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The Dalton "Dirty Dozen"Grow Your Bodywork Practice by Expanding Your Skillset
With These Practice-building Strategies
By Erik Dalton, Ph.D.
The Freedom from Pain Institute
The holistic alleviation of pain is largely dependent on restoration
of proper functional alignment, range of motion and proprioception.
Today’s pain management therapists are seeing a boost in client satisfaction as various structural integration and functional rehab models are incorporated into their deep tissue practices. As posture and functional movement patterns improve, many long-standing aches and pains disappear, often without the therapist ever knowing exactly which soft tissues were the actual pain-generators. The first step is to develop a simple and effective postural assessment routine that is easily adaptable to most bodywork practices. 
Any change within the sensorimotor system due to pain, pathology or adaptive changes will be reflected by compensations or adaptations throughout the system. This leads to systemic and predictable patterns of muscle imbalance.Oddly, the chain of events leading to muscular weakness often takes a strange path.
Clinical experience demonstrates that moderately tight muscles tend to be stronger than normal.Often, however, we sometimes encounter a decrease of strength (i.e., the hand-grip test) in clients experiencing prolonged tightness in muscles, such as the forearm flexors.This type of muscle inhibition is called tightness-weakness and expresses the close association between neurological weakness and altered viscoelasticity of the muscle and its enveloping fascia.
Stretch-weakness syndrome
Weakness must also be viewed from a neurological perspective. The act of releasing tight agonist muscles also results in improved strength in their inhibited antagonist, likely mediated via Sherrington’s Law of Reciprocal Innervation. Massage therapists unknowingly correct aberrant postural patterns and relieve pain every day by applying Sherrington’s principles. For example, techniques that open up constricted chest wall soft tissues also reciprocally strengthen the lower shoulder stabilizers.
Likewise, lengthening the lats and subscapularis muscles reciprocally strengthens the posterior rotator cuff.Too often, therapists defy this basic neurological concept by “fascia-mashing” stretch-weakened rhomboids and lower traps. The end result is increased pectoral tightness and greater postural deformity as gravity pulls the shoulders and head further forward. Situations like this demand the stretch weakened rhomboids be strengthened, not lengthened.
In 1992, I had the good fortune to study with Vladimir Janda and my mission became clear —develop hands-on techniques (Dirty Dozen) to accompany his practical “upper and lower crossed” visual assessment model and integrate into an effective pain management treatment program.
To help therapists identify common upper crossed muscle imbalance patterns, we've developed the "Dirty Dozen" techniques poster and accompanying technique handbook.
Hope you enjoy this handsome wall poster for your office.
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NEW Dirty Dozen Poster & Workbook Set A beautiful 2 ft. x 3 ft. Laminated wall poster illustrating the 12 effective Myoskeletal Alignment techniques for chronic neck, scapula and rib pain. Along with this is a 12 page workbook that shows the techniques in full color along with detailed step-by-step instructions for each. Two Piece Setonly $44.95 |
 Includes The NEW Expanded Advanced Textbook, 2 state of the art video/DVDs Level 2 Myoskeletal Therapist Diploma Now available with online testing |
Grow Your Bodywork Practice by Expanding Your Skillset Dalton's Dirty Dozen Techniques based on Janda's Upper and Lower Crossed Syndrome are available as a Home-Study Course Save on only $248 ORDER 26 CE hours... Includes a FREE 6CE Ethics Course |
The 2011 Dynamic Body Tour
Coming Soon...
June 10 - 12
West Palm Beach, FL
4 day Seminar Event...
3 Day Myoskeletal workshop
and a 1 day Florida Required
license renewal seminar
Click for more Information
Only 4 chances left to
Learn from Erik Dalton
Erik Dalton 2011
Dynamic Body Tour
3 Day, 24 CE hours
June 10 - 12 . . . West Palm Beach
|August 5 - 7 . . Chicago, IL
Sept. 30 - Oct. 2 . . . . Dallas, TX
Nov. 19 - 26 . . . . Costa Rica
at kkelly@templehp.com Click to Register online for Paul Kelly Workshops |
>>2 Day Workshops<< By Certified Senior Myoskeletal Instructor Paul Kelly Book Now for April 16-17, 2011 Jacksonville, FL 16 CEs - only $325 June 25-26, 2011 - Charleston, SC July 23-24, 2011 - San Francisco, CA August 27-28, 2011 - Omaha, NE September 17-18, 2011 - Runnemede, NJ October 15-16, 2011 - Louisville, KY November 5-6, 2011 - Denver, CO |
