What Is NMT?
NEUROMUSCULAR THERAPY (NMT)
Neuromuscular Therapy is a comprehensive approach to assessing muscular imbalances and restoring proper functional relationships in the neuromuscular system. Neuromuscular Therapy, a form of medical massage, or clinically relevant deep tissue massage, which recognizes the critical relationship between posture and biomechanics relative to proper function. It employs holistic clinical massage therapy techniques and patient education to reduce or eliminate pain to help restore postural balance, to mobilize tight myofascial restrictions, and optimize musculoskeletal function.
NMT is based on the principles of:
Postural Distortion: Imbalance in the muscular tonus system resulting in the movement of the body off the coronal (front to back) and mid-saggital (side to side) planes.
Biomechanical Disturbance: Imbalance in the musculoskeletal system resulting in faulty movement patterns.
Ischemia: "Tissues which suffer from lack of circulation. Ischemic tissues are areas so contracted that they restrict the flow of nutrition and oxygen into the muscle, and the removal of metabolic waste products from the area." (As sited by Chaitow and Delany*), pain associated with fibromyalgia may be derived, in large part, from muscular ischemia. Chronic muscle tightness produces ischemia; ischemia produces pain.
*(Leon Chaitow, N.D., O.D., and Judith Walker DeLany, L.M.T., N.M.T., Clinical Application of Neuromuscular Techniques: Vol 1-Upper Body,Churchill Livingstone, Harcourt Publishers LImited 2000)
"Trigger Points: Dr. Janet Travell, physician to President John F. Kenedy, coined the term "Trigger Point," to refer to discrete areas of soft-tissue structures with low neurological activity that, when stimulated or stressed, transform into areas of high neurological activity with referred sensations to other parts of the body (the referral “target” areas).
Nerve Compression or Entrapment: Pressure on a nerve by a bone, cartilaginous structure, or a soft-tissue structure, which can produce a range of symptoms from numbness, tingling, thermal sensations, (called paresthesia), to overtly painful sensations and decrease in muscle function. Nerve compression and entrapment syndromes occur at the level of the spinal cord itself, but also “locally” through the peripheral nervous system, manifesting, for example, as a cold, numbed or “dead” feeling in the forearms, wrists or hands.
