Neuromuscular Therapy
From everyday overuse and compensation to acute injuries, Neuromuscular Therapy could provide the relief you’ve been searching for. Scroll on to learn more about how NMT can benefit you.
What is Neuromuscular Therapy?
A common sentence of feedback that we receive about Neuromuscular Therapy is “this is exactly what I’ve been searching for”. Neuromuscular Therapy is a highly researched and well developed approach to treatment of the body’s soft tissues. As you might imagine, this is highly useful when one is experiencing any type of dysfunction in the soft tissues of the body in chronic and acute scenarios alike.
The Neuromuscular Therapy approach allows healthcare practitioners to take a step back and seek out underlying issues within the body- biochemical, biomechanical, and psychological.
Biochemical examples: exposure to environmental factors that are toxic to the nervous system, activities that increase oxidative and hormonal stress, or nutritional deficiencies that could be contributing to poor sleep, low energy, and inadequate muscular repair.
Biomechanical examples: issues resulting from postural and body positioning, poor body mechanics during activity, irregular gait patterns, or adaptations to things like carrying an infant or possibly your genetic anatomy.
Psychological examples: unconscious “protection” of structures that have been previously injured or broken, emotional stressors preventing meaningful rest or encouraging tight musculature, excitable nerves and tight muscles from anxious tendencies, or issues with static positioning from depressive tendencies.
By identifying possible issues that could be contributing to your symptoms NMT allows treatment to be custom tailored to you.
Conversation throughout sessions help us determine these possible issues and help to formulate the approach to your sessions. Example: you’re experiencing headaches, neck tightness, and maybe some numbness in an arm/hand since starting a work from home desk job. Are you working on a multi-monitor setup now that is causing you to constantly be looking slightly to the left? How high is your desk chair in relation to your desk? Are you even working at a desk? (Looking at you folks who work from the kitchen. counter or your bed) Have your sleep habits changed? Are you crossing your legs in a wacky way to stay comfortable? These types of questions are what we seek to answer to help your body get back on track and to help you correct the habit that may be causing your issues.
Neuromuscular Therapy has a slower, deeper, and more detailed feel than many other types of Massage and Bodywork (this is what many people think of when they are asking for when requesting deep tissue massage). This often results in a meaningful improvement and change in the texture of your soft tissues (working all the “knots” out) and often times a deeply relaxing experience.
Whether you’ve awoken to a stiff neck or you have an old injury that bothers you, NMT could be exactly what you’ve been searching for.
Why is Neuromuscular Therapy so effective?
The best way to explain this is by example. Imagine you’ve had longstanding pain within the joint capsule of your shoulder. You’ve gotten imaging (MRI/CT), gone through PT (although they could practice NMT or an effective therapy to treat you, not just prescribe exercises), utilized steroid injections and you still have this nagging shoulder pain. Could it be that this pain signal is coming from an adjacent soft tissue that has yet to be addressed?
The comprehensive approach of Neuromuscular Therapy allows us to focus on finding the root cause of your issue.
Is there an adjacent structure (muscle, tendon, ligament, fascia, or periosteum) that could be causing the issue?
Is there a fascial restriction within the body that would affect this?
Is this an old injury that has formed scarring that is impacting your symptoms?
It should be noted that Neuromuscular Therapy is not exclusively practiced by Massage Therapists- but by a wide array of healthcare practitioners such as Chiropractors, Physical Therapists, Dentists, Athletic Trainers, and more.
This therapy is highly effective because it looks at the body through a multi-factorial lens, enabling the practitioner to get to the root causes of your issue.
What does Neuromuscular Therapy address?
Neuromuscular Therapy addresses symptoms associated with several types of conditions such as muscle pain and tension, headaches and migraines, repetitive stress injuries, sports injuries, myofascial pain, postural imbalances, and chronic pain conditions. NMT assesses dysfunctional tissues for the following: ischemia (tight tissue with restricted blood flow), postural irregularity, abnormal gait patters, myofascial trigger points (hyper tense spots in tissue commonly referred to as “knots”) , and neural entrapment.
Who can benefit from Neuromuscular Therapy?
A wide array of individuals have experienced benefits of Neuromuscular Therapy. More often than not, this therapy is adaptive to most ages, conditions, and concerns one might have. From tension headaches to plantar fasciitis- we’ve got you covered.
