Soft tissue therapy involves manipulating the body’s soft tissues. This treatment includes essentially everything except the bones, including the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and more. These parts of the body allow us to move and hold our vital organs in position.
When moving begins to cause pain, treating the source directly with soft tissue massage physical therapy relieves chronic pain and occupational stress. The therapy relaxes overused muscles and softens scar tissue, allowing complete healing. There are several types of soft tissue injury therapy available.
How Soft Tissue Therapy Works
The goal of soft tissue therapy is to enhance the soft tissue function and restore responsiveness. Scar tissue and adhesions within our soft tissues cause pain and limit normal mobility. Alleviating the knots and adhesions while stretching and increasing soft tissue flexibility yields long-term relief.
Other soft tissue massage benefits include an improvement in circulation and nutrient distribution within the body. Cellular repair is also optimized, making these therapies very helpful for athletes and those recovering from injuries.
Types of Soft Tissue Therapy
Soft Tissue Massage
This is a type of therapeutic massage which deeply targets each muscle group in the body to stretch and soften the deep structures. The deeper toward the base of the muscle the therapist is able to go the greater the benefits.
Trigger Point Therapy (NIMMO Technique)
This treatment focuses on precise trigger points throughout the body that may be causing pain to radiate or spread. The therapist will relieve the constriction by locating the specific point and then applying healing pressure.
Muscle and Nerve Manipulation
Just as chiropractic adjustments improve the alignment of joints, muscle and nerve manipulation will bring the muscular and nervous systems back into correct alignment, providing relief from muscle spasms, nerve irritation, and sciatica pain relief.
Myofascial Release
Myofascial release focuses treatment on the tough connective tissues that hold muscles together in groups. The technique involves applying manual pressure and stretching those areas that are too tightly bound together.
Visceral Manipulation
This treatment entails soft, gentle manipulation of the supporting structures around the internal organs, working to pinpoint the areas which cause pain and reduce the effects of adhesions and internal scarring.
Spinal Decompression
Spinal decompression involves stretching and relaxing the spine to create negative pressure between the disks. This treatment provides lower back pain relief and is particularly helpful to counteract the stiffening effects of surgery.
Reap the Benefits of Moving Freely
Soft tissue therapy brings a wealth of other health benefits, such as:
- Correcting muscle imbalance
- Increasing the speed of healing
- Optimizing athletic performance
- Correcting dysfunctional movement patterns
- Decreasing blood pressure
- Dilating the coronary arteries
- Improving brain alpha-beta wave correspondence, increasing mental clarity
- Reducing the pain of fibromyalgia
Functional Medicine is All About You.
Wellness is not just the absence of disease, but a daily feeling of health and well-being. Functional medicine provides the body with balance and strength from the inside out by healing the root causes of disease to foster your true vitality.
If you suffer from IBD or other digestion issues, call Pollack Wellness or schedule a 15-minute discovery call today to learn how our functional medicine doctors and holistic services can help you. From enzyme replacement nutrition, to chiropractic care and detoxification services, we have many natural digestion treatment options for you.