Simple to BE: Holistic Physical Therapy

Remember in the first post on the definition of physical therapy when I told you that I have learned a fair and reliable amount about being a human that informs my practice? Here are some of those important lessons:

Each of us is sum of our parents/caregivers/environment.
Each of us has the capacity to make choices for our bodies, and there are consequences for each and every choice.
Life is hard! Control is really not possible.
Fear kills every possibility of joy, and both are states of being; they are mindsets, so to speak.
Trauma is always imposed on us. It can be from natural causes, like childbirth, or injurious like an accident.
Each of us has a mind that allows us to think and have emotions. Our mind, with our emotions, allow us to interact with and experience one another and our world. We get to choose how to use our thoughts and emotions on others, and how we react to or allow others to use theirs on us. Sometimes we hurt with them and because of them. Other times, we help and care for one another with them, and even receive from others the same.
Each of us has a soul — a way to connect with one another on a deeper, often unseen level. This is the part that recognizes something way bigger than our human experience. The soul is simply our capacity to believe in something, so our beliefs are interwoven into our mind, emotions, and physical body.

Definition of Holistic Physical Therapy

In my last post, I defined holistic physical therapy as a medical treatment model that focuses on the wholeness of the body — including the mind, emotions, and soul — of the patient to create a space for healing. It seeks to support the whole person on their own individual journey to health, wellness, and mobility.

A Holistic Physical Therapist

The body, mind, and soul are the parts that make us whole. A holistic physical therapist is one who approaches each patient with a well-rounded process of evidence-based evaluation tools, listening to the body’s story and how it wants to tell the story, without judgement or having an expectation for why or how. Because injuries, illnesses, and diseases are physical, they manifest themselves in our bodies as pain, dysfunction, stiffness, and immobility.

Mental and emotional health is crucial to overall health and directly affects our physical body as much as our physical body affects our mind. This is our DNA creating an intricate and complex set of systems that depend on one another as parts and together as a whole, interact with the environment we live in.

Understand that an injury, trauma, or disease process can occur in the body or the mind. When this happens, a stressor is introduced which creates an abnormal tension line. These tensions produce restrictions into the hard frame — our bones, tendons, muscles — and will transfer into the internal organs. Stressors from within can also create restrictions into the hard frame. A state of immobility, stiffness, and pain is created, and compensatory patterns of movement automatically develop.

These tension lines and compensation patterns can be acute or chronic. Many acute stressors can be ignored until they cluster together and become chronic and congested areas within a body system. Now, a change in health is observed. Your mind perceives the change and determines your sense of wellbeing as somehow different. How you adapt to these changes — whether positively or negatively — is based in part on your emotions and on your beliefs (soul).

A holistic physical therapist processes all that information WITH the patient and seeks to support all three parts along the continuum of life. They will specifically address the physical body — eleven systems working together to produce mobility and function. They support the person at whatever point they are on in their journey. Together they will develop a treatment plan that supports healing and restoration of function and mobility.

The Journey to Holistic Healing

Simple to BE started with my own journey of BEing. Life has a beginning and end for us all, and the most important part is the journey in between. That’s what being alive IS. It is a state of BEing.

Each of us has a journey. And we each have been given a body, a mind, and a soul — all perfect in its integrated design. It is the imperfections of this world that cause our journey to be hard, confusing, traumatic, and unhealthy. Yet, even though moments of suffering affect our wholeness, we can learn from them if we are willing to BE — to BE in the midst of the struggle and the pain; not avoiding, not ignoring, just BEing. As that space opens, you will find a stillness that is dynamic and full of hope that extends beyond you. This is the journey of health and wellness I would like to help you most enjoy. It is a mindset of being whole, while simultaneously being a part of a whole. This is where healing begins.

It is my greatest privilege to BE with you, to help you in your healing process. Schedule your initial visit now, and experience the benefits of holistic physical therapy. To learn more, go to simpletobe.com.