Experiences of a physiotherapist

Last Saturday, we held the second symposium about ‘putting Fascia Therapy into practice’.

I took the initiative last year, because we (fascia therapy) were losing touch with our origin, the physical therapy. If you would have asked the average physical therapist in Flanders (northern part of Belgium) what Fascia Therapy stood for, only few could answer. In fact, the situation was worse, most of them would have to admit they had never heard of it.

This year, the executive committee of the Belgian Fascia Therapist – Method Danis Bois (BFmdb) took care of the project, which resulted in a better organization, (much) more participants, lectures of higher quality and better geared to one another.

You can understand we were thrilled having welcomed more than 200 participants, all of them doctors, physical therapists, physical therapy or osteopathy students. The auditorium was rather small for this large group of people, but thanks to the flexibility of all present, we were able to bring the lectures and the two workshops to a favorable conclusion.

A symposium is not the same as a science congress. Its purpose is not to pass on scientific researches and results, but to have therapists talk about their experiences while practicing therapy.

I had the honor to open the symposium. After the usual word of thanks, I went more deeply into the challenges physical therapy is facing. Physical therapy must develop in order to stay in line with the insights and needs of the current spirit of times. Also, Fascia Therapy in particular is facing a great challenge: sound scientific research (but I’ll come back to this later on). (Read the article)

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Fascia Therapy has some very important trumps in the pre- and post-surgery treatment.

According to me, the medical world prescribes pre-surgery treatment too less often and post-surgery treatment far too late. Typically, post-surgery treatment starts as soon as rehabilitation can begin, in other words, as soon as joints can be mobilized again, muscles need to strengthen or, for example, there is a need for walking rehabilitation. In this situation valuable time is being lost. Immediately after surgery the fascia therapist can execute important handlings that speed up the healing process after the operation and set the most optimal situation for rehabilitation. There is no need to wait for the arm or leg to get out of the plaster, for the time that motion is allowed again or for the operated zone to be strong enough again.

Pre-surgery treatment is even less popular. And yet, a specific approach may generate important effects. The goal is to have the body on the surgery table in the best possible conditions: cutting loose all fascias, clearing the main blood circulation, working on micro-circulation, this all prepares the ‘consistency’ of the body. Next to this, optimizing the motion pattern, motion consciousness also can prepare the further rehabilitation process and reduce the rehabilitation period to a minimum.

Let me illustrate this by means of a practical example. It is easy when having didactical material runningcrawling around at home.

In the blog ‘About the importance of crawling’ I wrote that we hoped Michelle would ‘really’ crawl before October 23. That day she was going to have a surgery on her left foot: mother nature has given her 11 toes (and metatarsal bones). Because her left foot would get at least 5cm broader than her right foot and, as a consequence of this, she would barely be able to wear her ‘princess shoes’, we decided to have the ‘spare parts’ surgically removed. (Read the article)

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14 days ago I found this article in the newspaper:

> New sleeping bag to soothe a crybaby

According to this article’s author swaddling up a baby has effect on a baby since it feels secure (probably reminding it of its time spent in its mother’s belly), and because it can’t wake up itself by making rowdy arm-motions.

According to me there is more. Please read below … (Read the article)

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After a series of blogs on the fasciatherapy, time has come to write on the “Critical Developmental Accompaniment, method Hendrickx”.

In this first blog I could have written about the person Professor Hendrickx himself, on his method, on the structure of the training, but I preferred to pass the word to the Professor himself. In this way, you will get to know what will become an important character of this blog. I consider Prof. Hendrickx, as well as Prof. Dr. Bois as my ‘spiritual fathers’. Both of them have formed me on a professional base (as well as on a personal base). I owe them a lot of what I currently am, know and can. 

Later on I will discuss the theoretical and practical aspects of the method, specifically on the treatment of baby’s.

The video’s are made during the ‘problem analysis’ of my little daughter Michelle. At that time, she was 4 months old. Ann and I attach a lot of importance to this analysis. There wasn’t/isn’t a particular problem with Michelle, but when accompanying baby’s we tend to achieve optimal development. Even if there are no (visual) problems with the baby, it can be important to control if the baby’s body is already (axial) structured or not, and how (and how much) he or she has started to use her or his body.

“Today, we investigate her, but we should look at every baby in this way. Not only the baby with problems, the baby who has this or that. Off course, by definition, they need our help. But also the ‘normal baby’s’ should be taken care of.” (Read the article)