Physiotherapists are trained with a variety of techniques from around the world to understand how the body is supposed to move. Manual Therapy is a variety of techniques done using the hands to guide joint, nerve, and muscle into normal patterns that are often disrupted by injury. Once the areas of dysfunction are identified, manual therapy restores normal mobility to these structures. The injury is often the cause of tension or stress built up in one area that causes the source of the patient’s pain. Much like a wheel alignment for your car, once the wheel is aligned properly and things are running smoothly, you notice the difference. Manual Therapy restores the alignment in the body and afterwards when you move you feel that same difference. Restoring mobility to these dysfunctional areas with manual therapy allows painful areas not to allow force to build up.
Our therapists are continually learning new advanced manual therapy techniques through ongoing education and seminars staged around the world. Finding areas of dysfunction and restoring normal motion is a key factor in every patient’s recovery. This directly leads to an accurate treatment strategy. This takes areas of tightness, friction, tension and strain and remobilizes them into mobile, flexible and strong areas. Often people don’t understand what structure is tight or weak, however once manual therapy restores it to its pre-injury state they can feel the difference. With these areas corrected, the path is clear to begin strengthening and movement training, which will ultimately re-strengthen the injured area. It also guides our physiotherapists to select the right exercises to assist in re-strengthening these previously found weak areas, turning them from weakness into strength. This essentially strengthens the weakest link in the chain. Manual Therapy targets the problem at its source, whether it is deep or superficial and leads to lasting change.