People often ask me about visceral mobilization/manipulation. They often ask questions like What the heck is that? Aren’t you a PT? Is it like Reiki? Are you going to rearrange my internal organs?
Visceral mobilization (my preferred terminology) refers to the manual facilitation of movement between the visceral organs, fascia, and the musculoskeletal system. It is a manual technique that is not taught in PT school, and it requires many hours of continuing education to learn. It is not like Reiki in that I am touching your body rather than working off your body. I definitely do not and will not rearrange your internal organs. Promise.
When I first began my career as a physical therapist, after 4 years of undergrad, 2 years of a master’s degree, and 3 years of a doctorate degree, I felt pretty confident that I would be able to help people. And for the most part, that was true…but there were some patients that were not improving, and I was not able to understand why. My mentor suggested I take some visceral classes through the Barral Institute to help me on my journey.
I began my journey through the Barral coursework in 2016. The classes are 4 days, Thursday through Sunday, and are very rarely held in Southern California. I spent a great deal of time in airports and hotels in Denver, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Phoenix and Tucson learning VM. These four-day immersive experiences helped me understand a new way of thinking about treating the body. Rather than inflict my ideas and thoughts on where the treatment plan should go that day, I began to listen (with my hands) to the client’s body. This was very foreign to me as I had been trained to assess, treat, and reassess based on a number of musculoskeletal tests I learned in PT school and in orthopedic continuing education courses. Once I was able to let go of being the one in charge, I began to make progress with clients whom I had not been able to previously.
It turns out our bodies are completely connected and designed to survive, and the musculoskeletal system is the low man on the totem pole, so to speak, in terms of maintaining our survival. The highest rungs belong to the nervous system and the cardiovascular system; without these, we can survive only minutes.
Sometimes, our musculoskeletal system will tighten to protect more critical systems underneath. This was quite a blow to me, having spent nearly a near decade of study primarily focusing on the musculoskeletal system. I believe this protection is what happens when a patient reports feeling good for a few hours to a day after treatment, only to have a reoccurrence of symptoms shortly thereafter. In those cases, it felt to me like I was doing symptom management rather than getting to the root cause of the problem.
I still prefer to test a few things orthopedically before I work, in part to make sure I am making a change and for my client to be able to see and feel the difference in their movement, strength, or balance after treatment. This can look like range of motion or strength testing before and after treatment. If you have further questions about how your somatovisceral system connects to your muscuoskeletal system, please feel free to write me an email at megan@megansteelept.com