Appropriate for patients recovering from injury and trying to prevent re-injury, proprioception training is used by physical therapists to increase a patient’s subconscious awareness of body position in space. Patients commonly perform balance exercises on wobble boards designed to improve balance, coordination, and agility.
Redcord therapy is a physical therapy technique designed for injury rehabilitation, pain relief, and performance enhancement. Particularly helpful for athletes, redcord therapy suspension exercises use body weight for resistance, working the neuromuscular system and improving the core to restore normal function and mobility.
Reflexology is a manual therapeutic modality that can relieve pain and stress and improve sleep. Practitioners use their hands to apply pressure to specific parts of the feet, hands, and ears—which correspond to specific organs, bones, and systems of the body—to elicit a positive physical response.
Reiki—a.k.a energy healing—is an alternative medicine based on the Eastern belief that the body is supported by an unseen energy. By placing their hands on or just above the body, practitioners transfer universal energy to help facilitate the body’s healing response.
Resistance training is the use of resistance—weight machines, free weights, or your own body weight—to increase muscle strength, tone, mass, and endurance. The benefits of resistance training include improved health and well-being, increased metabolism and weight control, elevated good cholesterol, and decreased risk of osteoporosis.
Built into normal running routines, running injury prevention programs help runners resolve the issues that lead to injury and re-injury. Programs typically include professional shoe fitting, gait analysis and re-training, consistent and progressive training, increased body awareness, stretching exercises, weight training, and cross training.
Scar management is an occupational therapy treatment for the prevention and improvement of scar tissue. Treatment can stop scars from spreading, decrease functional impairment, and improve the appearance and texture of scars. Treatments for scar management include compression, massage, and desensitization.
The Selective Functional Movement Assessment is a full-body assessment of fundamental movement patterns. It can be used by a physical therapist to determine meaningful impairments that contribute to a patient’s musculoskeletal condition and to develop a treatment plan to address the impairments and provide pain relief.
Self-care typically encompasses the tasks a person performs on a daily basis to take care of his or herself. Some of the tasks might include dressing, self-feeding, walking, bathing, toileting, and meal preparation. If a person is unable to perform these tasks, he or she might need self-care therapy.
Shoulder therapy is physical therapy specifically for the rehabilitation of shoulder injuries, or treatment of shoulder pain. Shoulder injury or pain is common because the shoulder is a complex system of tissues, limbs, and joints—all depending on one another for movements. Everything from poor posture, to sports participation can cause pain or injury.