- 3 Blackberry Court, Walnut Tree, Milton Keynes, MK7 7PB
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This is a methodical assessment process that looks at the whole body and its connections during movement to determine the root cause of the patient’s problems.
This is a methodical assessment process that looks at the whole body and its connections during movement to determine the root cause of the patient’s problems.
ConnectTherapy and The Thoracic Ring Approach is particularly useful in re-occurring problems that don’t seem to go away, patients with multiple pathologies and patients who have had not had the required result from previous treatments.
Central to this process is The Thoracic Ring Approach™ which focuses on how the thorax works as whole, rather than just the thoracic spine. The thorax is a large part of the body and consists of the thoracic spine and ribs as well as all the muscular connections between them. The ribs come off the thoracic vertebra and attach to the sternum at the front.
This forms a ‘ring’ and there are 12 of these rings, stacked on top of each other. In order to move well and feel good, the rings need to be stacked symmetrically, like a pile of plates, with nice space between them. The surrounding muscles should be doing their job of maintaining this and helping the rings move in the correct way to allow free and easy movement.
In dysfunction, these rings become unstacked and this can limit movement or cause pain/stiffness etc and this can affect all areas of the body. Treatment is aimed at finding out exactly which set are the problem, releasing anything that is restricting their movement and then training them to move well.
Mark Suttie is our certified ConnectTherapy™ practitioner.
Treatment for acute and chronic sports injuries, arthritis, soft tissue injuries and exercise medicine consultations
It may be hard to understand, but this approach deals with underlying causes for your pain, and does not focus on the injury alone. For example, if you have left knee pain when running, this may be caused by your thorax shifting to the left when you run, causing you to load more through the knee and creating the pain. So in this case, treating the rings will solve the knee problem.
The thoracic rings are a common cause of many problems, but they can also be affected by other parts of the body. For example, you may have persistent back pain where past treatment only helps short term. If you have an old ankle sprain that was never treated, this can cause the thoracic rings to become unstacked and be the reason for the back pain. In this case, actually treating your ankle will make the back pain go away. The possibilities are endless when you consider someone’s injury and movement history. Everything that has happened to you up until this moment dictates how you move and feel now.
As the approach is different to ‘traditional physio’ it can be particularly useful in re-occurring problems that don’t seem to go away, patients with multiple pathologies and patients where previous treatment hasn’t helped. At Blackberry Clinic our sole aim is to get you back to your every day life without pain and we are proud to offer a variety of approaches that can help you.
Mark Suttie, Blackberry Clinic Milton Keynes, has trained extensively in this method of treatment. ConnectTherapy™ is a relatively new physio approach developed by Dr. L.J. Lee, based out of Vancouver, Canada. Mark has spent several years taking her courses and studying this, eventually becoming a fully Certified Practitioner in 2018.
I’ve had back and neck pain for around 5 years and have seen a variety of physios through different referrals. I always get short term relief but no one has ever looked to fix the underlying long-term issue of why my problems always come back. Mark was the complete opposite and focused solely on the underlying cause and looked to fix that using ConnectTherapy™. The difference after 1 session was remarkable and I woke up without severe back and neck pain for the first time in years. After 6 sessions I was able to lift weights again and the education received through Mark has been invaluable to keep building on the progress made with Mark’s sessions in my own time. I cannot be more grateful and wish I had discovered ConnectTherapy™ earlier.
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