Soft Tissue Therapy

Soft tissue therapy is targeted clinical massage. It is hands on bodywork that can get you out of many kinds of painful episodes and reduces tensile and compressive stress on your body, dramatically speeding up the healing process. 'Soft tissue’ refers to the type of body structures that are targeted in a treatment session and include:​

• Muscles, tendons and ligaments

• Fascia (superficial and deep)

• Fluids such as blood, lymph, interstitial fluid (between cells)

• Arteries, veins, lymph nodes and channels

• Nerves and motor programs (brain maps that direct movement/ dysfunctional patterns)

 

One of the strongest aspects of Soft tissue therapy is that it aims to make a big improvement of symptoms in the first treatment. Clinically we see this 95% of the time. Longer lasting change occurs in many problems within 3-4 treatments.

 

What is Soft tissue therapy good for?

• Random muscle aches and pain that move around the body

• Neck and lumbar spine disc bulges. 

• Computer posture-rounded shoulders and sway backs

• Functional and structural scoliosis of the spine

• Growing pains in children and adolescents

• Thoracic outlet syndrome

• Muscle tears

• Tendon and bursitis conditions

• The need to increase range of motion for various sports eg. shoulder and thoracic spine flexibility for snatch in Olympic weight lifting

• Poor posture and repetitive strain injuries

• Tennis and golfers elbow

• Plantar fasciitis

• Whiplash

• Many kinds of nerve conditions in the neck, lumbar spine, arms and legs

• Tension headaches and some migraines.

• Erasing compensation patterns post injury and post surgery

• Post joint surgeries (once surgeon/physio approval has been given)

• Adrenal fatigue and central fatigue (nervous system burnout)

• Unusually rigid tight muscles throughout the body

• Also, most conditions being over seen by a physiotherapist, podiatrist, chiropractor or osteopath

 

Soft tissue therapy techniques:

• Remedial massage and sports massage techniques

• Trigger point therapy

• Nerve pain release techniques 

• Myofascial dry needling for trigger points

• Deep Ischemic release techniques with elbows, thumbs or fingers

• Myofascial release techniques

• Passive tissue tensioning techniques

• Muscle energy techniques

• PNF pain elimination techniques

• Active release technique

• Positional release technique

• Loaded stretching for accelerated flexibility development and improved joint stability

• Kinesiotaping for support

• Postural taping techniques 

• First stage exercise rehabilitation

• Breathing retraining

• Swedish massage techniques

• Relaxation massage techniques to in aid recovery from central fatigue (nervous system burnout)

 

Chris also uses Bowen Therapy as a part of Soft Tissue Therapy sessions as he finds it very often adds positive change to the session. Bowen Therapy is also available as a stand alone technique.

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