Heal
Heal & Restore
Manual Therapy includes a variety of highly refined and complex bodywork therapies combining traditional Chinese medical principles and modern Western approaches. A holistic bodywork program restores, promotes, and maintains optimum health through the treatment of the physical body, bioenergy, and emotions that reflect and are bound into the neuromuscular system.
In my practice, I work with modalities such as myofascial manual AMMA Therapy®, Neural Manipulation, or Post-Trauma-Injury Recovery techniques since they have proven to be the most effective healing protocols for treating a wide range of medical conditions.
AMMA Therapy®
AMMA (“push-pull”) is an ancient Asian bodywork therapy dating back approximately five thousand years to the period of the legendary Yellow Emperor that combines all forms of massage. It assesses the flow and harmony of the five essential substances: Qi (energy), Jing (essence), Shen (spirit), Xue (blood), and Jin-ye (body fluids).
To achieve this harmonious state, AMMA Therapy® proposes a structured protocol of pressure techniques, allowing the therapist to create a customized session via acupressure points, balance the energy, and restore wellbeing. These treatments can stimulate your entire body’s energy channels or calm your nervous system.
Choreographed movements and pressure techniques like pressing, stroking, stretching, and tapping with thumbs, fingers, arms, or elbows along the acupressure points of your body’s meridians increase circulation, improve the flexibility of joints and soft tissue, enhance healing, circulate and drain lymphatic fluid, and strengthen your immune system.
AMMA Therapy® may also include herbal supplements, teas, and exercise, alleviating conditions like arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, diabetes, hypertension, neuromuscular diseases, respiratory problems, skin conditions, or tissue injuries.
Neural Manipulation
Neural Manipulation branches out of Visceral Manipulation that focuses on repositioning internal organs. Its creators, two French Osteopaths, Jean-Pierre Barral and Alain Croibier, began to study trauma further and discovered that any injury impacts and elicits a reaction from the nervous system (www.barralinstitute.com).
Neural refers to the body’s nervous system, which includes the brain, the spinal cord, and the peripheral nerves. These intricate and delicate systems act as the body’s “communication highway.” When these connections are imperfect, pain and loss of function can result.
Depending on the amount and the direction of the force damage caused by whiplash, concussions, or traumatic brain injury, vasculature to the brain tears and internal bleeding occurs. Neurons, neural centers, and support tissues will also be damaged, leading to post-concussion syndrome. Symptoms can differ in individuals, including headaches, neck pain, apparently unrelated pain syndromes, dizziness, sleep disorders, tunnel vision, stiff neck, photophobia, tinnitus, fatigue, or hormonal imbalances.
Neural Manipulation is a light touch, hands-on treatment that releases local nerve restrictions as it locates other areas affected by the injured nerves and corrects and cures physical issues. It also can improve emotional and behavioral issues such as anxiety, apathy, depression, aggressiveness, apathy, or cognitive dysfunction.
Post-Trauma-Injury Recovery
When an injury is caused by accident or surgery, your body experiences a significant trauma, and its immediate reaction is a sharp local pain. Later, your body may also develop auxiliary pain in different parts since your body’s natural response is to guard and protect the injured area to a cellular level.
Post-Trauma-Injury Recovery therapies differentiate significantly between methods used at an acute stage and protocols to heal an injury already in the recovery process. Both treatments focus on the tight and guarded areas and promote relaxation and healing to the body and mind.
Massages reach where muscles and soft tissue are tight, gently kneading and stretching the affected areas until the body is loosened. Improved circulation and blood flow to the injured section speed up your recovery.
Some people experience a significant emotional connection to the original trauma as recovery begins. Therefore, treating mental and physical symptoms is essential to return to the original (“pre-trauma”) state of wellness and equilibrium.