Soft Tissue Mobilization
What is soft tissue mobilization?
When you consult with a physical therapist, you can expect to receive a combination of physical therapy services that are either active (where you, as the patient, perform specific tasks) or passive (where treatment focuses on you receiving care rather than you participating in it). Both have highly valuable benefits for acute or chronic health conditions, especially when provided in conjunction with each other.
One of the most beneficial types of passive treatment we offer at our physical therapy clinic is soft tissue mobilization. That’s right: physical therapists are explicitly trained in therapeutic soft tissue mobilization and can use it to your direct benefit?
Soft tissue mobilization involves a wide range of explicit manual techniques (delivered by your physical therapist’s hands) that can be used to target specific tissues in your body, including muscles, fascia, lymph nodes, joints, and tendons.
Who is soft tissue mobilization for?
Everyone from young toddlers to seniors can benefit from soft tissue mobilization. This technique offers a variety of benefits that’s truly safe for just about anyone.
Specific benefits of soft tissue mobilization include:
- Improved circulation and lymphatic drainage
- Accelerated healing
- Reduced swelling and inflammation
- Improved range of motion
- Reduced pain
- Decreased adhesions and scar tissue formation
We use soft tissue mobilization to help people manage or recover from a wide range of conditions, including fibromyalgia, back and neck pain, arthritis, migraines, diabetic nerve pain, and sports and auto-accident related injuries.
What should I expect during my soft tissue mobilization treatment?
The first thing you should expect when you come to visit our clinic for a physical therapy appointment is a thorough examination and patient history questionnaire. We ask that all our patients visit us in comfortable clothes and sturdy shoes. If soft tissue mobilization techniques are deemed an appropriate part of your plan of care, then we’ll be sure to position you in a comfortable position seated or lying down (depending on the target treatment area). Your dignity and privacy is important to us, so you can rest assured you’ll always be appropriately covered if certain articles of clothing need to be moved so that our therapists can appropriately access the target tissue (whether in the spine or limbs).
At our clinic, our therapists can talk to you about anything you may be experiencing and work with you in a coordinated way to encourage healing on all levels and help you gain a deeper understanding of your body and what’s happening with it. We’re not just concerned with symptom relief; we want to identify and resolve the underlying cause (or causes) of your symptoms so that your healing will be more complete and longer lasting.