As a part of our "Provider Spotlight" series, each month MusiCares highlights one of our amazing providers with an interview that dives deeper into their work, their story, and what drew them to MusiCares. In honor of National Wellness Month this August, MusiCares is thrilled to highlight Janice Ying and her dedicated service to the music community's holistic health.
How did you first become interested in physical therapy?
I was a musician before in my past career. I grew up playing the piano and the violin competitively. I was a piano performance major in college, but I was also on scholarship for violin. I ended up experiencing some injuries as a result of playing. Through my experiences dealing with that as a patient, I grew to understand the lack of understanding and knowledge and how to go about addressing these issues.
I ended up having shoulder surgery in college as a result of my playing. I was able to recover, but because of what I went through, I decided to start taking steps to make the switch to pursue physical therapy in my own effort to try and understand how to prevent injuries in the first place. My motivation was so that musicians wouldn't end up in the same position that I was in then.
Given my piano performance major, I had to go back to school after I graduated and take all the courses, and then I applied to PT school. I went to the University of Southern California. USC has been really great to me in terms of getting connections and whatnot. There aren't a lot of physical therapists in the country, or the world, that truly specialize in this niche. So really, it was taking the knowledge I was learning from PT and kind of extrapolating it and applying it to what I felt was needed from a musician's perspective.
A lot of what I borrow from is how sports approach treating their athletes and are very specific to what their functional needs are. I've taken that same framework, and I look at what musicians need to do — what instruments they play, what style they play — and that could vary greatly. If you have a classical violinist versus a fiddler, even though they have the same instrument, their struggles can look very, very different. It's been really fun for me to explore that, unpack it and work with musicians to try and help them get better, and also help them learn how to work a little bit more efficiently so that they can prolong their careers.
How has your personal experience as a musician benefitted your career in physical therapy?
I definitely use that to my advantage. I'm not an expert in all things music, of course, and not all instruments, but one of my degrees at Pepperdine was a music education degree. So, I've at least had my hands on all of the instruments in an orchestra — we had a semester of percussion, a semester on woodwinds, a semester on brass instruments, etc. I can probably play a scale and, like, one song on every instrument. Definitely not an expert in every instrument, but I've at least held all the instruments and have some kind of idea of what could be physically affected.
I think it's been really great for me, and I'm hoping it's been really great for my patients as well. I know what it's like to go to a doctor who doesn't know left from right — they don't know what side of the body I use to hold my instrument up. I've had patients tell me that doctors in the past have told them to change instruments in their offseason. I don't fault anyone for these types of recommendations, it's just a lack of knowledge.
That's really what I'm super passionate about: creating more knowledge for the musicians to be able to digest and consume, but then also spreading awareness from the medical side of things. I'd love if medical professionals knew what to think about in assessing clients who are musicians. How would they change their normal assessment process to fit a musician's needs? Spreading awareness on techniques specific to musicians' needs is really fun for me. I get to be in both worlds as a musician myself and a physical therapist.
What are some common orthopedic conditions that musicians often face?
The overuse category of injuries is definitely common. We're talking about tendinitis — or I also see a lot of nerve issues, like carpal tunnel or cubital tunnel. There's a lot of nerve entrapments that have their own names. I see a lot of nerve entrapments, either from the neck or kind of at any point, mostly in the upper extremity, mostly in the arms and in the hands. I would say that either cases of tendinitis or nerve incontinence are probably the most common that I see.
Do you have any preventative tips you could share with the music community in thinking about prioritizing their health and wellness?
Prevention is key, of course. Trying to find ways to basically just keep your body healthy, regardless of what mode, is important. Some people choose to do yoga, or do pilates, or run or swim, etc. There is no magic that will be able to prevent injuries, but I think that any type of movement is valuable. Taking the time to make sure that you're flexible and strong in the right areas goes a long way. It's also really important to address problems earlier on. When an injury is just beginning, it is much easier to try and work through versus if someone's had an injury for a year or more. Those tend to be a lot more stubborn and harder to address. It's not that they can't be addressed, but it just takes a little bit more time.
I think a lot of it also comes not only with physical health, but making sure that you have a good routine, even if you're on the road. Making sure that you take time for self care, both physically and mentally. That all plays into your overall health, and can be manifested physically as well.
How can physical therapy contribute to holistic health and wellness?
Oftentimes, you think about PT and it's like, "This hurts. I'm going to get PT to solve this issue," but a lot of times — especially with conditions that have been going on for a longer period of time — there can be so many other factors rather than just the physical injury itself. Speaking from personal experience as a musician, the art of music making can be a very personal and psychological experience. So, when musicians are impaired in their ability to play, that can be scary for a lot of different reasons. They might not be able to make any income, or they might not be able to play, and a lot of times people find relief just making music in itself.
Stress can also drive inflammatory processes, elevating the injury when a musician is stressed over the hindering of their playing. So, it's really not just "I have an injury here. I have tendinitis in this area," and getting treated in that area to make it go away. There are other factors that have to be addressed in order to completely help resolve whatever issue is going on.
There can often be a lot of fear avoidance as well. People get injured and they're fearful of going back to playing the way that they were because they don't want to get injured again. But that in itself can also contribute to stress and even more issues — so it ends up being this vicious cycle that needs to be broken in order for them to overcome that obstacle.
How did you first hear about MusiCares?
It's always been on my radar. At my previous job, one of the physicians who I worked with worked very closely with MusiCares, and he connected me with the Santa Monica office. I did a couple of talks with the Recording Academy, and then started seeing a few patients.
When I opened my own practice, that's when I decided that I really wanted to invest time into MusiCares' clients. My practice is mostly focused on helping musicians, so I felt that that was a relationship that I really wanted to continue and strengthen, so I could help more musicians — especially because there aren't that many people who specialize in working with musicians in the first place, making myself as accessible as I can is so important.
There's only so many of me helping people find the right type of specialized care. I think that is really important to me, because I've experienced care that was kind of subpar and that I thought would help me but really wasn't helpful.
Education and awareness play a big role in accessibility to the care that musicians may need. I teach at USC, and I've started to try and ingrain in the students that I interact with the importance of looking at the big picture — and getting people who maybe have a background in music or performing arts thinking about branching out and specializing in this area that way. There's even more access down the line — maybe not right now at this very moment, but down the line, people will at least be aware and thinking about how to approach this population's unique struggles.
Can you share any stories from your experience benefitting the MusiCares community?
Everyone that I've met has just been so awesome and unique in their own ways. I think the coolest thing for me is helping someone through a very challenging time, whether it's a severe injury or something that really truly affects their ability to play. Being able to go and watch them play on stage and perform so effortlessly is probably the most rewarding part of it, because I know everything that they've gone through.
To see the hard work manifested through their performance, and to see other people enjoying that — and to see how happy and proud that they are afterwards — is so rewarding. Emails and calls from clients expressing "I did it!" or "I played this concert that was an hour long, and I didn't have any symptoms." That to me is the coolest part of it all.
4 Tips For Patient Safety — And Why It’s So Important For Music Industry Professionals