What is Integrative Movement & Manual Therapy (IMMT)?

The creation of IMMT was the result of a concept, the idea that each profession has its strengths and its blind spots. It came together from the shortcomings we saw various groups of physical rehabilitation practitioners had as a result of their formal training. We asked ourselves as a group, in each of the professions, what were our collective strengths and deficits, and how could we support each group to become better clinicians?

CHOOSING THE RIGHT PATH

If you were to imagine that “client health” was at the center of a bicycle wheel, and that the spokes of the wheel were the various health disciplines, you would be faced with two choices. You could take your framework and decide that it was correct and true since what you did led to your clients having improved health, therefore, since your path was true the other paths must be wrong. Or, you could see the beauty of your chosen path and at the same time realize that there were many other “true paths” that led to health as well.

Instead of each spoke being mutually exclusive, they could be seen as an essential part of the client's health, integrated and synergistic with other health disciplines. You could acknowledge that there are many ways to treat someone and not just “one way”. At IMMT, we believe that there are many paths to health and that each discipline is linked to the other by two main tenants. Our desire to help our clients achieve optimal health and by movement. We decided to take what we considered our profession's biggest strengths and then learn from each other so that we would be able to approach our clients from a more holistic approach.

To give examples, osteopathic practitioners are known to have great palpation skills and approach their assessment holistically, but lack the ability to teach and integrate appropriate exercises into the treatment plans. Physiotherapists are excellent at clinical diagnosis and rehabilitation, but aren’t trained to palpate at a high level and often lack the higher threshold exercise component. Kinesiologists and athletic trainers were fabulous at exercise prescription and high performance training, but lack formal palpation or manual therapy skills, even though it is within their scope of practice.

HOW WE CAME TOGETHER

As a team, we sat down, set aside our professional egos and talked honestly about where our blind spots were so that we could use our different paradigms to create something that was holistic, client centered and non-territorial. There was no need to vigorously defend each of our professions, since in admitting that there were deficits, we could openly draw on the expertise of each other. We all deeply believed that there was no “one way” to treat someone and that health was found when we were facilitators versus fixers. It became our mission to bring our message and framework to other allied health professionals.

HOW WE WANT TO HELP

We want to help you fill in your knowledge gaps and enhance your assessment skills, manual therapy techniques and movement prescription. We are so excited to offer our courses to kinesiologists, physiotherapists, osteopaths and all other allied health professionals interested in physical rehabilitation. Our courses are custom tailored to the professional group we are teaching and will be sure to change the way you practice.

We don’t try to show you “our way”, we help establish a framework or methodology on how to best understand your strengths, where they fit within a holistic approach to client health, and how to identify and then fill in your knowledge gaps. In keeping with our vision, a strong emphasis is placed on both manual therapy and exercise and how to blend these two worlds. Check out how we implement this thought process here.

We look forward to seeing you at our courses!

The IMMT Team