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Visceral Manipulation
What is Visceral Manipulation?
The visceral system can be described as the interrelationship of motion between all the organs and structures of the body. When a person’s health is at its best, this harmonious relationship remains stable despite the body's endless varieties of motion. However, when one organ cannot move easily in relationship with its viscera due to abnormal tone, adhesions or displacement, it works against the body's other organs, muscles, membranes, and bones. This disharmony creates fixed, abnormal points of tension that the body is forced to move around. With these types of chronic irritation occurring in the body, postural distortion, neuromuscular dysfunction, and disease processes occur. And without proper correction may lead to long term structure problems.
Doctor Jean-Pierre Barral, an osteopathic physician can be credited for discovering these interrelationships between the organs and structures of the body. He along with registered physical therapist and healthcare practitioners today can use the rhythmic motions of the visceral system as important therapeutic tools to determine how best to correct or minimize an imbalance in the body.
At the Barral Institute, students learn how to work to use manual therapy that focuses on the internal organs, their environment and the potential influence on many structural and physiological dysfunctions. This is the study of Visceral Manipulation.
Visceral Manipulation relies on the palpation of normal and abnormal forces within the body. By using specific techniques, therapists can evaluate how abnormal forces interplay, overlap and affect the normal body forces at work. The goal is to help the body's normal forces remove abnormal effects, whatever their sources. Those effects can be global, encompassing many areas of bodily function.
How Does Visceral Manipulation Help You?
Visceral Manipulation is used to locate and solve problems throughout the body. It encourages your own natural mechanisms to improve the functioning of your organs, dissipate the negative effects of stress, enhance mobility of the musculoskeletal system through the connective tissue attachments, and influence general metabolism. Today, a wide variety of healthcare professionals perform Visceral Manipulation. Practitioners include massage therapists, osteopathic physicians, allopathic physicians, doctors of chiropractic and other licensed body workers.
How is Visceral Manipulation Performed?
During a Visceral Manipulation session, the client is clothed except for the mid-torso area. The practitioner uses specific placement of soft manual forces to encourage the normal mobility, tone and motion of the viscera and their connective tissues. These gentle manipulations can potentially improve the functioning of individual organs, the systems the organs function within, and the structural integrity of the entire body.
Harmony and health exist when motion is free and excursion is full - when motion is not labored, overexcited, depressed, or conflicting with neighboring structures and their mobility. Therapists using Visceral Manipulation assess the dynamic functional actions as well as the somatic structures that perform individual activities. They also evaluate the quality of the somatic structures and their functions in relation to an overall harmonious pattern, with motion serving as the gauge for determining quality.
Due to the delicate and often highly reactive nature of the visceral tissues, gentle force precisely directed reaps the greatest results. As with other methods of manipulation that affect the body deeply, Visceral Manipulation works only to assist the forces already at work. Because of that, trained therapists can be sure of benefiting the body rather than adding further injury or disorganization.
| Time | Cost |
|---|---|
| 60 minutes | $60 (College students - valid ID Special Rate $45.00) |
| 90 minutes | $90 (College students - valid ID Special Rate $75.00) |
