Barrett Dorko
25-06-2007, 02:21 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
I actually started to write this week’s column as I sat in the Cleveland airport on Tuesday waiting for my flight to Michigan. I watched as across the concourse a man about my age fixed a sign to the wall above some machinery. I wrote down the tools he used but found I was far more interested in how he used his hands and eyes, his weight and height. I thought that this might lead to some writing but the idea disappeared some time on Thursday.
Then a therapist commented about my apparent lack of concern for posture and strengthening regimens. “If you don’t do that you don’t fulfill your obligation to the patient – you don’t do what they expect,” she said.
Right up until this moment I had the sense that this woman and I were pretty much in agreement, but if she thinks that manual and movement therapy for painful problems must include classic postural instruction and “muscular balance,” as she called it, we aren't. I don’t think I need to get into that here because my reasoning in opposition to these things is all over Soma Simple.
I commonly find that therapists are very concerned about their patient’s expectations, which, of course, makes some sense. But it’s been my experience as a clinician that what most therapists think patients want (strengthening regimes and postural instructions) aren’t part of the patient’s agenda at all. All I had to do was ask them. Even if they expected this stuff I could talk them into something else without any difficulty. They were grateful to find that they hadn’t walked into the office of a personal trainer the insurance company would pay for. They just wanted care and that’s all I offered.
Similarly, many of my students will comment that they appreciate how little I direct them in technique but rather have a tendency to allow them to discover what another is doing instinctively by landing lightly and waiting. It’s remarkably easy and many have already done a little of this in their own clinics. What I offer is a plausible explanation, and that’s no small thing.
What I remember most about this man in the airport was how he began. He stood quietly for a moment, gazing at the wall a little over his head but not beyond his reach. He reached up and pounded lightly in a line from left to right, listening for the tell-tale sound of a stud near to his hand. Finding it, he gently placed his drill bit there and let the machine do the rest of the work.
It took me back to the clinic, and I was glad I didn’t miss it.
I actually started to write this week’s column as I sat in the Cleveland airport on Tuesday waiting for my flight to Michigan. I watched as across the concourse a man about my age fixed a sign to the wall above some machinery. I wrote down the tools he used but found I was far more interested in how he used his hands and eyes, his weight and height. I thought that this might lead to some writing but the idea disappeared some time on Thursday.
Then a therapist commented about my apparent lack of concern for posture and strengthening regimens. “If you don’t do that you don’t fulfill your obligation to the patient – you don’t do what they expect,” she said.
Right up until this moment I had the sense that this woman and I were pretty much in agreement, but if she thinks that manual and movement therapy for painful problems must include classic postural instruction and “muscular balance,” as she called it, we aren't. I don’t think I need to get into that here because my reasoning in opposition to these things is all over Soma Simple.
I commonly find that therapists are very concerned about their patient’s expectations, which, of course, makes some sense. But it’s been my experience as a clinician that what most therapists think patients want (strengthening regimes and postural instructions) aren’t part of the patient’s agenda at all. All I had to do was ask them. Even if they expected this stuff I could talk them into something else without any difficulty. They were grateful to find that they hadn’t walked into the office of a personal trainer the insurance company would pay for. They just wanted care and that’s all I offered.
Similarly, many of my students will comment that they appreciate how little I direct them in technique but rather have a tendency to allow them to discover what another is doing instinctively by landing lightly and waiting. It’s remarkably easy and many have already done a little of this in their own clinics. What I offer is a plausible explanation, and that’s no small thing.
What I remember most about this man in the airport was how he began. He stood quietly for a moment, gazing at the wall a little over his head but not beyond his reach. He reached up and pounded lightly in a line from left to right, listening for the tell-tale sound of a stud near to his hand. Finding it, he gently placed his drill bit there and let the machine do the rest of the work.
It took me back to the clinic, and I was glad I didn’t miss it.