Hands on or hands off therapy

A silly debate generally fomented by therapists with little experience in one or the other, or for the sake of creating controversy.

Why would you not want to have a tool in your tool box that can achieve things at times that other tools cannot?

The argument that you can give an exercise that will achieve the same thing as a hands on technique is somewhat flawed -

1. at times the specificity or dosage required cannot be achieved as well or at all with an exercise - examples would include a chronic headache patient who has signs at 01/c1 with very specific palpation that reproduce their headache - at times you are unlikely to be able to achieve the dosage required or the specificity from an exercise.

2. even if an exercise can achieve as good an outcome - are we not allowed to get there via another route?

As to what we are doing with these treatment techniques - lots of theories - which at this point in my career concern me less than results. However just because you do improve someone with a specific hands on treatment or an exercise does not mean that the theory you had as to why it might work is proven. Once you think you know that answer - you shut down your lateral thinking and progress as a clinician.

I agree that along with manual therapy ( or exercises for that matter) our messaging does not need to be - "you need me to apply this hands on technique for ever to remain pain free". We need to promote self reliance and see manual techniques as just one part of most treatment approaches - but to say you never need them is as i said just plainly "silly".