Speaker 2 (00:06.69)
Welcome to the Massage Business Success Podcast. I'm Amy Bradley Radford, Massage Therapist, Educator, and the creator of Pain Patterns and Solutions Bodywork. On this podcast, we talk about sustainable business, how to successfully work for yourself and pain management, what works, what doesn't, and why. Let's get started.
Speaker 2 (00:38.104)
Well, welcome to the Massage Business Podcast. I am your host, Amy Bradley Radford. And today I'm joined by Tom Swales. He's a physiotherapist, strength coach, and the founder of Advanced Movement Therapist Certification, known as AMT. Tom is the clinical director of ComPhysio plus Performance Wellness and has trained clinicians around the world in assessment, rehabilitation, and movement-based recovery. And you know, what I really appreciate about Tom's work is his
focus on helping clinicians bridge the gap between treatment and real measurable results. His approach helps therapists assess more clearly, which I firmly believe in assessment, validate the changes they're creating in the body, and move beyond simply chasing the painful areas. You're going to learn why you don't chase pain today. And Tom's journey into this work was shaped by a life-threatening health crisis that he's going to talk to us a little bit about. He's going to tell us his story
And how it really changed his outlook on recovery and resilience. And this experience that he went through pushed him to look deeper into the root cause of pain and develop the framework that helps both clinicians and patients achieve a meaningful breakthrough. And so, Tom, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me, Amy.
Well, I'm really excited for you to be here with us today. So before we get into all of this clinical framework, which I know you are extremely passionate about, and I love to sit and listen to every little, every little jam that you drop every time we have a conversation, but I'd like you to share a little bit about your personal story about how you got into this work.
Speaker 1 (02:17.39)
So a lot of clinicians, I think, get into this work because they had a great experience with a physiotherapist or chiro or massage and they help them get past an injury. You know, oftentimes we come from a a a perspective of athletics. And mine was almost a perspective of selfishness. So I would get hurt and I would go to physio and Cairo and massage, and I wanted to know how do I fix myself faster? How do I get back to doing the thing that I love?
And with that desire to get back to doing all my sports, I had this natural affinity for anatomy, physiology. And honestly, in high school, there were two classes that I got an A in: phys ed and physiology of exercise. So I looked at this, I'm like, okay, well, I have a natural interest in this. I have this brain that can comprehend and memorize these things. So
Let's let's just put it together. So moving forward, I went to the US on a soccer scholarship, did athletic training, did my degree down there, got certified and licensed. Came back home after multiple times of applying to physio school, not getting in. I finally got in on the cancellation list. Okay, did my master's in physiotherapy. So once I finished that, I got a job relatively quickly and then I worked with the Canadian ski team. So because of my snowboard background, because of my AT background and being a PT.
One of my professors recommended me for the job with Alpine Canada. So I traveled for two years with the World Cup ski team. Great experience. Finished that, found a mentor who was I heard about through the grapevine locally, never met him until I met him on an acupuncture course. And I'm like, this is this is the person I want to work for. Cause what the insights that he could provide and my future trajectory of where I wanted to be, I'm like, I need to learn from this individual.
And his perspective really shifted my view on it's not just the physical body. He has every certification, traditional Chinese medicine, anything you can think of. And he was just a pure healer. And I did not understand what he was doing sometimes. He could put his hands on a body and he would close his eyes and he would feel and he would could move through that person's body and find find things. And it was wild.
Speaker 1 (04:43.052)
And he would say things, and I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about, but it sounds awesome. Sounds all mystical. Like he's very science based, but looking outside the traditional paradigm of physiotherapy and traditional Western medicine, it added a broader perspective of how the individual human being actually works and how to treat them. So in my younger days, I'm like, I don't understand this, but I put it in my back pocket.
And then once I started diving deeper, again, looking outside the the traditional education system, looking at deeper into psychology and biology and chemistry and physics and neurology, then I started realizing, what Doug was talking about, this is a this is quantum physics. This is an energetic perspective, right? When they talk about vibration, frequency, and energy, Tesla talks about that all the time. If you think in those three terms, you can understand the universe. So I took that and I started looking at particle theory and I started looking at how atoms work.
And what we're actually made of. We're just made of empty space that's composed in a specific frequency that is perceived by the five senses in the three-dimensional world. Okay, cool. So now that I understand that we're just a bunch of empty space vibrating at a specific frequency, well, what what else is creating waves and vibrations? Well, thoughts, right? Because the placebo effect is very powerful. It changes chemistry and it changes neurology. So all of a sudden,
The physical matter starts to be affected by something as simple as an electrical signal as a thought, which creates vibration, frequency, and energy. So once I started realizing the connection bet behind these kind of five elements, then my ability to troubleshoot and help the person in front of me became more clear as to what they're missing, what's my entry point, you know, where how do I prove to them that th changes are happening?
And using movement as a and muscle testing as a biofeedback marker for change and getting them to feel the changes and meaningful changes that mean the most to them. Now I know, my the treatment I'm doing is effective. So I learned that through movement and assessment, I can really make those changes, but also show the client, bring them into the process and educate them that the changes are happening, not just what you're feeling, but how you're moving.
Speaker 2 (07:08.44)
Which is huge. You have to include that brain and and hopefully it's not all empty space where that brain is, right? So you have to yeah, you have to include all of that. So so Tom, you you got to experience your work firsthand. You got to experience how this works for you. So what happened to you that really made this work more profound?
I had the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. So coming from higher level sports, and you know, people think, well, this only works on high on athletes. And then so early June 2023, I got sepsis. I went into stage three toxic shock or stage three sepsis, toxic shock, organ failure, heart, liver, kidneys, kidneys were failing. They had to put me on respiratory, they had to put me on dialysis, I had rhabdo, I had clotting disorder, I had everything. And
So for 10 days I was in the ICU and my toes went black. They thought they're gonna have to amputate stuff. And five weeks total in the hospital, ankle got infected, surgery. I went from 220 pounds to 170 in a matter of a couple of weeks because they were taking four liters of fluid off my body every day. And they're like, they're telling my wife he's gonna have to be on dialysis for the rest of his life. Well, everything came back. Heart back to normal, kidney function 100%, liver regenerated, like everything came back. When I was in
The rehab floor, I asked one, I asked multiple multiple specialists. I said, Doc, what were my odds? They're like, less than 20%. I was like, I was sick. They're like, You are super sick. I did not know how bad it was. I did not know that people died from what I had. And I was one of five at this hospital that survived with sepsis that summer. Wow. And they said the only reason you're still here is because of how healthy you came in. So now I'm like, that.
doing all the nutrition and the training and the hard stuff and the cold plungers, that was my insurance policy I've been paying into for the last 40 plus years. So I had to rebuild, I had to relearn how to walk. I couldn't do anything on my own. Going from the person that everybody depended on and for answers and help to needing help from everybody around me, that was probably the hardest part.
Speaker 2 (09:21.25)
That would be really hard.
Yeah, I couldn't do anything. And you have to leave dignity at the door and ask for help to do the simplest things. I won't get into details.
It all went through our brain right there. We heard exactly what you said.
But I looked at this as yeah, this sucks. My body hurts all the time. I have no energy to do anything. I can do little baby steps. I would go to rehab at 9 a.m. every day. I knew all the physios at the hospital. And they're like, What do you want to do? I said, put a mat down and let me roll around for 30 minutes. So my perspective of, well, where did we first learn to move? Like babies come into this world, what do they spend all their time? On the ground because they're strengthening their center. I said
There's no point doing squats and all this other stuff until I get this stronger, my spine and everything, at least to support the structure. Then once I was done rolling around and doing my dead bugs and my bird dogs and crying, they would get me up and we would do some squats and then I would practice crutch walking back to the room. And every day we would do a little bit further, right? That's it. Just a little bit more. So as long as for me there's progress, I'm happy. And as much as it sucked to go back to ground zero.
Speaker 1 (10:35.598)
I'm like, I know what to do. And I just followed the system that I created. And within five months, my weight went back up to two fifteen. I was back doing handstands, I was back doing kettlebell swings. I couldn't squat a ton because the ankle still needed some work, but I regained most of my weight back and a good level of function. And even though it's never as fast as we want, being on the patient side, everyone's just like, all my nurse friends and doctor friends, they're like, You're doing unbelievable.
Like you're doing so quick. I'm like, yeah, it's not fast enough. Right? But I didn't rush it. I wasn't gonna be stupid either. So
Life and death experiences have a have a tendency to change your perspective on life as well.
It does. That that forced me. I was burning the candle. We were launching the advanced movement therapist certification. I was treating a lot at the clinic. I was teaching and I didn't listen to the signals in my body. I didn't realize I had an underlying fever that week. And I kept pushing and training and all of a sudden system crashed. And that sepsis took hold. And it it took hold very, very quickly. But luckily I had doctors to catch it really quickly and give me the right things to stop it.
But it forced us to really take a step back and reprioritize what's important. So as much as that sucked, there's two lessons. One, prioritize what's truly important. And nothing is urgent. Like there's no, I gotta get this done by this date. No, like the work's there tomorrow. You know, unless it's a big emergency where if it's if something's urgent or important, nothing's really truly urgent. And the second thing was.
Speaker 1 (12:18.134)
This affected a lot of my friends and family more psychologically than it affected me. They're like, How did you get sick? You're so healthy. I said, the only reason I'm still here is because I'm healthy. And it so many people came up to me after saying, I heard what happened. Me and my husband, we started eating better. We went to the gym. I'm like, good, because it's always like, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. So I'm gonna take back a little bit of that urgency. I was like, the one thing that we should be urgent about is our health.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (12:48.662)
And not put it off to tomorrow or New Year's or whatever that is. Just start now a little bit. Because you never know. Like training and exercise and looking after our bodies, it's an insurance policy. We are creating resilience and capacity in case shit happens. Like in case our body gets an infection, in case we get in a car accident. If we have that capacity and resilience, the body can bounce back. But if we don't, and we're already in a level of deconditioning, well, we're gonna be in big trouble.
I'm actually going to add a little to that experience since we're here. And then we're going to then we're going to jump in and talk about your program. But so my younger sister was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2023. And she was not a healthy individual. I mean, she she was a workhorse. She knew how to work and she knew how to take care of people, and she was the softest, most giving individual you would ever run into. She would, she would do anything for anybody, but she never took care of herself. And so as we processed through, you know.
brain going in and having this brain tumor removed and everything. She ended up, we had to do chemo and radiation and her body became so depleted that we went through six more surgeries because of complications and infections. So they went into her brain seven times. I mean it was just well around around the area but but her body couldn't recover. And so I loved how you just said insurance policy because I agree with you 100 100%. I watched her in the ICU
Seven times thinking, Girl, you should have not eaten that hamburger and should have tried something else. You do you know what I'm saying? But but but I could see it. Her body was so depleted that she made it through it, but it it it has totally changed her. Uh-huh.
Healthcare professionals are notorious for this. We're givers, we're empathizers, but then we look after everybody else, but we don't look after ourselves. So it's like death by empathy. yeah. It is.
Speaker 2 (14:42.498)
Two
Speaker 2 (14:47.456)
How many people how many people on here are listening to Burnout and he just said Death by Entity? Okay.
It is. And I'm like, it's a physical job, whether you're massage, chiro, physio, like you're doing physical stuff, but you're also exchanging energy. People coming in pain, they are they're they're in this kind of sympathetic state. They're over we'll call it overcharged or whatever, right? And by us using the power of touch, we're gonna offset a lot of that electrical charge and we can take that on because we're walking talking batteries.
And the skin is conductive. We know this. We are electrical. Everything in our body runs through electrical and cells communicate via light. So when we're talking to somebody and they're emotionally dumping, we have to process that, but then we have to remove it. And if we don't expel it somehow through physical exercise or meditation or whatever health practices, then it's going to collect in our bodies. And then that's good, that's really what causes the burnout and the fatigue. It's not.
Our bodies are physically exhausted. We're mentally and emotionally energetically exhausted because the battery's being drained just from the just from the nature of our professions. We have to understand that.
You know, one of the things I talk to my coaching clients about and I talk to them, you know, inside their own practices is getting to a minimum number of people they have to touch because it isn't the whole hour. It's the number of people you touch. And there's a level that people can handle and then there's a level they can't handle. And it's not the half hours and 45 minutes and chair massage and all. It is the number of people you touch if you're not taking care of yourself.
Speaker 1 (16:26.978)
And if we're fit and we're strong, then we can help more. Now we can't help people if we're sick and injured and are constantly burnt out because we're sharing energy as well, right? And it's not that we're just taking theirs on, but we're giving, not just in the form of physical touch, but from an energetic perspective. You can have a conversation with somebody. And if it's a good conversation, they feel they like you and they feel safe, they're gonna feel better.
Simply because you help their psychology and their psychology is affecting their neurology and the neurology is affecting the biology, right? So
Isn't he isn't he fun people? Isn't he fun to talk to? Isn't he fun to bring all these pieces together? Cause you know, one of the things I really like, Tom, is is that you don't compartmentalize all of this stuff like we see in the Western, you know, world of of treating people. You're actually saying, here it is, and this this is how it works, and this is why. Not just, you know, I'm saying it, but but this is why. And it's and it's huge. And you're you're speaking the language of the massage therapist.
Which we had a conversation about this before that, you know, massage therapy takes on a whole personality of people. You get everything from white coats to gypsy bells, as I call it. So and everything in between. And I'm sure you have seen it all come through your door when you're training people. So it you identify with with with our our professionals.
Yeah, and and that's why I love I love massage therapists because a lot of a lot of them have open minds to learn and think outside the tr the traditional paradigm. What can happen, and this this can happen with anybody, is we we can get locked into I I'm gonna go and look at the crystals and all the energetic stuff and blah blah blah. Okay. Well you're take if you take it for dogma and then that's what those things do, but not understand how they can potentially have an effect from an energetic
Speaker 1 (18:18.188)
physics perspective or psychological perspective or whatever, well, then it's hard to validate that. And then all of a sudden you get pushed over here and labeled as kooky, mystical, you know, practitioner. And we don't want that because we don't want to be labeled as that because then we're not taken professionally, because then the white coats and the experts and the scientific people are like, well, that's just crazy talk. But what we know on
We call it woo woo. It's called a woo woo. Yeah, woo woo.
Speaker 1 (18:46.914)
The medical side or the scientific side looking at studies and evidence based practice, they're trying to they're trying to compartmentalize and they're trying to isolate a single variable to prove whether it works on a human being or not. I'm like, that's the dumbest thing that we can do because it's like, well, in this group of individuals with back pain, and a lot of people have back pain for no reason.
what number one cause of people going to the ER that they don't know what to do with.
Right. imaging says there's nothing there, therefore it's all in your head. I'm like, well, it's just not nothing scary is popping up. There's no tumor or stenosis or anything like that, right? Or even with bulging discs, I have bulging discs, but I don't have back pain. Right. Like half of the population have disconniations with no back pain. So that's irrelevant. But they're trying to say, okay, well, with this group of individuals with back pain, we did exercise on this group, we did manual therapy manipulation on this group, and then we here's our control group where we did nothing.
Yeah or
Speaker 1 (19:44.128)
And based on all those, it's like, well, nothing helped. So guess what? Therapy doesn't help. You might as well do nothing for your back pain because it will resolve on its own. Yeah. But if we combine a good assessment, we treat the right area. And then we do some manual therapy to reset the inputs to make that area feel good and safe in the body, make the body feel safe in itself. And then we add some proper movement strategies to change the software so that that individual doesn't keep moving into the lower back in a
suboptimal way and all of sudden the back pain goes away. But we can't isolate that. And there's no studies. All we know is we're a recipe and it's looking at the individual in front of us. Okay, this person has these past experiences, these beliefs, they responded well to this in the past. you know what? They're more they're getting some pinchiness in the back. Might be a joint compression. Maybe we do some manual stuff in there. you know what? The hip doesn't rotate. We should probably take care of that. The reading sucks because
They're breathing up in here and compressing the low back. And they got poor foot control. So if we take care of all those things, all of a sudden, wow, the back pain went away, but I didn't touch the back. Right. So we can't use models that they use for drug trials to prove if a molecule works in a specific way with what we do as clinicians. It is important that we have evidence-based practice to validate what we do.
But evidence-based practice is often 10 to 15 years behind anything we already know clinically, because we're experimenters. We're trying stuff, and as long as we follow the rule, do no harm. That's how a lot of the methods that I came up with in the AMT, I just started to take older models. And I'm like, I wonder if, okay, if I do this cross cord reflex or this sling, I wonder what happens if I facilitate the neck or do some traction. All of a sudden, wow, their straight leg rags got better. What's going on there? Well, the nervous system's saying, I like that. We should probably do something there.
So the nervous system talks to you. If it likes something, it takes the brakes off. It's like, yep, increased mobility, decreased pain, increased motor output. If it doesn't like something, doesn't feel safe, puts the brakes on. Creates tension, increased pain, muscle guarding. So now, and I know I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent, but I
Speaker 2 (21:53.966)
No, no, actually you're explaining your technique very well. You're you're you're putting it into a different perspective. So no, don't stop. You're doing a great job.
So this is where it's very difficult to isolate what we do, but we always want to look at whatever approach that we take, whether it's from the mystical woo-woo side of things and energetic or the scientific 3D dimensional realm model, we need to understand it through first principles. And that's where I really tried to take a step back of what we do as clinicians, of like, okay, you know, physio, massage, chiro, like they're all relatively new sciences.
In the bigger picture. Chemistry is an older one. Physics has been around a long time. Mathematics, like you have these older, older models of education. So I'm like, well, how okay, we are a combination of a lot of these things. What are the five fundamental elements that make up the individual human being? So I start thinking, like, well, we first start with a conversation. Like, what's the first thing we do when a patient comes into our office? We talk to them, we find their story, we make them feel calm.
Okay, great. I'm creating connection through communication, which is building trust and building safety. nervous system feels safe? Well, the nervous system's gonna downregulate. So now we go into neurology. I want to see how you're moving as a system. What's your neck doing? Can you touch your toes? Can you backbend? What's going on there? And then I look at the parts and the pieces. What muscles are inhibited? Where's the nerve tension? Right? Is the nervous system shutting stuff down because it doesn't feel safe? And then I start looking a little bit deeper into.
Well, what's your nutrition? Are you sleeping? What's your stress level like? What's your breathing mechanics? Like all of these simple low-hanging fruit things have a huge impact on our biology and our neurology. But if I can affect going through those first two, well, now the biology is going to change because now cells, mitochondria and and the cells and the tissues can start healing because I've now downregulated the nervous system into a state of healing, which is parasympathetic, simply by talking to people.
Speaker 1 (23:58.326)
In a way that feels safe. So now I'm going back up. And then we look at chemistry, which is everything's molecular. Our DNA is made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and oxygen. So everything's broken down to a molecular level. Food we eat is broken down into a molecular level that we can use. So that's why food is important because it's information. If we eat the wrong things, it creates the wrong responses, which affect hormones and pH. And then coming back to physics.
Okay, well, we're these three-dimensional beings living in a three-dimensional world, and we're governed by the five senses, and we we are all a slave to the laws of physics: gravity, friction, hydrodynamics, all this stuff. Cool. Well, that's affects matter. And then you go into the woo-woo side of things, which is quantum physics, energy, vibration, and frequency. Once we understand those, an atom. So we look at molecules, and then you look deeper at the molecules. It's
We're composed of atoms and atoms are 99.9999% empty space. Okay, so we're 99% empty space. But you look deeper down at that and you see quarks. And quarks are wavelengths. so we're just wavelengths. Like when we're starting to look at first principles and understanding, then it gets a little bit more clear as to why the woo-woo works sometimes, because it affected their psychology and then it affected the neurology, and then it's affecting their biology, and it affected their chemical and the whole system that makes us up.
Changes. Now, whether it was placebo or not, maybe, but placebo, I'm good for placebo as long as it lasts. Like if it if we did something and we applied something that that person was missing or needed, whether it was a word that gave them belief and hope back, everything's going to change because their brain's going to change the chemistry and the whole system's going to shift and allow change to happen.
So this is where we come back to the psychology component of, well, I need to change people's beliefs and give them hope that I can help them and that I will help guide them to their solution. So this is where the woo comes out.
Speaker 2 (26:09.548)
You just talked my language right there, Tom. Because when I when I teach about deep tissue, it's about the hope that you well, not deep tissue, but pain management. Pain management starts with hope, in my in my opinion, the hope that things can change instead of staying the same. And and it it is literally a thought process that starts to change people and allow them to go in a different direction. Yeah. And and positive touch.
Yeah. Yeah. But you gotta you gotta be in the right area, right? And the nervous system has to accept it. If the nervous system doesn't feel safe with a touch in a certain area, it won't let you in. So this is where we can use movement and muscle testing as massage therapists, you know. I have back pain, but you stick their finger in their left hip flexor and their movement gets better. Well, the nervous system's saying we need to treat the left hip flexor because there's something going on over here.
Yeah, I like that. I like that thought. Mm-hmm.
Because now it's validating because we know the pain is the signal for change. The pain is a signal saying something's wrong. Doesn't mean it's the problem. It's saying I'm creating a signal in this area, but you need to find out why it's there and what is driving that pain. And oftentimes it is not the area of pain. Yes, we want that area. It's important that we touch that area to make it feel good, downregulate it, put it into a parasympathetic state, but we have to look away from that painful area.
To treat the root cause of why that pain's there in the first place. And as massage therapists, your therapists, it's in the name. Too often what you guys do is not appreciated because you're like, I go for a massage to feel better. But we have our massage therapists, they all went through the the event the AMT and they they assess ever before every single treatment, right? Okay, yeah, you got back pain, yeah, you got caftite dust. Well, let's just go through a simple little three minute scan, see how your body's moving. They'll check nerve tension, they'll do a couple of muscle tests. Great, hey.
Speaker 1 (27:59.576)
Patient, you see how this isn't working? See how you can't do this? Yeah. Okay, great. We're going to treat some stuff and then we're going to remeasure the change. So now not only do they feel better, but now they can see meaningful, measurable change in their body. And now it validates what you do as a clinician because you treated the right area and you created change in the system. So the hope also came from the proof that change happened, not just I felt better.
Yeah. No, I totally love that approach. Totally love that approach because too many times there's a disconnect. There's a disconnect between that. And you know, I've often said, because you're you're from Canada. Yep. And the rules are a little different in in Canada for massage therapists than they are in the United States. And across the board, I think we've down down regulated our hours just a little bit. There's states and different things, and I'm not gonna get into that that still have higher numbers, but
But overall, you know, a lot of people graduate from school for with five or six hundred hours of education. And they know how to how to do structured touch and they know how to do an intake and they know how to run a basic business if they're lucky. But they but they need experience. And so they get thrown out into this world, and you get all kinds of things on your table. All kinds of things, relaxation.
I just want to be touched. I have emotional issues. I've got all this pain. And it's when they come in in pain that they struggle. If they haven't had a lot of education, it's when they come in with pain and they struggle because really what you have are maybe some, you know, biomechanical tools or maybe some structural integration or maybe some understanding of how the body's working. But when the day is done and you're trying to make money.
You're touching their pain over and over and over again, hoping it gets better so that they'll feel better and want to come back again. And that that that works for some people. And then when it doesn't work for people, what do you do with them? And and how do you create the tools? So we're going to dive into a little bit of how you structure your educational program and what it is that you walk people through so they have new tools. Because if anybody's listening, you can tell that Tom has a very busy brain. He's an ADHD graduate just like myself.
Speaker 2 (30:16.568)
But he has so much knowledge about the ins and outs of so many things that that it could be overwhelming to think you have to replicate that. And so how do how did you take all that knowledge and bring it down to your program that you would walk them through?
If you've ever listened to this podcast and thought, okay, but what would Amy tell me to do about my situation? That's exactly what coaching is for. We take everything you're learning here and apply it directly to your business. I love to help therapists who are ready to take what we talk about and put it to work and find their own massage business success. If that sounds like you, I have a coaching request form linked in the show notes.
So we first off, so one the first principles that I talked about, that's just for our understanding when people are asking questions. We don't that's just so that we can explain better what we do, why we do it, and how we can do it better. The next thing we we do is we create frameworks of well, how do we assess? How do we ask questions? How do we rebuild movement from the ground up? what is the priority?
Right, because the nervous system sets priority over certain tissues and structures based on energetic demands, based on anatomical location, right? So, for example, the brain. The brain controls everything, right? And it's constantly sensing for threats. The brain being two percent, the nervous system being two percent of the total mass takes 25 to 30 percent of all the resources. So it's pretty important, right? When we have tight muscles, you know, we go and stretch, my peck is tight. Yeah, but if you have nerve tightness.
That nerve is going to tell that muscle to tone up to protect it because the brain will rather tear a muscle than tear a nerve from a survival perspective. All of our most important tissues are in the middle for survival. The body will sacrifice your knee to protect your back and anything around that area. Because if we do something to the spine, we're in big trouble. So we we create frameworks of okay, when we're in the assessment, when we're taking a history, I'm more interested in some of the old injuries.
Speaker 1 (32:24.472)
That happened. I want to know about the car accident 15 years ago and the whiplash that occurred that was never treated properly before the new low back pain. Because those old things are probably driving the new thing, right? So asking about old questions, cesarean sections, childbirth, all that stuff is important. And then we go through the assessment. Okay, well, let's look at posture. How what is posture? It's a physical representation of the internal and external inputs and how the body's reorganizing.
So we kind of come up with some, you're side bent this way, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, cool. Snapshot. Then we look at how the body's moving as a system. Can you touch your toes? Can you stand on one leg? Can you squat? Can you rotate? you got pinchiness there. And then we start to look at the parts and the pieces. What's the T spine doing? What's the neck doing? What are the what's the lumbar spine? What are the hips? Again, top down, center out. We're just assessing the same way. Once we find those areas of restriction.
You know, say a hip doesn't rotate very well at the caps and it's a capsule restriction, we're going to move that hip. Well, now we need to apply some new software. We got to teach the body to move differently in that new position we just created or that new feeling. So now, well, where did babies first learn to move? On the ground. Oftentimes people need to start there. I work with high-level athletes. They come in at the end of a season and I have them on the ground because they've been standing up, they've been putting a lot of torsion compression forces through the body. They've organized in this specific way.
But if they're imbalanced because of their sport, I can't have them deadlift and swing swing stuff because it might cause problem. So we need to rebalance them. We need to go after some of those reflexes. So we look at primitive reflexes, breathing, eyes, neck, jaw, like are all those communicating with the nervous system? Because those take priority. And that's what we ran on early on. Once we have these frameworks of understanding of subjective assessment, neurological assessment, motor repatterning, all this stuff. Well, now we have an algorithm.
So every single one of my patients that come in, they have the same assessment. It's an algorithm. So I don't miss anything. It's like a pilot without a flight plan. You don't, you're gonna fly and you're gonna fly the plane, you're gonna burn some fuel, but you're gonna crash because you're not gonna get to the destination. So everything I've learned has an algorithm. And it's not the same for everybody. It's adaptable, it's not written in stone. I just want to make that very clear.
Speaker 1 (34:41.88)
But it helps keep me on track so I don't miss anything and I don't assume anything is not important. So just because they have the lobaca, I want to know, you know what? You can't get your chin to your chest because you have myodural tension. And then we look at the dura, which is the covering of the spinal cord. Well, the dura is jammed up, right? So you bend at the lumbar spine, but you don't bend in the neck. Well, it's a tube. So if you got one end of the tube that's jammed up, it's gonna pull down below. We need to take care of that top end of the tube. We need to look at myotomes, right?
How are the nerves and the electrical system communicating to the muscles? Because if we have a slight nerve impingement, even if it's not nervy, it will cause muscle inhibition. And we see this all the time. Everybody who comes into our clinic is neuro until proven otherwise. We scan the neurological system. And if it's clear, great, move on to something else. But if it's there, that's what you treat first. You have to take care of those that electrical system because it doesn't matter what you do to the muscles and the joints.
If that signaling is not getting there, it's never switching back on. It's never going to not be tight. So we look at the priority and then we structure it in a in an algorithm. And we just move through it. And then all of a we get to these forks in the road. we got to this. You're going to use your critical thinking and go over here and investigate this. that's not the problem. Get back on the main highway. Keep going down through the algorithm until you find those main linchpins. And it's organized in the exact order that really is priority to the nervous system.
For survival. You look at central structures first before peripheral. And if the central is clear, great. Now go peripheral. But let's not treat tight hamstrings and pinchy knees and assume it's just a meniscus or muscle tightness. It's probably nerve. It's probably a motor control issue. There's some kind of force that's ending up into that knee that's twisting because hips not moving, core's not stabilizing, necks in the wrong position. See it all the time. But as soon as we learn an algorithm, then we don't assume we truly assess and we can find those main drivers of their pain and problem.
But then we can make the changes quickly that we're looking for.
Speaker 2 (36:40.824)
Well, I'm just gonna put out here you have the knowledge and the tools to make those changes and the structure to walk someone through so then you can understand what it is that you're seeing in front of you.
Right. Everyone has the anatomical knowledge. Everyone knows range of motion. Everyone knows muscle testing. But what school doesn't do for us, it doesn't put it into an actual usable framework that here's how you put it all together. And that's what the AMT did is it took I again, I've done I went through physio school AT, I done Chinese acupuncture, like I've looked at all different systems and I've kind of brought in to this system some of the like the tools that work. It's like an 80 20.
This will work for eighty percent of the population. And then the twenty percent, you fine-tune it.
And you just realize that there are answers, you just have to dig a little deeper and pay pay a little more closer attention.
Yeah. And the great part about this is you can go learn new techniques and you just learn to plug them into the system and when to deploy them. Because early on I was a collector of courses. Every month I was doing a new certification. This is going to solve all my patients' problems.
Speaker 2 (37:44.608)
I just found the next answer. I just found the next answer. Yes.
of the month everybody everyone's getting acupuncture flavor of the month everyone's getting PRT right and then you realize well this works for some people but not everybody and then I got more confused so then I I had to let's take a step back and like okay how do I streamline this because they're all valuable courses are great the more we learn the more valuable we are because we can solve more problems they solve specific problems but we have to know what problem are we looking at first before we deploy the tool.
And this is where we can get caught. And there's some clinics in our area, they just do dry needling on everybody. I'm like, but they don't need it. Like the muscles toned up for a reason. You didn't find out why. Is it protecting something, compensating, or is it trying to stabilize something? And if you just needle it and then walk off walk off the table, they're gonna get it's gonna come back because you didn't look at the root cause, you treated a symptom. And it's a great tool, and it's a hammer that I pull out not very often, but when I need it, it's there. And
But this this just comes back to a deeper understanding of what we do, why we do it, and how we can do it better. And that comes back to down to first principles. But it's all laid out in the certification, it's all chaptered, it's all laid the the exact layout that I put it in in the modules is the exact order we do it. So we don't have to try and piece it all together. It's the map is there, and then you can just adapt it. So learn it and then you can adapt it, and then you can modify it, and then you get to be creative from it.
That's a fun little journey. That's a fun little journey. You know, you almost described part of my journey that I went through as a massage therapist. And I've been doing massage now for 33 or 34 years. And I started out as a deep tissue, as a trigger point therapist in in a town where there really wasn't a deep tissue therapist and became very popular very quickly, burned myself out, hurt myself, saw
Speaker 2 (39:39.33)
You know, 28, 30 people a week. I mean, I was it it went down that path and I dove into what was called Paul St. John Neuromuscular Therapy. And I couldn't afford at the time because I mean this was in the 90s, I was charging $25, $30 a massage. There was part of the problem. But I ordered his home study course and it came in VHS tapes. How many know what I'm talking about with a VHS tape? I mean, come on, here we go.
But the things that I learned about the nervous system inside that program were huge. And and I I really look at a lot of the laws that he trained us in to understand, you know, the reality of it is is if you can't change what's going on with the with the nerve and you don't understand, the muscle can't let go because the nerves are running the show. So it's just interesting as you were talking I'm like, Yep, yep.
Yep, yep. And then I started to go to all these other classes and like, woohoo, you all get this and woohoo, you all get this. And and and then over time it it became something where I was like, How are you really feeling?
So I always want to preface, you know, whatever we do, ask what is it doing and why am I doing it? When we learn a new course, when we are taking information in, it's is this helpful or could this be a waste of time? And my thing is there's no course that's a waste of time. You're always going to take some value from it. But is it just entertainment or is it education?
Because if we're just consuming stuff and not learning why it's relevant or why we're doing it or how it works, then it's just entertainment. There's no real world application. And then it becomes memorization and then just becomes the thing. Well, I do this because I saw this online or I read this in a book. But that's not true understanding. This is where, again, I'm gonna go back to first principles of understanding of where does it plug into these first principles? Where does it plug into my framework?
Speaker 1 (41:40.726)
And how can I apply this in a system? And if we don't follow that logic, then it's just random. We're just applying random things on random people and we don't know if it's the right thing. I like a level of certainty. And I know everything nothing in life is certain. I get that. But people are paying us a lot of money to come to see us to help them out of their problems. I want to put my best foot forward and come in with a
very high level of certainty that I know how to navigate this human being and what they need and what they're missing, what my entry point is, and how we can start making the meaningful changes that this individual needs in front of me very, very quickly. So stop guessing and start assessing. So I like the quote most of my most of my first appointments, the assessment we we have hour long assessments. And I'll spend the first 40 to 45 minutes assessing.
Stop guessing. Stop guessing.
Speaker 1 (42:39.062)
And then once I get all my information, I have the picture of the individual. I'm like, I know exactly where we need to start with this person. I give them one or two things. If I need to do a little manual therapy or whatever, I change one input, I apply one or two movement strategies, and all of a sudden, they feel an immediate change because I went after that kind of that main thing, that first level that's kind of driving the system. And of course there's layers because next time I see them.
That's that's moving great, but we've uncovered something else because the body works in layers and it's really good at compensating and creating all these torsions and all these movements. Again, compensation's good. It's a survival mechanism. We need to compensate. We need to be able to run away from the tiger, but they're not helpful long term because they will cause these kind of secondary and tertiary pain problems down the road. So one of my mentors, he said this exact same thing. He's like, if
Somebody comes in, there's new pain. I only have 30 minutes. He's like, I'm spending the first 25 minutes assessing them. And I'm spending five minutes on treatment. Because if I don't spend the time assessing to find what is truly causing this problem, then I'm just chasing around pain. Then I don't know what what was the thing. If I treated five things, I don't know what was the thing that actually worked. So what, next time I gotta chase the five things around again? Abraham Lincoln said it. If I have
Seven hours to cut down a tree, I'm spending the first six sharpening my axe. So the assessment is where the magic happens. If we spend time on that, if it's thorough, if it's not skipping things and not assuming, we can make more meaningful change a lot faster. Treatment is it's important, it's great. But if we're not treating the right area on the right person with the right tool at the right time, nothing changes. They might feel good momentarily.
But it comes back an hour to hours. Yeah. Yeah. Or an hour later. It comes back. And then they get frustrated. You're like, why didn't that work? you must not be doing your exercises. like it just becomes this, you didn't fix me, you didn't do your exercises. Well, now nobody wins, right? And this is it becomes this perpetual roller coaster and and fa carous wheel of of pain, chase the pain, treat the pain. Pain's still there, feels a little bit better. And that's not the point. The point is to get people past their pain.
Speaker 1 (45:00.012)
Back to function, back to doing the things that they love, but it comes to the assessment. And we again on Comeback Physio School, they teach you all the tools and how to assess and compartmentalize the joints. They don't teach you how to assess. We we're good at diagnosis. Diagnosis is easy. I can get asked a couple of questions, do a couple of tests, and I'm like, you have a grade two partial thickness tear of superspinatus based on my tests. Why is it there? Why did it take why is it tearing in the first place? Is it your neck?
Is it your nerve? Is it your breathing pattern? Is it a capsule restriction? Something accumulated those forces into that rotator cuff, broke it down over time, and now we have a pain syndrome. Why is it there? We are very good at finding the what, which is the diagnosis. We need to find the why. And that comes with thorough, proper assessment. And if you're consistent with the assessment and the algorithm, you get really quick. Like I've gone through, I can assess 15 minutes and find root cause real quick.
Patterns. The body has patterns. It has patterns.
But I practice it so many times I can move quickly through the algorithm and get to that if I need to. But you know, in the beginning I tell people, I'm like, yeah, this is gonna be new for you because you're used to doing it a certain way. And we have to kind of unlearn that and make this your new default pattern. It's like it's like a martial art. Takes time to build, but easy to apply once it's there. It's like anything. It becomes automatic, but it just takes some practice. And the way that the certification is laid out, it's in the exact order in which you do it with every single patient.
And we get it deeper into neurology stuff. If you got concussion patients, vestibular issues, there's a whole separate algorithm that you deviate over to to go through that. Look at the cerebellum, look at the balance testing, look at the visual system, look at the jaw, look at the cervical reflex. Like there's all kinds of things. Rule out why they're dizzy. okay. It's a neck issue. Great. Go back over here. So it's a it's a roadmap. And I laid it out. You know, it took me quite a while to lay it out because that that was the map that was in my brain. But it works. I've seen it.
Speaker 1 (47:00.14)
Consistently, our clinicians who come in and they're one year out of physio school or massage therapy school, they're treating faster and better than a five-year vet. And my three-year clinicians, they're treating better and faster than a 10-year vet. Because our clinic is the people come to us because they've been everywhere else. they they keep treating my I'm I'm seeing different things. I'm getting different answers. And then all of a sudden they see our therapist, whether they see chiral massage, osteo, or physio.
They're all assessing, they're all applying their different lenses, but they're all finding kind of that same root driver. And we've had clients say, my osteo, so physio and Cairo found this and massage found this here at our clinic. And the osteo is just like, I don't see that. Like, how are these three different individuals all getting to and you know, they're obviously getting better, but it's nice for the clients to be like, there's consistency. It's not.
Cairo saying this and massage is saying this and like everyone's finding different things. But how do you know, yeah, you're treating an area? How do you know that's the main area? How do you know that's the driving system? So it c it's kind of cool because for clinic owners, it creates consistency of care across clinicians. Everyone's still doing their Cairo thing, their massage thing, physio thing. They all have different tools. But there's consistency in the language and there's consistency for the patient of like, all these experts are coming to the same conclusion.
They're getting there slightly differently, but they're finding the root cause. And that patient is seeing consistent results. So it's cool to see because it really levels up clinicians faster because they're more organized with their approach. There's no chaos. It removes the chaos. Consistency on the front end of your assessment creates creativity on the back of treatment. We get too creative with our assessment coming out of school and with all the stuff. And then everyone gets protocols. Everyone gets the same treatment.
It's backwards. Consistency on the front end leads to creativity on the back end. And that's how it should be. Because if it's treat everyone gets the same treatment, that's cookie cutter.
Speaker 2 (49:07.15)
yes, cookie cutter syndrome, as I call it. So, you know, Tom, this is a great segue into tell us a little bit about your program because I know you do live classes, but I know you also do online training. So tell us just a little bit about how that structure works for people.
So it's immediate access. It's evergreen. So the nice thing is it's it's about twenty-eight hours of content. So it's two certifications in one. you go at your own pace. So you can watch it as many times as you need to. You do the quizzes, you take the exam, you pass the exam, unlocks level two. But we have monthly live coaching on school. So people bring cases, case studies, we go over problem solving in person or online, and then
Nice thing with the community that we created is people can, hey, I have this client. They pop the question into the community and then we all get to respond. Right. We it's like everybody coaches everybody because the culture we created at our clinic from the beginning was this is an open door learning policy. We do mentorship every week, we teach each other. we do masterminds every quarter, meaning we come in on a Sunday and you did a course? You're now the instructor to teach everybody what you know because you're now the expert. So we
What we did is we took what we do in our clinic and we replicated that in a bigger model to bring in clinicians from everywhere. And the thing is, is everyone's coming in with different perspectives and different ideas. And it's the only way to evolve and get better as a profession. Because, in my opinion, if clinicians are or patients are coming in from other places and they're just treating pain, I'm like, we're not doing a good job as health experts here. Like the standard of care is too low.
Because what's common knowledge for us at our place is not out there yet. And I want to make it common knowledge of better problem solving so you can actually help people and not string them along for a year and a half of treating the same thing because you're treating the wrong thing. So it's it's all online. we have I I put YouTube videos up all the time. We'll record mentorships, we'll go over the systems, we'll go over treatment techniques, when to apply them, case studies. So we have
Speaker 1 (51:22.858)
a lot of content that I'm constantly building and it's great. It's a fun community. Everyone's there to learn and level up. And it's super supportive. So I recommend, you know, if you are in this perspective of I really want to stand out from the rest of the herd, come and join the AMT collective.
Well, that's wonderful. That's awesome. You know, Tom, I've really enjoyed I've really enjoyed talking with you today. I could probably pick your brain for a really long time. Really long time. I I love what you're teaching people. I love how you're approaching pain. I love how you're approaching change and not just focusing on the pain. I think that's a that's a huge mind shift for for people to really understand how to make a difference, not only in their own life, but in their clients' life.
And you know, I'm gonna put this little thing in here, and that is one of the things that perpetuated my career because I got tired of doing the same thing over and over and over again. And one of the things that made me want to be a massage therapist for a long time was learning, and it was also finding ways to help my clients in pain. I left regular massage and went off into my own because there was this passion and this drive and
This desire to learn as I was working. And it is what fulfilled me for years at the table. And so I have people that are like, how am I going to do this for the rest of my life? And and you know what? Curiosity and truth are what would help you actually have a long-term career in massage therapy. I think you have a lot to offer, those those in the massage therapy field. So I want to thank you for hopping on our podcast today. It's been wonderful to talk with you.
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (53:05.132)
We'll have you back again because I think there's some really great things that you can share with people.
Sounds great. Thanks, Amy.
Speaker 2 (53:16.91)
Thanks for spending this time with me. If this episode was helpful, subscribing or leaving a review helps other therapists find the show. For classes, resources, and ongoing education, you can visit amibradleyradford.com or join my email list if you'd like to stay connected. Take care of your body, your clients, and your business. I'll see you next time.
