Dear Dekkly/SigMik

I would trust the response from SigMik, as nothing occurs with the resisitance tests rules out a muscular issue. SigMik has given a plausible reason for your chronic pain. The graded exercises using the slump test deriatives should impove your symptoms for as long as you do not over do it. Primarily because it can easily be irritable (causing more inflamation). Your thoracic spine needs a thorough examination as suggested by SigMik, It might be a good idea to combine your self treatment with heat or a contrast treatment if you do not have a heart problem to get muscular relief and enable better movement. A visit to your doctor for some anti-inflammatoies should be helpful as this will reduce the inflammation furthermore in preparation for your self treatment as suggested by SigMik.

To SigMik, i do not feel a mckenzie approatch will help this situation primarily because like you say it sounds like a tethering of the dura matter. The Mckenzie approach purely looks at derangement from disc issues. If that is unlikely here, I think going through those principles will not make a difference. I agree with you that using graded neurodynamic exercises should be the way to go first.

To Dekkly/SigMik
A visit to the chiro maybe needed once more. Not to take anything away from the chiro as im sure he knows exactly what he is doing, logically speaking...it is perhaps better to use gentle mobilization of the vertebrae above and below to help stretch this tethering and perhaps gentle mobilizations to the tranverse processes of the involved vertebrae.

An X-ray will confirm that you might have a degenerative spine, it will unlikely show this problem, as SigMik rightly said your best bet is with the Wikipedia reference-linkMRI and I agree its not necessary yet unless the problem is not getting solved, best to avoid unnecessary radiation/investigation if the problem can be solved clinically.

Cheers to you both and thanks SigMik for helping us narrow this problem further.