That’s a fact…

Recently, I was told that course content and discussion should be solely factual, and that opinion should not be used as it may bias discussion… The fact is… much of what we know about pain and manual therapy is not necessarily fact…

Are you focusing on the wrong thing?

Do you ask questions like, how is your pain today? How has your pain been over the last week? What is the level of pain you are feeling at the moment? Tell me more about your pain… Directing attentional focus to the pain may not be helpful.…

Mindful success

I was thinking the other day about something I quite often say in the classroom.“Success breeds success”.It’s true that when we succeed at something, we are more likely to try it again and ultimately gain even more success. Though, on…

Feedback

A very important but overlooked skill… Feedback is what I am referring to. I believe that both giving and receiving feedback is a skill, and that skill takes practice. The word itself might increase anxiety levels when someone says  “let…

The Technician and clinician

When teaching health practitioners new ways of treating or introducing new ways to work with patients, I’m often met with the following statement…“But my patients expect me to do XYZ, I don’t think they will be open to me working in…

Case study time..

Let’s tickle your dendrites, fire up your axons because this case study will get you more excited than an action potential. What comes to mind for you? Does your mind go completely blank? Do you panic? Or do you get a rush of…

How much is enough?

I always get asked the question, “How much is enough?” What I mean by this is treatment dosage.How long should you mobilise a joint for? What grade mobilisation should I use? How long should I leave a needle in for? How much stimulation…

Are you staying up to date?

As clinicians it is important that we are always staying up to date with evidence based practices and terminology. One very commonly used label is “Sciatica” This diagnostic label dates back to Hippocrates who was allegedly, the first…

Stop Blaming Me!

So often in clinicians and patients blame an individual muscle or structure as the cause of pain.  How often do you hear (or even say) that it’s the Piriformis, Supraspinatus or the QL… Yes, I am sure if someone presents with pain in…

TMJ in clinical practice – Part 2

Welcome back to this series on the TMJ in clinical practice. My goal in this series is to introduce you to different factors in the assessment and treatment of TMJ related pain. Today I’d like to bring your awareness to the temporomandibular…

TMJ in clinical practice – Part 1

Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction… Where do we start?! Such a small joint, but so much to understand and consider when assessing and treating this presentation. I hear from so many of you that the TMJ is just so complex and difficult to…

Reconceptualising pain with a plastic brain

Can your brain change? Have you every changed your mind, or changed your opinion? Even when you believed something so strongly, but you were still able to change. What about that bad habit that you were able to shake? Have you…

Leadership – personal perspective

Firstly, let me start out by saying I am no expert in leadership, nor do I think I am a great leader. But over the years I have had some great leaders and some not-so-great leaders. I am lucky enough to currently be led by one of the best,…

You have a bad posture..

Does pointing out postural discrepancies help or harm? I, like many of you were taught to assess a patient’s posture, and was taught that if someone had an anterior pelvic tilt, then it must mean their hip flexors are short and tight and…

I think, therefore I am

Often there is a lot of attention directed towards the ‘condition’ or the ‘pathology’ in chronic pain, and while this is a component, we need to zoom out and look at the whole person. It is common to think and believe that the…

Don’t build something for sake of building it

In my travels I get the privilege of speaking to lots of clinicians from all over the world, and something that often comes up in conversation is their desire to build a big clinic with lots of practitioners.It makes sense of course……

The Danger in Confidence

I bet you can think of someone like this…It is the person who is so very confident in their ideas or opinions that they are incapable (or perhaps unwilling) to see that there may in fact be flaws in their perspective. Don’t…

Stress, pain and resilience

We all talk about stress, But what is stress? The World Health Organisation defines stress as any type of change that causes physical, emotional or psychological strain. But is all stress bad? Stress is a common and normal physiological…

The wrong advice

Ok, picture this… True story. I was in a shoe shop a few days ago, and happened to overhear a conversation with one of the shop attendants (SA) and a customer (C). It went something like this. SA – Hi, how can I help you today.C –…

What kind of a plant is painful?

A faceplant.. Ok that’s enough jokes... But it does link in with today’s topic so I couldn’t resist. Our bodies and our aches, pains, injuries and overall wellbeing can be a bit like a garden. You put good stuff in, you get good…

The Trigger Point

A trigger point is something that you will deal with in everyday clinical practice when treating patients with musculoskeletal pain presentations. Unfortunately, the myofascial trigger point is often an overlooked contributor to chronic myofascial…

A perspective of change

Definitions in the world of science continuously change. Just as our skin ages and changes so do our brains. The ideas and beliefs that we held to be true when we first learned about manual therapy in our undergraduate studies should also…

6 Myths about sacroiliac joint pain

Myth #1 The SIJ can become unstable The SIJ functions to provide stability and the transmission and dissipation of load from the trunk to the lower extremities. (Thawrani, 2019) The SIJ is an inherently stable structure with…

Hip and Groin pain

Anterior hip and groin pain could be due to a number of different reasons. But let’s talk about intraarticular hip pain. ▶️ Intra-articular hip pathology refers to pain and pathology within the hip joint▶️…

If it is working, go all in

Such simple advice, but why don't we all follow it? Be it in the clinical setting, in business or in life, far too often we change course or try something new when the thing we were doing was already working so well for us. It's easy…