ConnectTherapy™ - What is it?
So, you’ve made it to this page. That means, you’ve probably read somewhere that we use a style of physiotherapy called ConnectTherapy™ but that you need a bit more information to understand what it’s all about, why we choose to use it and most importantly how it’s going to help you.
ConnectTherapy is a whole-body approach to physiotherapy, which was developed in Vancouver, Canada by Dr LJ Lee but is now taught and practiced around the world. It is different to some of the more traditional assessment processes used by physiotherapists in Australia which are focused around the symptomatic site, but it has been warmly embraced by many Australian physios as we recognised traditional models weren’t always able to offer the results and explanations we were after.
The key to ConnectTherapy is the whole-body assessment process which enables us to find and treat the underlying cause of the pain, instead of just focusing on the painful area. Do you remember that old kids song “the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone…” well it’s true! Our body is super smart and really good at finding ways to compensate for areas of the body not working the way they should. Unfortunately, this often results in another area of the body having to work harder than they’re supposed to, leading to injury in that part of the body. Think of two office workers. One is a slacker so the other is picking up the extra load. They can do it for a little while but in the end, who gets burnt out? Not the one who’s slacking but the one who is working consistently above their capacity. This is what happens in the body. All of our tissues can only sustain so much loading and if we consistently demand more than what they are capable of giving us, they will tell us they’re not happy about it. This could be in the form of pain, stiffness, torn muscles. The problem is, we can’t fully treat and restore this newly injured area unless we work out why it was working so hard to begin with and what part of the body it was trying to cover for.
A classic example to understand this is when someone rolls an ankle. It doesn’t seem that bad so they just rest it a bit, maybe see a physio once, take some time off training and then slowly get back to it. It still feels a bit stiff but doesn’t cause them any pain and they can do everything they want to, so they think nothing of it. Unbeknown to them that stiffness is just the tip of the iceberg and their body is not using that leg like it should, which means they end up putting more weight on the other leg in all of their activities. Six months later they go to the physio with hip pain or an achilles tendinopathy on the other leg that seems to have appeared from nowhere. You can do your achilles rehab all-day long or get a hundred massages into that hip to make it feel better temporarily, but unless we treat the reason for that uneven weight distribution as well (i.e. that injury 6 months ago), progress will be slow and frustrating.
The above example might seem fairly obvious but the ways our bodies choose to adapt is different for everyone. The further away the root cause is from the injured tissue, the less likely you are to associate it with that old problem. Also every individual’s body processes its experiences differently, which is why we do a whole-body assessment on everyone. Then, when we know what the root cause of the problem is we treat that as well as rehabilitating injured local tissue so you get better, faster and without any of those annoying and seemingly unexplainable ups and downs. And because we are treating the root cause and not just providing a band-aid treatment, your risk of this injury recurring is significantly decreased!
So, you’ve made it to this page. That means, you’ve probably read somewhere that we use a style of physiotherapy called ConnectTherapy™ but that you need a bit more information to understand what it’s all about, why we choose to use it and most importantly how it’s going to help you.
ConnectTherapy is a whole-body approach to physiotherapy, which was developed in Vancouver, Canada by Dr LJ Lee but is now taught and practiced around the world. It is different to some of the more traditional assessment processes used by physiotherapists in Australia which are focused around the symptomatic site, but it has been warmly embraced by many Australian physios as we recognised traditional models weren’t always able to offer the results and explanations we were after.
The key to ConnectTherapy is the whole-body assessment process which enables us to find and treat the underlying cause of the pain, instead of just focusing on the painful area. Do you remember that old kids song “the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone…” well it’s true! Our body is super smart and really good at finding ways to compensate for areas of the body not working the way they should. Unfortunately, this often results in another area of the body having to work harder than they’re supposed to, leading to injury in that part of the body. Think of two office workers. One is a slacker so the other is picking up the extra load. They can do it for a little while but in the end, who gets burnt out? Not the one who’s slacking but the one who is working consistently above their capacity. This is what happens in the body. All of our tissues can only sustain so much loading and if we consistently demand more than what they are capable of giving us, they will tell us they’re not happy about it. This could be in the form of pain, stiffness, torn muscles. The problem is, we can’t fully treat and restore this newly injured area unless we work out why it was working so hard to begin with and what part of the body it was trying to cover for.
A classic example to understand this is when someone rolls an ankle. It doesn’t seem that bad so they just rest it a bit, maybe see a physio once, take some time off training and then slowly get back to it. It still feels a bit stiff but doesn’t cause them any pain and they can do everything they want to, so they think nothing of it. Unbeknown to them that stiffness is just the tip of the iceberg and their body is not using that leg like it should, which means they end up putting more weight on the other leg in all of their activities. Six months later they go to the physio with hip pain or an achilles tendinopathy on the other leg that seems to have appeared from nowhere. You can do your achilles rehab all-day long or get a hundred massages into that hip to make it feel better temporarily, but unless we treat the reason for that uneven weight distribution as well (i.e. that injury 6 months ago), progress will be slow and frustrating.
The above example might seem fairly obvious but the ways our bodies choose to adapt is different for everyone. The further away the root cause is from the injured tissue, the less likely you are to associate it with that old problem. Also every individual’s body processes its experiences differently, which is why we do a whole-body assessment on everyone. Then, when we know what the root cause of the problem is we treat that as well as rehabilitating injured local tissue so you get better, faster and without any of those annoying and seemingly unexplainable ups and downs. And because we are treating the root cause and not just providing a band-aid treatment, your risk of this injury recurring is significantly decreased!
