What is Holistic Physical Therapy?

I often describe my approach to treatment as “holistic physical therapy”. Recently I had someone ask me what I meant by holistic, as they always think of physical therapy as being holistic since we aren’t performing surgery or using injections. This is a great point, so I thought I would write a blog further explaining what I mean when I say holistic physical therapy.

First of all, this person was absolutely correct about physical therapy being non-invasive. We may do dry needling, but we don’t inject anything. In this way, physical therapy is considered a conservative treatment option for pain and injuries. However, being non-invasive or conservative doesn’t mean the provider is taking a holistic approach.

There are 4 things that I believe make my approach more holistic.

1) We talk about lifestyle factors. In many PT experiences, patients may only share things they think are “relevant” with their provider, meaning things that are very specific to their injury. However, your body is one system. We have to consider sleep, hydration, nutrition, stress management, and the demands of your daily life, and how those may be impacting your symptoms. I may not be able to address all of these things, but I can flag what factors may be contributing to your symptoms and refer you to the right provider if necessary.

2) We take a whole body approach. You may be experiencing pain in your shoulder, or maybe you’re leaking with running and feel you have pelvic floor weakness. We will definitely assess your shoulder or pelvic floor in these scenarios, but once again your body is one system. We need to look outside where you are experiencing symptoms to determine all contributing factors and help you find long term relief.

3) We consider possible visceral restrictions. Your organs need to move, too. Sometimes when treating the area of pain doesn’t work (or even treating related joints and muscles doesn’t work), we need to assess and treat restrictions in the viscera. You can learn more about visceral manipulation here.

4) We keep you moving as much as possible. We have had too many patients stop activities that are important to them because a provider told them too (or they didn’t stop the activity but stopped seeing the provider). This can be very frustrating for patients and ultimately slow their progress. We may ask that patients modify or reduce some activities depending on pain levels and aggravating factors, but we truly try to keep patients moving as much as possible.

Hopefully this clarifies not only what holistic physical therapy is, but what I believe makes my approach different than many traditional physical therapy clinics. If you have questions, you can email me directly at alexis@absolutekineticspt.com. If you want to set up a free 15 minute phone consult with me, you can do so here.

Blog post written by Dr. Alexis Hutchison, PT, DPT, OCS