Manual Therapy and Manipulation of the Spine.

There are many different techniques available to facilitate the timely healing of a back pain problem. Some people choose to believe that there is a quick fix and that getting their backs cracked will absolve them of all guilt caused by years of abuse and neglect of our most important asset our spine!
I believe there are more than one way to "crack" the case and to be a part of facilitating the healing of a damaged back. My techniques are based on 19 years experience with manual therapy, and are gentle and safe but yet powerful enough to correct spinal misalignment's.
Sure, I was taught the "old school" where if it did not crack it did not do anything! The problem with the required "crack approach" is that there is a greater risk of doing harm to the surrounding tissue. I therefore changed my approach to exert a gentler adjustment but with the same end result and less risk of doing harm.
The adjustment of alignment faults is only the first part of getting someone better. After the tracking of the joints have improved we need to work on keeping the joints in the proper alignment during movement and during functional activities. This involves postural awareness retraining and dynamic muscle stability retraining.
I often think about my early encounter with treatment of people with a stroke or other neurological dysfunctions. Their movement pattern totally changed and often these clients experienced pain in the low back and shoulders due to their dysfunctional pattern. The parallel with musculo skeletal dysfunction is that pain can cause "micro-paralysis" of the muscles involved in stability and functional movement patterns, which in turn affect the proper motion of the spinal segments.
It is important that each spinal segment is able to move in its designed path, as restrictions at any level causes strain and can lead to pain. The trouble with pain and even the anticipation of pain is that it can cause muscle inhibition. With muscle inhibition and weakness often follows a compensatory pattern by the wrong muscles which exert the wrong force at the wrong time and thus can affect the pattern of motion of the spinal segment. Timing of activation and quality of contraction are both very important in the process of rehabilitation.