|
The history of Myotherapy is one of claim and
counter claim as to who is credited with coming up
with the name. Most claims seem to disregard
that the term has been used since relatively ancient
times. Around 1986, the term, "myotherapy" was
used to describe a number of courses offered at the
time.
RMIT
is arguably the best known of the tertiary
institutions offering early Myotherapy courses as an
advanced diploma, but is by no means the only one.
Myotherapy is a blanket term covering a large
range of technique styles (modalities) relatively
common to most academically oriented,
non-manipulative body workers. Myotherapy's
original charter was to introduce functional
medicine into what is a structurally dominated
field. Myo means muscle, therapy is therapy,
application of knowledge aimed at lessening the
impact of imbalances.
Whilst not strictly limited to the muscular
system, Myotherapists routinely regard soft and
medium connective tissue (muscles, tendons,
ligaments etc) as their arena.
Read more
about Myotherapy in general here
Simply put, functional medicine uses the client
themselves as the benchmark of 'normal' and works to
achieve balance in the body's tissues and systems by
removing movement limitations which would otherwise
trigger imbalance. The classic question a
functional therapist will challenge a situation with
is, "why is this happening?".
An illustration often used in my clinic is of a
snow bound village being hit by an avalanche.
Think of the destruction at the bottom of the valley
as the symptoms with which the client presents.
Functional medicine challenges the therapist to
detect and eliminate the trouble maker with the snow
ball at the top of the hill and stop the cascade
from occurring in the first place.
Whilst over-simplistic and abstract, this
illustration is also quite correct in many cases.
Often an essentially unfelt movement restriction in
a tissue far removed from the symptoms is a trigger
which leads to compensation, adaptation and eventual
dysfunction is areas far removed from the original
trigger.
Read more about symptom
cascades here
Structural medicine suggests that if the shoulder
hurts, has a reduced range of motion and does not
meet the 'book's' definitions of what a should
should be able to do, then it is the shoulder that
requires treatment and correction. This is a
classically reductionist point of view which is
necessary in the learning of the components of the
whole body. The problem comes when this
reductionist learning is not re-integrated into a
whole inter-related organism with varying levels of
activity, genetic potential etc.
This is a question of practicality (disregarding
all of the conspiracy theories for a moment at
least!). The only effective way a functional
therapist in training gets to learn is by placing
their hands on a body with a particular problem and
educating the touch. It can not be taught from
a text book AND it relies to a great degree on
reductionist, component learning for its basis.
When a functional therapist 'listens' to a body
by placing their hand somewhere on the client, they
are not channelling psychic information! They
are feeling the subtle draw of functional
restrictions reflected through the body's tissues
and detecting these with their hand/s. Using
an extensive knowledge of anatomy and experience
gained at their 'master's' side, they learn how
different restrictions feel.
The techniques used in Myotherapy vary greatly.
Structurally oriented courses have therapists
chasing myofascial trigger points and often using
dry needle techniques. The ideal of Myotherapy
is totally different in that rather that challenging
a tissue to adapt to the therapist's view of what it
'should be doing', a Myotherapist aims to highlight
to the body the misalignment or malplacement and
bring about a circumstance where the client's body
does their own manipulation within the range of
change that they can tolerate.
We use an almost exclusively functional approach
to working with out clients to achieve improved
health and wellbeing. Muscular releases,
visceral manipulation, cranio-sacral techniques all
feature strongly in our work.
Read more about Visceral
Manipulation here
Read more about cranio-sacral
therapy here
|
