Do you have stiff Joints? Tight muscles? Precise and specific mobilizations can help work through some of this stiffness and adhesions, unlocking some hidden movement and activation potential that’s been inhibited by tissue tightness and shortening. But that’s not all! Some of the sensory pathways may have been damaged by a neurological lesion or injury, mobilizations can help improve the mapping of the body in the mind’s eye. This can be immensely helpful in the pursuit of recovering function.

Do your extremities occasionally move involuntarily? Do you experience numbness or tingling? This is likely due to inappropriate sensory processing. Progressive sensory stimulation can help your senses normalize. It can help your brain sort through sensations that are too intense or it can help you regain sensation in areas that are numb. Regaining sensation typically precedes regaining movement therefore sensory stimulation is crucial to movement recovery. You can imagine how hard it would be for your brain to move a body segment that it can’t feel or doesn’t have any awareness of.

Is your goal to sit independently? Stand without arm support? Walk again? Therapy should be geared to these activities and be challenging enough to mirror the demands of these tasks. In order to learn to stand you have to be provided the experience of standing. In order to walk you need to have the experience of walking. Gone are the days of generic cookie-cutter exercises applied to clients with vastly different abilities!

Is standing a challenge for you? Are you able to walk but often your toe drags? With the help of a therapist you could perform these movements with better alignment and with an improved movement pattern. Through skillful hands-on assistance your therapist is able to help you experience better movement, help your brain re-map movement sequences, and to do them in a manner that’s safe and repeatable.

Neuroplasticity is the principle that the nervous system and neural networks can grow and reorganize based on the experience and stimulus it is provided with. With enough intensity of treatment, specificity of the exercises, frequency of treatment and appropriate facilitation you are able to learn new movements. Consider how its possible to learn a new language or start a new hobby at any age, that’s neuroplasticity at work!

Motor learning is the process of acquiring new skills (or movement) and refining skills already possessed to do them well. All previously mentioned variables work in concert with each other and culminate into what we know as motor learning. For example, standing with therapist assistance, provides the experience, sensation and physical challenge of a proper stand. Overtime the therapist reduces their support and you slowly learn the movement patterns and develop the muscle activation required to stand appropriately on your own!