The Fascial Distortion Model: Making the Patient the Expert

The Fascial Distortion Model can help guide a practitioner towards treatment selection because the model is based on the patient’s input. The patient is the expert. Patients guide us as practitioners by body language or gestures and their verbal description of their pain. They show us exactly the pain they’re feeling, how they’re feeling it, and we guide our treatment based on that description of the pain. It’s a pattern recognition model.

I’m a family physician by training and I have taught all of the family physicians in my clinic, and they preferentially will use the Fascial Distortion Model to treat pain. The techniques are quick to learn, easy to utilize, usually with the thumb. Some of them can be uncomfortable so we have to have a conversation with the patient that it could be potentially painful and may leave a bruise. Some of the other treatments are completely pain free and so not everything we do hurts. We use the thumb to apply direct pressure on herniated trigger points or a line of pain will be ironing out a wrinkle in the fascia, all of which can be uncomfortable, but intuitively patients understand, because they’ll be pressing on things themselves. We find that practitioners, both MD and DO, who learn the Fascial Distortion Model are re-invigorated to have something new that they can offer patients that doesn’t involve a prescription.