Manual Therapies Make Space

At this point there is very little (if any) compelling evidence that massage or other manual therapies can heal, fix, or cure anything. I’m not saying that manual therapies are ineffective or unwarranted, but research thus far shows that manual care alone produces only short term changes. Despite their short term nature, these changes can be extremely valuable if leveraged correctly. This understanding can help set reasonable expectations and produce more favorable outcomes for everyone involved.

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Historical Posture Perspective

I was recently sent “The Rise and Fall of American Posture” which is a wonderful sociological account of how we in the United States came to highly value and (relatively) devalue the role of posture in health and everyday life. Posture has historically been a central theme in fitness, massage, rehabilitation, and other movement disciplines, (but not everyone has the time or desire to read through nearly 40 pages about posture) so I’ve attempted to condense some of the more thought provoking and relevant points while adding some commentary of my own.

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Microblog: Movement and Nutrition

Just about everyone agrees that it’s healthy to eat blueberries. But no reasonable person says that because blueberries are healthy, you should stop eating everything else and only eat blueberries. In fact, if you could survive on exclusively blueberries, you wouldn’t be very healthy as a person and you would probably start to hate the taste of blueberries. We need a variety of foods in our diets to keep us healthy and happy.

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Microblog: Mouse or Monster?

Imagine that you’ve just seen a really scary movie and you’re walking alone. As you walk by an alley you hear an unknown noise. What’s the first thing you think that noise is? The monster, the slasher, or whatever the villain is from the scary movie. Your heart races and your muscles tense up even if only for a moment. There is a real experience of fear and real physiological response. Of course you know there isn’t a monster in the alley, but you have been primed to react to any unknown sound as a possible threat.

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Breaking Painful Habits

Sometimes you push too hard, don’t recover enough, stress piles up, and you start to hurt with certain activities. A lot of the time you don’t even know how these things happened, yet they linger over months or even years. These pesky things that we often mislabel “old injuries” can limit you from doing things that you enjoy and are good for you. You don’t have to give up those activities, you just need to find different ways to do them.

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Letters to Muscles

Dear Transverse Abdominus,

I’m sure you’re lovely, but this focus on you for low back pain just isn’t working out. We can still be friends, but we’re just not going to be spending a lot of alone time together. I hope you understand. It’s not about you, it’s just an evidence thing.

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