Integrative Manual Therapy (IMT)
An Integrative Approach to Physical Therapy
From Lisa Klein, PT, IMT.C:
Throughout my Physical Therapy (PT) career, I have always been looking for answers. Back in PT school, it seemed that we were being taught how to make patients accept the health challenges they were facing, rather than being taught how to fix their health challenges. Although I appreciated the training I received in PT school, I left feeling that there was so much more we could do for patients. I had friends who were training in other health professions, and I knew that there was more information to be had. As soon as I was out of school, I started taking as many classes as I could in order to find the answers I was looking for.
Integrative Manual Therapy (IMT) is a combination of thousands of techniques, and represents a huge step forward in manual therapy care. Often when receiving treatment, patients want to know exactly what I am doing and why, and IMT gives me the ability to answer those questions.
The following is an explanation of IMT:
The focus of IMT is on removing mechanical strains from every tissue in the body, in order to get each part of the body working the right way. Structure dictates function. This means that when any part of the body is having a problem, there has to be some mechanical/anatomical issue or else there could not actually be a problem. There are techniques for every single structure in the body, from muscle to ligament to tendon to organ. IMT is a collection of thousands of techniques that have been shown to be effective for certain individual tissue. The basic IMT certification is 32 classes, reflecting the comprehesiveness of the material.
As an IMT therapist, what I do is evaluate patients' conditions based on mechanical strains in the body. The mechanical strains show what is happening in the body and also the effect of those mechanical strains on the physiology.
Throughout the process of evaluating and treating patients, I focus on finding the "why." The "why" is: why is the patient in pain? Why is there still muscle spasm? Why aren't things healing? Why is there inflammation?
When you can figure out the why, you can fix the problem and often dramatically change the physical status of the patient.