Has traditional physical therapy failed you?
If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, you might be interested in this blog.
Allow me to introduce myself my name is Courtney and I am a physical therapist with Omni Wellness and Performance. I have always wanted to help people which is what drew me to peak performance physical therapy in the first place.
Omni is a physical therapy Virginia based clinic that focuses on sports medicine physical therapy.
Over the years, I found myself becoming more interested in various manual therapy techniques, such as dry needling which helped a lot of people but I found it couldn’t help everyone.
Around this time, I started having back issues and was seeing a chiropractor, acupuncturist, and massage therapist which all helped me with my pain. I became my own marker of how effective a treatment method was based on how I felt from it.
I took my first visceral manipulation course a few years ago and it really opened my eyes to a new way of looking at and treating the body. In the class, we practiced with each other and the relief I felt in my back from releasing restrictions in my abdominal organs was amazing. It felt like it had been the missing piece for several of my patients (and myself). I have now taken 3 out of the 4 core courses for visceral manipulation.
Another manual therapy technique that I received treatment in was Amatsu. This is an amazing therapy that really looks at the body as whole regardless of where a person’s complaints of pain might be because the root cause of the problem might be in a seemingly unrelated part of the body.
The difference I felt in my body after one session was enough for me to determine I had to learn this technique. I started the certification program in 2019 and started utilizing what I learned on my patients right away with great results. I’m going to spend a little time in this blog talking more about Amatsu:
The best way to describe how it works is to think of the body as a cog wheel system. One cog, no matter how big or small, not moving is going to affect the whole system.
Our bodies are amazing structures that compensate in ways without us even realizing there is a problem in the system. So the first cog gets stuck on a toothpick which starts to affect the cogs connected to it but the system needs to keep working so it finds ways around the stuck cogs.
This compensation starts to create issues in other areas because of the change in mechanics which leads to new compensations. This continues until the body can no longer handle all of the compensations so it waves a white flag at the final breaking point.
This is why we start having pain without recalling doing anything to injure ourselves.
How many people have felt they just woke up one morning with pain?
What Amatsu does is assess the body to find where the initial cog that got stuck on a toothpick and caused the whole system to change. Once this is found, the treatment to “remove” the toothpick through gentle, focused touch.
When the initial stuck cog can move normally again, the connecting cogs start to move again as well which has a widespread effect on the whole system.
This is why traditional approaches might not provide more permanent pain relief, they focus on where the symptoms are instead of finding the root cause. Without treating the initial cause, the issue will continue to exist.
I hope you found this blog interesting. My plan going forward is to post about various topics to increase your awareness and understanding of how our bodies work. Until next time, take care.
Courtney Dagan, PT, DPT
