The Fascial Distortion Model: Making the Patient the Expert

The Fascial Distortion Model looks at six different types of patterns of gestures that people do when they have an injury. When they show a certain gesture, we’re going to use a certain manual therapy technique that’s going to match. If they indicate with their finger a single spot on the bone, we’re going to treat differently for that than if they draw a line up and down their arm, or if they dig in with multiple fingers into a soft tissue spot. Each one of those hand gestures is going to lead us to a different treatment. A.T. Still, the founder of osteopathy, said that when you deal with the fascia, you do business with the branch offices of the brain. Our nervous system goes out throughout the body. It is an extension of the brain. And those branch endings of the nerves are in the fascia. They’re right underneath the skin. So, when we touch the skin and touch the fascia it is having an input into the nervous system.