Chiropractic for your insides?
“Adjustment” to the tissues in your belly & pelvis maybe the answer to your pain.
First things first, Visceral Manipulation, aka adjustment of the soft tissues in your abdomen & pelvis is not a chiropractic technique. It is a manual therapy technique of shortening & lengthening the soft tissues around your organs that was developed by French Osteopaths, Jean-Pierre Barral & Alain Croibier. Currently this technique is used by several licensed health professions such as DOs, OTs, PTs, and DCs as a non-drug based method to relieve pain.
Unlike Chiropractic adjustments, which primarily focus on the bony structures in our body, Visceral Manipulation targets the fascia and muscles. This can be very helpful any time the muscles and soft tissue are cut through, damaged, out of alignment, chronically inflamed, or “stuck”.
Some conditions Visceral Manipulation can help with include :
- Dysmenorrhea — very painful and crampy periods
- Chronic pelvic pain conditions — endometriosis, PCOS, chronic UTIs, painful bladder syndrome or interstitial cystitis, painful sex
- Bloating and abdominal pain with GI conditions like Celiac Disease, IBS, chronic constipation, and SIBO
- Chronic low back & hip pain
- Mechanical infertility
So what does a Visceral Manipulation treatment entail?
Following an assessment of your overall health, your care provider will use their hands to gently mobilize the soft tissues in the affected area. Similar to the picture above, or the one below, the care provider will gently “sink” in their hands into the soft tissues where they find a need for adjustment and check the mobility of the tissues in 3 planes.
Once a restriction is identified, the provider will use gentle pressure to move the soft tissues towards or away from the restriction. Each manipulation or mobilization is held for 60–90 seconds with the client focusing on relaxation or performing gentle movements to increase the benefit of the provider’s maneuver.
For lasting benefit, most care providers will plan visceral manipulation treatments once a week for 2–4 weeks, with more spaced out treatments once a comfortable baseline is achieved. When done correctly, with an effective home exercise program, a client should not need visceral manipulation care on an ongoing basis.
Visceral manipulation can also be used for wellness care like decreasing pulling or numbness from surgical scars, managing pain & bloating with painful periods, and supporting fertility treatments.
For non-medication based pain relief and support of your wellness journey, reach out to your local health care provider trained in Visceral Manipulation.
Originally published at https://pelvicfloorbuffalo.com on November 3, 2020.
