Functional ACTIVE Release hands on care- involving YOU in your treatment - Osteopathy has many methods to achieve results

How does FAR Work

Using hands-on detailed palpation in combination with a details history and an active functional examination – the aim is to find key areas of muscle dysfunction.

Identifying the parts of a muscle that do not fully contract and thereby not providing the power they could or where only part of the muscle is contributing to the overall movement is key to knowing where to treat.

Often these areas have reduced blood flow due to being chronically tight and sometimes tender.

These areas may not be the site of the reported symptoms however. The pain patients report may be quite a distance above or below the contracted area.

A combination of localised pressure and active resistance from the patient allows a focal point of tension to be established.

Asking the patient to then contract and relax the area over a range of movement being guided carefully by the practitioner allows arcs of poor quality movement to be identified and gradually enhanced.

During this process the painful site of “focus” can in most instances to be expected to eases and the function as a result may therefore indicate improvement which can be verified by re-testing using Active Palpation.

The muscle is should then be able to contract over a larger and larger range of movement more fully and thus provides more fluidity of function and this may reduce the onset of fatigue at the same time. This is also retested with Active Resisted contraction to assess muscle power.

 The net effect is more supportive and stronger muscle that is also flexible and adaptable to perform its function where it is located in the body.

When several sets of overlapping muscles as treated in this way it enhances postural support as well as greater power for the muscle chain system the also links into the periphery including the shoulders and hip girdles