About SMR
SensoriMotor Repatterning Therapy is an extremely effective treatment for resolving chronic pain and enhancing athletic performance.
SMR finds glitches in how your brain communicates to the body and aids the nervous system in correcting these dysfunctions so you can move better and without pain. Three sessions in many cases have resolved years of chronic symptoms, please see the testimonials page for reference.
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SMR identifies inhibited/weak and/or overactive muscles caused by old injuries and resets the connection between the motor control center of your brain and the affected muscles. The net result is more functional muscle engagement allowing for a stronger, pain-free musculoskeletal system.
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SMR also integrates complex Traditional Chinese Medicine theory to correct faulty movement patterns and holding patterns within the acupoint systems linked to trauma/stress, allowing for a deeper level of recovery and a return to pain-free movement.
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Because SMR truly sets its sights on finding and fixing the core source of clients’ problems, chronic pain issues are often resolved and stay resolved. SMR finds these faulty neural patterns and fixes them.
DETAILED
SMR finds faulty neural patterns in your body and corrects them. Here’s an example…
Two years ago you fell off your bike and landed hard on your glute medius (side of your hip). For the next few weeks, your brain needed to figure out a compensation pattern to work around the fact that you had tissue damage on your hip. You could still walk because your brain re-arranged the associated movement patterns so you could limp along without causing further tissue damage. This pattern wasn’t optimal, but it got you from point A to B.
Four weeks later, your tissue damage healed, but there remained faulty sensory receptors at the site, and your brain didn't correctly revert to the old (most optimal) firing pattern. Instead, it fires your quadratus lumborum (QL) every time you need to use your glute medius.
Six months later you are experiencing lower back pain (where your QL lives), and you're not sure why. The reason? Your QL has been firing when it shouldn’t. It’s fatiguing and tight, additionally, your gait pattern is less than optimal causing compression in your L4/L5 facet joints.
SMR finds these faulty neural patterns and fixes them.
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You may be reading this after spending years bouncing around chiropractors, athletic therapists, massage therapists, and physiotherapists trying to solve that chronic issue after finding short-term relief but no long-term solution.
This may be due to the therapists assuming there is a hardware problem, such as a sprained pelvic ligament, tight hamstrings, knots in your back muscles or trigger points in your neck. But what if all these hardware issues are really caused by a software issue? It is possible that due to faulty sensory input being sent to your brain, the motor control center is not sending out the correct firing patterns to corresponding muscles.
You can stretch those hamstrings or foam roll that knot in your back till the cows come home, but they will keep coming back until the software issue is resolved. Once the software is corrected the hardware will return to its healthy state and remain there.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) does not see the mind and body as two separate entities, but instead as a complex whole system, SMR is mindful of this concept. If you believe that previous stress or trauma is in part having an effect on your current symptoms, SMR may be able to help.
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Remember the previous example regarding falling off a bike? Along with the physical and proprioceptive injury, the brain looks around to identify the mode of injury and creates protective software loops that are triggered when the same threat is perceived. These protective "Trauma Neural Loops," cause inhibitory or overactive responses in local and global muscle patterns. In the hierarchy of how the brain organizes itself, these threat responses are very high up. For this reason, addressing these Trauma Neural Loops from a motor control perspective is a priority in SMR.
TCM considers stress as being stored in the systems and organs of the body and seeks to identify this stress. SMR utilizes the Somato–Autonomic Reflexes speculated by researchers to direct the specifics of the treatment. Please note that SMR does not directly "treat or resolve" Trauma; I do, however, have some great Registered Clinical Counsellors I refer to who can help in this regard. I am also a big believer in Dr. Sarno's theory regarding the mind-body connection to chronic pain. More about Dr. Sarno's theory can be found at this link.
You can find out more about the history of SMR at this link.
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You can find out more about common questions and answers at this link.
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Ottawa clients please check out this link.
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I also do a Neuro Bike fit (first in the world), check out more info here.