Progression Through Multiple Sessions

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Hands On Healing in Montgomery, Alabama offers bodywork services consisting of multiple sessions for those suffering from chronic conditions.

The Healing “Process”

Have you ever heard the phrase “time heals all wounds”?

For those suffering with chronic pain or movement dysfunctions this phrase may be a bit of an insult.

People with chronic issues can testify that they go to sleep every night wishing that time would simply heal their conditions, but they instead wake up each day with the same problem at hand. However, time is an essential component in the healing process of the human body, and while the average person may want to get instant results, improvements cannot be forced to occur overnight.

This process couldn’t be more true when discussing the use of bodywork and manual therapies.

It is not uncommon for clients to approach hands-on therapy with the misconception that they will experience a sense of pain relief, or very sudden movement improvement, from only a single session. However, if they do not experience a sudden change, it can often lead to a sense of disappointment for the clients, and may very well discourage them from continuing to seek treatment for improving their condition.

While bodywork can vastly shorten the time it would take to improve a condition, it still cannot remove the factor of time altogether.

Importance of “Progression”

This is when the importance of progression is discussed with our clients, that a single session is only just beginning to scratch the surface of what is often a multifaceted and complicated problem.

Whether someone is facing a circumstance with pain or movement, narrowing down the leading culprit in a chronic condition often raises more questions than it provides answers.

• Is someone experiencing pain because the movements are dysfunctional?
• Has damage already been done and is pain altering the movement patterns?
• Is there potentially a combination of both circumstances?

Assessment is Key

As with every bodywork session, assessment is a key component to ensuring that the correct dysfunctions are being addressed as they present themselves.

Distinguishing between tissue restrictions, movement issues, or any active and painful trigger points will give way to achieving the best possible results from the session as a whole. Yet not every single dysfunction can be fully relieved within the span of a single session. Oftentimes, spending any more than an hour on treatment has detrimental effects on the body, hindering progress rather than supporting it.

Bodywork is a process of planning and treating in response to the body’s most pressing issues, generally only focusing on a single dysfunction at a time, or balancing one concern so that a secondary problem can be appropriately addressed.

This step-by-step thinking is something we as therapists practice within all our bodywork sessions, looking ahead of the curve and planning one stage at time to achieve longer lasting results.

Customized Therapy Sessions

Each person’s dysfunctions, medical and injury-related history, lifestyle and activities vary, making no two sessions the same in any way.

This also leaves us without defined timetables on exactly how many sessions it takes to improve someone’s particular concerns.

Rarely does a single session allow someone to fully improve from a long–standing chronic problem, and it will almost always take at least a handful of sessions to see notable progress.

One of the leading reasons that many of our clients have seen improvements after other therapies simply didn’t help is that we always combine the process of soft tissue release therapy with the improvement of assigned movement patterns at home.

This “homework” we give our clients ensures that they continue to experience a sense of awareness around their bodies’ day-to-day functions, so that they don’t potentially undo any improvements that may have been achieved during their session. However, it also serves to improve balance in areas where a client is not naturally inclined to maintain good form, and in so doing the client actually “preps” the body for any potential changes that a follow-up session could accomplish.

1. Source: “Exercise ball, dumbbells, and weight scale,” CC0 Creative Commons License via Pixabay » [go back ↑]