WHAT IS MANUAL THERAPY?

Our bodies are incredible healing machines! We have all seen how the body magically heals up a cut or a cold on its own without much input from us. Sometimes, however, the body can't completely heal on its own. In these cases, our amazing bodies do the best they can, and compensate for the parts of the body that are struggling. These compensations might be as simple as leaning on one foot more than the other, or twisting the body slightly to one side. 

Compensations happen gradually, so we don't even notice that we are changing small things about ourselves. Our bodies do this so that we can keep living our lives and going throughout our day. Compensation is a burden for your body, but the body will shoulder these burdens to help you keep on moving!

As these compensations build up in our bodies, we might start to notice them as little pains in our back, a stiffness in our ankle, a cold that won't go away, digestive problems, or persistent headaches, to name some examples. The body compensates as much as it can until - eep! We do something small, like sneeze, and suddenly our back goes out. If we are lucky, this can be temporary, but we might also end up with more chronic issues that affect our quality of life. The alarm bells are going off, something isn't right! Andrea has seen that this alarm continues to turn up the volume (more pain! disease! depression! invasive surgery! multiple prescription medications!) until we can find a way to address what caused these compensations in the first place. 

It's important to remember that the body works together as a unit. Every part of your body is affected by every other part. This might be in the joints, bones, muscles, fascia, organs, brain, blood vessels, liquids, or the cranial-sacral system. The purpose of Andrea's work is to restore the body’s mechanical harmony in its entirety by drawing on her extensive knowledge in anatomy, physiology and human biomechanics.

The tensions and symptoms in your body act as a map and lead Andrea to the cause of the problem. Andrea's philosophy is to trust what the body is saying, and to focus on the cause of the problem, rather than remain focused on the symptoms. With a light touch, Andrea listens to the body's messages, and gently but powerfully encourages the body to return to its place of proper position, adequate blood flow, lack of tension, and optimal vitality. This allows the body to heal itself completely. When the body is healed, there is no need for compensations, and those tensions melt away. This lets us live freely, unencumbered by tension in our bodies. 

This is why Andrea is more concerned with the cascade of events that contribute to the development of medical conditions than with the conditions themselves. To use an example - if your boat is leaking, the smart thing to do is to find where the leak is coming from and close up the leak when it is small, rather than spend a lot of energy bailing out your boat!