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Time is a precious commodity these days. People want to pull up to the fast-food
window and have their food ready without slowing down the car. The same goes
for their health. If they can just feel as relaxed and have a greater reduction in pain
in less time, they will line up outside your door, so long as they don't have to wait.

The massage profession is the most giving profession I have experienced. I have
observed the wonderful benefits of soft tissue work over the years. Someone once
told me that I should have been a therapist instead of a doctor, because I don't "act"
like a doctor. I believe he meant that I was interested in helping the person, not just
in making money.

Over the years I have seen therapists work long, hard hours, and not see the results
with their clients that they wanted. Therapists have told me that their income is limited
because they work per minute, and there are only so many minutes in a day. A few
years ago, I developed a technique that increases results and only takes a fraction of
the time that a therapist normally spends with a client.

This method, the MyoKinesthetic System, is the soft tissue equivalent of Chiropractic.
It does not involve adjusting or moving of bones, but teaches a therapist how to be
specific by stimulating the nervous system. With this technique we do not work an
"area." We have mapped out the nerve roots and the peripheral nerves, where they
travel and which muscles to treat to have a specific impact. The beauty of this
technique is that because we are specifically treating the nervous system, we don't
have to work every fiber of the muscles we are treating. The power of this technique
is not how we treat the muscles, but rather which muscles to stimulate.

The nervous system is not exclusive to any one health-care profession. A medical
doctor will influence the nerve root or the nervous system with a shot or medication.
A chiropractor will influence a nerve root or the nervous system with an adjustment.
With the MyoKinesthetic System, a therapist learns to influence specific peripheral
nerves and the nervous system by manipulating the muscles.

To begin, we first clear the unbalanced memory of the muscles. Then we re-
educate the flexors and extensors, the opposition muscles, to restore full range of
motion in our clients. The exciting part of this technique is that each treatment is
different for every client, depending on what his or her problem is. Some treatments
take as little as three to four minutes, while others may take up to 15 minutes, depending
on how many muscles we need to treat for that particular problem. We bill per
treatment, not per minute.

HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
This method is a way to treat the cause of pain, the nervous system, in a specific way
via the muscles. This system follows a nerve root down its pathway to the muscles that
it innervates. Then it groups these muscles according to their nerve root innervation,
covering every nerve root and peripheral nerve that deals with movement.

As a health-care practitioner, I look for repeatable results. This system consistently rids
clients of pain in less than 15 minutes. Each treatment goes after the cause of pain, which
is the nervous system. It also enables the therapist to charge per treatment, not per minute.
This allows the therapist the ability to treat more clients with greater success in less time.
This technique is a stand-alone treatment. It is not an adjunct to other treatments, nor does
it need to be mixed with other professions.

We all know that the nervous system is the prime controller of homeostasis, which enables
the body to stay alive in an ever-changing environment. The nervous system controls your
heart and how it beats, how hard you breathe, when you feel hungry; it makes you sweat
when you feel hot. It controls muscle movement, contraction and relaxation; it controls when
you feel pain, the location of pain and the type of pain. Every time you touch someone, you
are stimulating the nervous system. Unfortunately, many massage therapists have not been
specifically taught about the nervous system.

My philosophy is that the two professions of Chiropractic and massage therapy should work
together. Muscles are connected to bones. Whether a bone gets forced out of place because
of an accident or pulled out of place by a muscle in spasm, the end result is the same; the
muscle is not working properly and the bone is not moving properly.

As you enter Palmer College of Chiropractic, based in Davenport Iowa, there is a sign above
one of the doors that reads: "Chiropractic is specific or it is nothing."

A chiropractor tries to impact the nervous system by rendering an adjustment, trying to move
a single bone and finding a way to impact a single nerve root. A nerve root is the junction
between the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). By
stimulating the nerve root with an adjustment, a chiropractor can achieve immediate and
long lasting results in a person's health.

It was not my intention to develop a new technique, but that is where my research led me. I
took the chiropractic philosophy of being specific, and applied it to the muscles. This is not
chiropractic, but a soft-tissue technique. This system does not move/adjust bones; it impacts
the nerve roots by treating specific muscles. Not only is this system able to have an impact at
one nerve root and help people with their pain, but because this system is being specific with
which muscles to treat, a therapist does not have to treat the muscles for very long to have
an impact. The power of this technique comes from the grouping of which muscles to treat,
not how to treat them. Every muscle innervated by a single nerve root has its memory cleared
after a treatment. This not only helps relieve the person's pain, but also assists in making postural
changes as well.

The ultimate goal is to get to the cause of pain, which is the nervous system. Muscles can
impinge on nerves, causing pain. To obtain consistent, repeatable results, you must be
specific. The more specific you are, the more likely you are to help the patient. With this
system, a therapist does not have to work for 30 to 60 minutes to get every muscle relaxed.
If you stimulate only the specific muscles innervated by one nerve root, then a treatment takes
less than 15 minutes.

The concept can be thought of like a telephone cable. At the beginning of a street with 20
houses, it starts off with 20 small wires within it. As it travels down the road, it drops off one
little wire to each house. Think of the PNS as being similar, with the nerve root having many
little wires within it, and then traveling down a large peripheral nerve and dropping off wires
at each muscle.

For example, the C6 nerve root innervates 41 different muscles in the upper body bilaterally.
With this system, we stimulate those 41 muscles - and only those 41 muscles - so that all of
those muscles will relax and stay relaxed for a longer time frame. If one of those muscles is in
a contracted state and impinging on a nerve, causing numbness in the hand, we can get rid of this
numbness effortlessly and quickly with lasting results.

Helping the client is the number one goal of the health-care professional. A lot of therapists
think "If I work more muscles, I am doing this person a favor; they will feel better." But actually
if you are trying to help someone who has shoulder pain, and you work more than the 31 muscles
innervated by the C5 nerve, you might end up stimulating the C6 nerve root more, in which case
you are telling the body and brain that you are trying to help with a problem in the hand.
Consequently, you have worked too long and too hard without achieving your desired result.

There are a number of treatments that use a stretch and compress technique. The MyoKinesthetic
System differs by targeting specific muscles to stimulate during a treatment. However, the movements
may be similar to other techniques. For example, if I want to stretch the biceps, I need to
extend the elbow. I can do this with the client standing, sitting, lying on the stomach, lying on
the side, etc. The end result with any of these positions is extension of the elbow. For this
technique, every muscle of the upper body is stimulated while the client is seated. This allows
for ease and quickness of a treatment.

I have been doing research on this for more than 12 years, and one significant thing I have
found is that the therapist does not need to treat the muscle until it relaxes. The reason is
because this system stimulates and clears the memory of all the muscles in a specific way,
this sends information up through a single nerve root in the CNS into the brain, then back
down the CNS through the single nerve root to each muscle treated. This allows every
muscle along this nerve root pathway to relax more fully, for a longer time.

ABOUT THE TREATMENT

There are three parts to this treatment. First is a passive stretch, which clears the memory
of the muscle. Second is an active stretch, which reeducates the muscles. And third, if
needed, is a pinpoint compression for problem areas.

Let me explain the stretches. In a passive stretch, the client is in a relaxed state and the
therapist moves the client's muscles through their range of motion. Be sure not to
overstretch a muscle. Every joint has a ligament. The purpose of a ligament is to prevent
a joint from moving too far. If the therapist takes a muscle into a stretch and then goes
further, the therapist starts to stretch the ligament and stops stretching the muscle. Over
time this will cause injury, which is the opposite of what we in the health-care profession
want. With this technique, it's important we stay within each person's own joint range
of motion.

If clients have their rhomboids in spasm, they could possibly look like they are standing
at attention in the military. The rhomboids are in a contracted state, and the pectoralis
major is in a stretched state. This client will not have full range of motion in the shoulder.
The therapist will take the client's rhomboids into a passive stretch. To stretch the right
rhomboid major and minor muscles, take the patient's right hand and place it on the
left shoulder. Grasp the elbow and push in an upward and backward (superior and
posterior) direction, and then stimulate the rhomboids. A therapist can stimulate the
muscles either by gliding, cross friction, or straight compression, whatever method the
therapist thinks is most comfortable. The passive stretch on each muscle only needs to
be done four to six times to clear the memory of each muscle.

The second aspect is an active stretch. This is where the client activates the opposite
muscle(s) that the therapist is stimulating. So with our example, the client would actively
bring the arm across the chest to activate the pectoralis major muscle; meanwhile, the
therapist would still be stimulating the rhomboid muscle. Again, this is telling the muscle
in spasm, "when this muscle contracts, you must relax." This active stretch only needs to
be done four to six times to help reeducate the muscles.

The third aspect is pinpoint compression. This is only done if a muscle is in a contracted
state, or if there are trigger points in the muscle. If the therapist can feel either of these
during the passive and active treatments, the therapist will go back to this muscle for
what I call pinpoint compression. The therapist will again take the client through a range
of motion, but this time focusing on the problem muscle and the problem within this muscle.
During the passive and active movements the therapist is stimulating the origin, insertion,
and belly of each muscle; however during pinpoint compression, the therapist is focusing
on the trigger point itself. This pinpoint compression only needs to be done four to
six times.

Remember, this technique treats all the muscles innervated by a single nerve root. Some
muscles will be in spasm and have trigger points and other muscles will not. The muscles
that are in spasm or have trigger points will be treated with up to 18 stretches; the other
muscles will be treated with around eight stretches. There is a rhythm to this technique, and
each therapist has his or her own. I treat with a faster repetition and the therapists in my
office treat with a slower repetition; we get the same results with our clients.

The stretch is the most important part of this technique; the stimulation of the muscle
is secondary. The compression does not have to be deep, so the therapist does not
have to exert a lot of force. The stretch is most important to make sure the correct
muscle is being affected. The compression will help hone in on the specific nerve root
to affect, thereby relaxing all the muscles along this pathway.

Let me give a few examples. By bringing the client's arm across the chest with the
palm facing down, the therapist can stretch the middle trapezius. By bringing the client's
arm across the chest with the palm facing up, the therapist can stretch the latissimus dorsi
and teres major.

By opening the fingers and working between the metacarpal bones, the therapist is
stretching and affecting the palmar interossei muscles. By extending the fingers and working
between the metacarpal bones, the therapist is now stretching and affecting the lumbricales.
This is why I say the stretch is the most important aspect, because without proper placement
of the client, you will not get the desired results.

CONCLUSION

Why is it important to be specific? So we can obtain repeatable results. A chiropractor tries
to move a single bone one way to have an impact at a single nerve root. If you stimulate all
the muscles of the upper body, you are being one-ninth as specific as someone who stimulates
only the muscles from one nerve root. If you stimulate all the muscles of the lower body, you
are being one-seventh as specific as this technique. This technique is geared to help with
specific complaints, and to relieve a client's pain faster and for a longer period of time.

I have found over the years that the more specific I am, the less I have to work, and the
greater the results! All it takes is less than 15 minutes to get your client out of pain, and to
have it last. It doesn't take a lot of time, and this is difficult for some therapists to understand.
They still want to work per minute, to spend at least 30 to 60 minutes per client. This
technique gives you the ability to charge for what you do, not how much time you spend.
It gives you the ability to treat more clients with greater success in less time.

As I said earlier, the number one goal for anyone who works in the health-care profession
is to help others. The method described in this article represents a way to treat the pain's
cause - the nervous system - in a specific way via the muscular system. You can cut
treatment time down to 15 minutes and get better results. Be specific and get
consistent, repeatable results!

Summer 2004 - Massage Therapy Journal

mike@myokinesthetic.com email address