What to expect
My approach to physiotherapy involves taking a little more time to talk through problems, incorporating education in anatomy and relevant ideas from neuroscience, using principles of yoga, and viewing pain from a wider perspective.
I use my hands to facilitate movement and for pain modulation through soft tissue work and joint mobilisation when appropriate. My focus is on functional human movement.
A thorough initial assessment forms the foundation of your treatment. From this we formulate a treatment plan together, We work with the natural movement patterns that feed into everyday life, to help you to do the things that you want to do, live the life you want to live, and feel good doing it.
Who is physiotherapy for?
As just a few examples...people with: back pain, neck pain, hip pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, ankle pain, foot pain, or arm pain.
People who've been told they have sciatica, tennis elbow, a slipped disc, a pinched nerve, arthritis, a rotator cuff tear, frozen shoulder, tendonitis, plantar fasciitis.
People who are recovering from injury, from surgery, from an accident or a fall. People with pain thats been there for a long time, pain that has just started, or pain that comes and goes.
People who are having problems with walking, with running, with swimming, with lifting weights, with lifting grandkids, with their balance or their stability.
What do I mean by 'holistic'?
Is this just a buzzword? Will there be chanting? Candles? Working with your aura?
I sit in a middle ground between western, evidence-based medical practice, and the other side of looking at life, health and the body. What I mean by holistic is that I look at more than just the nuts and bolts. Pain ALWAYS has more contributing to it than purely the body tissues. Even when an injury is acute (meaning it has just happened), your beliefs about what caused the pain will affect how much pain you are in.
Finding out what else is going on in your life, what your worries about this problem are, what your sleep is like, your mood, your social support network, what your work life balance is like, how you feel about your family, what you think is happeneing to cause your pain and what others have told you about it already. All of these things and more may be influencing your pain experience, and are therefore relevant. This means we do a fair bit of talking during an initial assessment - the aim is to figure out what else in your life is playing a part in your pain experience, and help you to acknowledge this so that you can piece together the puzzle that is your existence.