What are we really doing with manual therapy?
Have you ever wondered what we really are trying to accomplish with manual therapy? This seems weird coming from a massage therapist who learned everything about how to release everything in the body. I have often questioned what it is and the mechanism behind it for a while now. When I was in massage school, I often wondered why trigger points never went away, they just became less sensitive. I really didn’t believe in the crap about stretching fascia either. I was curious. This has led me to the neurobased work that I do currently, and barely any massage these days.
What is cupping doing? Is it really moving toxins (LOL) or bringing stagnated blood to the surface? We already know that they aren’t “bruises.” But guess what, people like it and it makes them feel better? Placebo????? I prefer to use it as a way to move fluids or lymph to allow the nervous system to cope better.
How about KT tape? I still use it, but not for the reasons they say to use it. It does make a great inhibitor or facilitator for muscle tissue. It creates a presence in the nervous system to allow a change to occur. Its feed back to the brain. It’s used depending on what I’m trying to get the nervous system to recognize.
Lets not even talk about graston>>>eeeek! Tissue damage much! Unless your going to use it as a sensor to find restrictions or again give proper feed back to the appropriate structures your targeting. I like to use it lightly to get lymph moving and provide the proper stimulus to a certain muscle or tendon.
And we already know that you can’t break adhesions, muscle knots, stretch fascia, foam roll fascia to break up adhesions or scar tissue and anything else that was and is still being taught in PT/OT/massage school. The nervous system is in control. It decides what it’s going to let go or release. Not you who’s trying to subject the body to something it doesn’t want or is ready for. The muscles are just the slaves to what the brain is telling them.
This all brings me to my real point in this musing…The change that we get from what we are doing, is it really us or it is the fact that you have brought awareness to a issue, gave it breath and stability. I have been doing a little study with the people I work with that I train and who have no hands on therapy from me at all, versus the people I have had some interaction with manual therapy. What I find interesting is that both groups of people are getting better, moving well(they are getting the right dose of movement) are having less pain and of course getting stronger and more stable. I often find I hit a wall with my clients when we don’t get them moving and more stable and just focus on the manual stuff. So again my friends, is it really us doing whatever manual therapy we do to make them better? Or is it dosing movement and creating breath and stability?
Just some neuroworld food for thought