Myotherapy
History
Physical therapy has been used for thousands
of years and in many different cultures. Past skills in working
with broken bones and damaged muscles have been demonstrated by
examining human remains located in archaeological
excavations.
Even in the early 1980s, this form of
physical treatment was known simply as ‘soft tissue therapy’ until
Bonnie Prudden, an American health and fitness practitioner
coined the term ‘myotherapy’. Dr Janet Travell, Dr David
Simons, and Desmond Tivy, however, were pioneering
practitioners in the field of myotherapy in the USA throughout the
1970s. Scientific interest in exploring how the human body
functions has existed since the middle of the nineteenth
century.
The emergence of myotherapy as a formally
prescribed and effective treatment for myo-fascial pain syndromes
coincided with a consumer demand for less medicalised forms of
manual healing practices. Following the identification by Drs
Travell and Simons in the 1980s of the neuro-physiological basis of
myofascial pain and associated trigger points, myotherapy gradually
gained wider acceptance and credibility as an effective therapeutic
modality.
Excerpt from: Brian Tritton.
Massage and Myotherapy, 2nd ed. RMIT Publishing:
Melbourne (1996).
See also: Janet Travell and David G Simons.
Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, Vols.
1 and 2. Williams and Wilkins: Baltimore
(1983)
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