News

The New Year for PRI was kicked off with the first Cervical Revolution course hosted by Advance Physical Therapy January 18-19th. This host site is a Postural Restoration Center with some of the most experienced and professional clinicians I have ever met. Their experience and  knowledge of PRI, Schroth Method for Scoliosis, pediatrics and working with dental professionals for occlusal reference is truly interdisciplinary and artful in approach.

Cervical Revolution has  had a lot of "evolution" this past year with a refined, step-by-step description of atlas on occipital bone position that is clear cut and more easy to understand in the Right vs. Left TMCC. This weekend students learned to appreciate and understand what seems to be at first the challenging subtleties of atlas on occipital function. Visualizing how "A" on "O" drives the sphenoid and how the sphenoid positions temporal bones and ultimately the jaw for a tri-planer picture of how the neck, cranium and TMJ complex affects the entire postural system seems daunting to everyone at first. In this course, autonomics is a prime focus as the neck is the neurologic appendage that drives the rest of the body.

This high level PRI group of practitioners was engaged from the first minute on Saturday to the last minute on Sunday actively asking questions, contributing to the professional dialogue and just working really hard to take in the detailed insights of an advanced PRI course. And then, be enthusiastic about how to apply the basic concepts of this course on Monday morning. This weekend there was a strong emphasis on the basics with a straight forward path to application of course principles.

This was a dream course for any faculty member with this kind of energy and participation from students. What made this course rewarding for me was the staff at Advance Physical Therapy. It was such a comfort to be with physical therapists and PRC’s Lisa Mangino, Jean Masse, Joe Belding, Susan Henning, Josh Olinick from STEPS for Recovery, Sangini Rane and of course Jennifer Smart in attendance. Jennifer Smart will be presenting at the next Interdisciplinary Symposium in April and her presentation is not to be missed! In addition, this group of veteran PRC’s offered clinical discussion and were all lab assistants in one way or another to lighten the load for the entire class and elevate everyone’s experience. Shout out to Angela Ellis, DDS who works with Advance Physical Therapy. She is a dentist and was a first time attendee to a PRI course and she could not have been more delightful and engaged! Thank you again Advance Physical Therapy for hosting Cervical Revolution and supporting PRI.

What a great weekend in Tucson, Arizona this past weekend! I not only got to enjoy blue skies and 65 degrees (Lincoln, NE snowy and 20 degrees), but I also had the pleasure of introducing a third of the class to PRI. It was a great weekend of pelvic inlet and pelvic outlet going into the weeds of detail with muscle actions, positions, and objective testing. The class participation was great with questions, participation, and engagement. I felt the participants appreciated the objective tests and how they can make improved PRI exercise selections when understanding what these tests are showing them. I also felt the power of the respiratory and pelvic diaphragms for internal pressure regulation and air flow were better understood with correct pelvic position. The facility was amazing and thank you to Ben and the University of Arizona for hosting Pelvis Restoration this past weekend. It was a great start to 2020!

We are excited about the opportunity to be involved with the Breathe Hawaii 2020 Conference at the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani on September 17-19, 2020! The Super Early Bird rate of $510 is available until February 28, 2020. Organized by Dr. Rosalba Courtney, this inaugural Breathing and Health Conference will bring together international leaders from the breathing world. They come from a range of health professions and have made important contributions and provide unique perspectives related to the role of breathing in therapy and in health. The goal of this multidisiplinary conference is to "Bring the Pieces Together" and raise awareness across professions of the importance of the work being done in the field of breathing health and to build multidisciplinary collaboration.

Rosalba and the other event organizers are bringing together a great group of multidisciplary speakers to present from the fields of physiotherapy, speech pathology, orofacial myology, dental medicine, pulmonary medicine, otolaryngology, and psychology. To view the full speaker list and schedule, click here! Ron Hruska will be presenting a workshop on day one titled "Top PRI Techniques for Establishing a Balanced ZOA", and he will also be presenting during the Postural and Musculoskeletal Issues and Breathing session on "The Diaphragm and its Effects on Posture, Movement, Breathing and Body Function".

We couldn’t think of a better excuse to visit the beautiful beaches of Waikiki Beach! If you are interested in registering or learning more about the conference, please CLICK HERE!

You can also follow the Breathe Hawaii 2020 social media pages below for more information.

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/breathehawaii2020
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/breathe_hawaii_conference/
Twitter https://twitter.com/2020Breathe

THE CANTRELL CENTER FOR PHYSICAL THERAPY & WELLNESS, THE PREMIER PHYSICAL THERAPY CENTER IN CENTRAL GEORGIA, HAS AN IMMEDIATE JOB OPENING FOR:

LICENSED PHYSICAL THERAPIST
***NEW GRADS, UPCOMING GRADS, & EXPERIENCED CLINICIANS MAY APPLY***

The Cantrell Center for Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine is a physical therapist-owned private practice and has been serving Middle Georgia for over 27 years. We’re proud to employee clinicians who have a passion for the science and value our one-on-one approach to patient care. We are currently looking to hire a licensed Physical Therapist for our booming practice!

We are proud to currently have 3 Postural Restoration Certified Therapists (PRC’s) in the clinic which makes us highly sought after by our referring physicians, our patients, and wellness members.  We often have patients who travel out of town and even out of state to come to the Cantrell Center as we are the only Postural Restoration Certified Facility in the state of Georgia.  

Located in Warner Robins, Georgia, the Cantrell Center is located in the Middle of the state! Just a quick drive to Atlanta or the beach, Warner Robins offers convenience to any interest without the crime rate and elevated costs of a larger city. If you love fresh air and lush green trees, this is the city for you! Visit the website of Robins Regional Chamber for more information about the city of Warner Robins.

What makes The Cantrell Center a great place to work?

At the Cantrell Center, patient care is paramount and each team member’s gifts and experiences blend to create an atmosphere of integrity and encouragement. As part of our team, you will work side-by-side with like-minded and dedicated colleagues, while enjoying the opportunity to build your own career.

WE OFFER:

• A Work/Life Balance — We understand that you have a family outside of work
• Outstanding work environment – Beautiful, clean, state-of-the-art facility!
• Commitment to clinical excellence – You’ll learn from the best!
• Team atmosphere – Our employees care about each other!
• Ethical standards – We have a reputation for the best patient care!
• Constant training and learning – You will learn cutting edge PRI treatment methods
• An excellent mentoring program for new hires – especially for new grads
• Competitive salary and benefits package

To learn more about The Cantrell Center for Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine…

• Visit our website
• Find us on LinkedIn
• Find us on Facebook
• Find us on Instagram
• Follow us on Twitter
• Learn about our Annual Cantrell Center 5K & Fun Run

If you like what you see, please send your resume to pr@cantrellcenter.com.

“A Guide To Awareness & Modification Of Habitual Patterns Of Postural Behavior”
We are excited to start of the 2020 calendar year by making progress on one of our newest resources. This patient guide, throughout its 16 pages, will highlight activities in our daily lives which can be modified to restore more appropriate postural behavior. As anyone who has taken a PRI course knows, these positions often turn into patterned dysfunction and compensation. This guide aims to bring awareness to our unilateral lives, and restore alternation while performing our most common daily activities.

Most of these activities can be categorically derived into common PRI positioning. This guide will dive deeper into those positions and the associated behaviors performed within them. For example, walking, talking, sleeping, eating, as well as many other “living” considerations and of course at its core BREATHING! Not only are we excited to be compiling these activities into one patient guide, but we will also be adding several new considerations and recommended activities to the PRI Living section of our website to further build on the concepts within this guide.

This patient guide will be avalible for purchase in various quantities and packaging options later this year! We are hoping that it will help you as a practitioner clearly communicate some of the basic positional considerations of our science with your patients and clients, and it will also include an available marketing opportunity unique to your business on the back cover! Stay up to date with this and other projects, updates and course in reviews on our blog, via our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and our quarterly newsletters throughout the year ahead.

Advanced Integration and specifically the Integration symbol itself, represent one’s ability to integrate not only the Primary Course concepts, but also one’s ability to recognize the asymmetrical patterns of behavior themselves. In fact your predisposition, perspectives and past experiences will all dictate how you perceive this symbol and consequentially appreciate this 4 day course. Advanced Integration allows us to come together once a year, for a detailed, didactic and sometimes difficult discussion of the most advanced considerations covered in Myokinematic Restoration, Postural Respiration and Pelvis Restoration throughout the year. It allows us to welcome individuals with various degrees of professional practice, differing levels of clinical understanding and multiple locations of living across the globe. This year we were joined by our PRI Family from 26 states, as well as the countries of Malaysia, Australia, Iceland, Germany and Japan. With Valerie Chai (PRC Class of 2019) traveling 35 hours to attend, the dedication of these individuals is something that is continually humbling, and appreciated beyond our measure.

Our Japanese family continues to grow and integrate their own understanding of these concepts as they are now offering all three Primary Courses, and working to present Impingement & Instability in the year ahead. We are also excited to announce the creation of the PRP, (Postural Restoration Provider ™ ) credentialing program that will be offered in Japan in the years ahead. Following these four days we were able to spend an additional two days with the PRC class of 2019, and welcomed 14 new providers from these countries.

The four days of Advanced Integration included some of the best presentations we have seen from Lori Thomsen, Jennifer Poulin and a special appearance by James Anderson representing the concepts they teach throughout the year in the Myokinematic, Pelvis, and Postural course work. If you have not heard these individuals teach this material I highly encourage you to attend one of their courses in 2020, as well as any other Faculty Member that may challenge your current understanding by receiving a different perspective from a different presenter.

The fourth day in particular allows us to reflect solely on Curvatures of the Spine and the effects that Torsion, Torticollis, and too much Torque can have on our already twisted systems. Lisa Mangino, Jean Masse, and Susan Henning have truly spent the better part of their collective careers to understand these concepts and the chance to learn from their intervention strategies was truly a gift to us all.

It is hard to wrap up an entire year of PRI course work through this one four day event. However the opportunity it gives us to come together as a family and challenge each other in a positive manner is one that we never take for granted. As you reach towards the year ahead, may you all appreciate the journey this past year has been for you as we do each December. May you reflect on those that mean the most to you along that journey, and welcome the challenges that will continue in the year ahead.

Our PRI Family starts with our Faculty and Staff and extends from there to all of you. I wish you and your Families a Happy Holiday Season and an Integrative year ahead!   

It was a great weekend in New York teaching Pelvis Restoration. We had 48 clinicians attending the course and 13 were attending their first PRI Course….they made it! Pelvis entails positioning of the pelvic inlet and outlet coupled with muscles facilitation and inhibition with respiration. It’s a lot. I felt the class did an amazing job absorbing the material and asking wonderful questions. Edmund, Sebastian, and Romina your thinking and questioning benefiting the entire class, thank you. Frontal plane appreciation with synchronization of the respiratory and pelvic diaphragm were emphasized with demonstration. Nicole is your left ischial condylar adductor still burning? Geri, I hope you appreciated frontal plane of the left inlet and outlet to re-direct airflow into the right apical chest wall and left posterior mediastinum. Physical appreciation of PRI is powerful, thank you both for letting me teach throught you to the class. The weekend went way too fast, I appreciated everyone and their willingness to come and learn. Thank you Dave, Cuyler, and Brendan and Finish Line for hosting. Neal and Sean thank you for lab assisting! I was able to see the Rockettes in their annual Christmas show,  it was specatular!  Bucket List for me since I was young. Thank You again!

We had a huge turn-out in Minneapolis for the Postural Restoration Integration for Pilates course this weekend and attendees had fantastic questions!  We spent the morning of Day 1 nailing down breathing mechanics and  obtaining the Zone of Apposition and practicing it in lab even before lunch. We followed up by getting into the nitty gritty of the L AIC and R BC pattern and using the Reformer Supine Gait Integration Test and the Reformer Quadruped Abdominal Lateralization to test to see how well people could properly stand and shift over one leg and counter rotate the upper thorax ("legally"). We finished up day 1 with sagittal plane focused exercises.

On Day 2 we started with a heavy discussion on lateralized gait and understanding early–>mid stance and mid–>late stance in regards to the L AIC/R BC pattern. There may have been some dancing involved….like some sagittal pelvic tilts, frontal plane "hula hips" and transverse plane "salsa twists." Then we went through The Reformer Side lying Stance Test that really looks at the frontal plane followed by a lab of frontal plane exercises on the reformer. We finished up the day with talking about the principle of sensing, including cuing and special reference points for the hands and feet to promote L AF IR and R upper trunk rotation. The final lab added transverse plane integration including a personal favorite exercise of mine, scooter. We wrapped up the day having a frank logistical discussion on how does one start implementing these concepts without getting too overwhelmed, starting with getting a L ZOA and mastering the sagittal plane with a L hamstring. A big thank you to Kristin Procopio and Studio U, for hosting this rendition of our Pilates course at her beautiful new facility, and a shout out to Christine Peh who traveled all the way from Kuala Lumpur to be with us over the weekend!

In the later part of 2004 I met with Stan Babel through Karen Jiran MPT, PRC and Carrie Langer MPT, ATC, PRC. Stan who owned and managed Physical Medicine Diagnostics Rehabilitation (PD Midway) and wanted to build a pool. At that time I was really interested in hydrodynamics and had countless discussions with my brother who is an engineer regarding pump power, jet nozzles, etc. And more importantly I wanted to design a pool for patterned neuromuscular isolation and inhibition through the use of directional water to maximize specific aquatic afferentation, as well as compensatory push and pull recognized by the autonomic and central nervous systems. My first PRI Sequential Movement (PRISM) pool design was developed and constructed through Stan. All eight of the stations provide neuromuscular isolation and feed forward activation of groups of muscles to resolve postural related dysfunctional autonomic and physiologic behavior through the flow of water. With the arrival of this pool and its science, PDR Midway, became IMPACT Physical Medicine and Aquatic Center.

Presenting course material that is related to the brain’s lateralized hemispheric specialization and the autonomic nervous influence on our central nervous system’s compensatory behavior, fifteen years later, made my amygdala related emotional, sentimental and nostalgic feelings flow uncontrollably. Stan and his wonderful staff over the years has enabled me to continue to move in directions that I patiently outlined, ballooned and flowed with. I feel so indebted and grateful to him and his staffs over the years. Many of those affiliated with this integrated minded center were in this class.

This particular class also made me feel somewhat sentimental, because I have known most, if not all of them, for so many years. They were watched, observed, tested and judged by me. They were my independent, dependent and constant variables for my research effort on knowing when, how and what to deliver to get where we were on November 2nd, 2019. There were 18 Credentialed providers in the room that affectionately tolerated me being somewhat unfiltered regarding autonomic and central nervous systems and their influence on each other and our patterned behavior.  

This course is such a joy for me to teach and resonate around. Just as aquatic flow can re-balance, re-engage, and re-tense us, so can mandibular latero- molar trusive contact, sphenoid (pterygoid) and temporal (temporalis) oscillation, and palatopharyngeus  (diameter of the pharynx) and tensor veli palatine (diameter of the eustacian tube) ANS control. Before Stan, before the pools, before PRI certification, I remember a quote by Socrates that remains with me today. “I cannot teach anybody, I can only make them think” and I am grateful for those who continue to flow and follow thought processes that make them sequentially think.  

The staff at IMPACT are always such wonderful hosts. The morning breakfast, break food and afternoon warm cookies (thank you Stan) are so appreciated. Christie Amundson PT, DPT, HFS,PRC and Mara Brandsoy OTR/L, PRC have a system in place for courses like this. Their and their fellow team-mate’s effort does not go unnoticed.  I also want to thank Amy Pennaz PT and Catherine Shelton PT for their willingness to work with me in demonstrating how to resolve postural related dysfunctional autonomic behavior.

Todd Robbins, PT hosted Postural Respiration at one of his facilities, Robbins Rehabilitation East, this past weekend in Easton, PA.  One of his trusted friends and former co-workers, Brian Buetel, PT, had been telling Todd about PRI since his first PRI experience and strongly suggested to not only attend but to sponsor a PRI primary course. Todd jumped in to be the host while attending his first PRI course. He also brought and personally sponsered nine of his employees with him.  And what a weekend it was for all attendees with two thirds of the class brand new to PRI!

The first PRI course experience can be exciting, challenging, over-whelming, a refreshing change to a status quo, a paradigm shift and very much like being fed water by a fire hose! What is so fun for a faculty member is to see students repeat back a new awareness and concept, put it into an application they experience during the weekend and have an enthusiastic response of wanting more PRI. This weekend was full of these new awareness moments- like the before and after of a non-manual technique or a new way to look at testing that always can be traced back to what shape and position the diaphragm is in and how it drives position of a pelvis and ribcage. Another insight that is always big is that one of the most important muscles of respiration is the left hamstring while IO’s and TA’s pull a ribcage down, in and back like "hay hooks". The class could see in a new way that muscles on the one side of the body are deficient and some are biased driving us laterally to an end-range position we rely on for a perception of stability.   Superior T-4 is always an added layer of discrimination of patho-mechanical accessory muscle respiration superimposed on top of dominate patterns and position. Watching apical expansion become positive on the left during lab after the Superior T-4, or get air into the right chest wall technique, and the reasoning behind it, was a huge eye opener for the entire class.

Many thanks to Todd Robbins, PT for bringing his PT staff to Postural Respiration.  It is a leap of faith to try a new approach and he and his crew jumped right in with energy and curiosity.  Big thanks to Brian Beutel, PT for sharing PRI with Todd and being the host site contact this weekend.  His help and support was an instructor’s dream and I hope to return soon to Robbins Rehab East. They already have another PRI course subject scheduled for next year. And last but not least a HUGE thank you my veteran lab assistant, Jon Herting who was a valuable resource throughout the weekend!

This was the last offering of Myokinematic Restoration for 2019. And what a way to end the year! We had a great group of chiropractors, athletic trainers, physical therapists and PT assistants,  strength coaches, personal trainers, and cranial therapists.  I was very excited to get to sunny northern California, as the we got 4-6 inches of snow the day before I left. Which made for a miserable Halloween.  

Fortunately, only treats and no tricks with PRI! This course affords us the luxury of spending a lot of time in lab.  Nearly 40% of the class is spent in lab, which provides the attendee ample opportunity to find, feel, and experience the science of PRI. This course also provides ample time for us to discuss, explain, and digest the Hruska Adduction and Abduction Lift Tests as a means of determining one’s ability to walk and breathe. If walking and breathing require compensation, everything will require compensation.  

We had a great discussion about sympathetic vs. parasympathetic nervous system activity related to pelvic positioning, foot and ankle performance, and how the acetabulum position dictates femoral activity.  

My thanks to Shaun Buchanan and Joan Shepherd Mellows for hosting us and all the logistical work that goes into a successful weekend.  My thanks to Jenn Gaskin, Brian Schulman, John Garland, Cody Gilliss, Michael Serrano, and Tracy Henry for all of their great questions and help during demonstrations.  

But this weekend wouldn’t have worked nearly as well if it weren’t for Will Waterman, PRC, and Tim Dempsey, PRT. They were fantastic lab assistants and were a great help during the entire course. Without a doubt, they were instrumental to helping this diverse group digest this information. Looking forward to 2020!