MANUAL THERAPY HOW DOES IT WORK?
Manual therapy can be a great tool in aiding recovery from pain and injury.
Below is a list of some of the benefits of manual therapy and how it can fit into your journey of recovery.
Manual therapy can help with the following:
Relieve symptoms, increase movement and decrease muscle tone.
Help both decrease our perception of threat and push us into a more relaxed (parasympathetic) state.
Promoting lymphatic circulation. For more on the lymphatic system visit my other blog post titled …
Building the therapeutic relationship between a client and practitioner. There’s something to be said about another human genuinely caring for you, listening and having your back (literally).
All of the above is especially important if you are looking to start your journey getting you back to doing the things you love.
HOWEVER, Manual therapy can be poorly used in healthcare when it’s positioned as a fix or sold as having the ability to change your structure.
What do I mean by that? Here are a couple of claims to be wary of
◾️”Putting joints back into place”
◾️”Releasing knots in your muscles”
◾️”Realigning your body”
Techniques with claims such as the above, have no current evidence to support them. If you have felt better despite your practitioner mentioning one of the above, the treatment likely helped for other reasons.
For me, I find manual therapy great for creating a window of opportunity to calm down the nervous system and help improve pain and function for the short term.
With each window of relief, movement and less muscle tightness. We can use this as an opportunity to make changes to our habits or current lifestyle.
This might look like strategies to improve our health, adjusting technique, program adjustments and/or corrective exercise.
All of this and a client's needs will be best gathered by a thorough case history and assessment of their movement.
Manual therapy creates short-term change and a window of opportunity to start making long term change!
References
Kerry, R., Young, K.J., Evans, D.W. et al. A modern way to teach and practice manual therapy. Chiropr Man Therap 32, 17 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12998-024-00537-0