What is Physical Therapy?

Physical therapy is a practice of medicine geared toward patients' achievement of their highest level of function and quality of life. I see it as empowering patients' healing through movement. It is the role of the physical therapist to help coach, guide, and educate the patient in how to use their body to heal their body. The therapist is only a small portion of the overall puzzle that is physical therapy.

When you first meet with a physical therapist, that therapist will assess how your body moves. They will look both where you hurt, along with evaluating the areas above and below the location of your pain, injury, or deficit. A therapist will use hands on techniques, called Manual Therapy, to massage tissues, mobilize joints, restore alignment and body symmetry. Machines can be used to add energy to your system with the goal of making pain better in order to allow improved therapy tolerance - these machines are termed modalities such as electrical stimulation and ultrasound. Exercise is used to help stretch or strengthen muscles that are not behaving with optimal efficiency and are contributing to your pain experience. A therapist will look at your balance, both while standing still and walking, lifting, and during the completion of everyday activities. Finally, pulling everything previously discussed into a neat package, the therapist can assess how your body moves as a whole unit - also known as body mechanics - to identify and address functional limitations and daily inefficiencies that brought you into therapy.

When you have pain, lost range of motion, weakness, or just general difficulty living your life to the fullest physically, consider seeking the assistance of a physical therapist to guide your recovery back to optimal function and quality of life!