Wearing a mask is optional!
As in previous years, Terry Kern Physical Therapy does not accept any insurance plans. Also beginning in March 2024, all therapy visits based on a hourly charge will see a price increase from $90.00 to $100.00.
I have decided to go to wearing a “mask is optional!”
I will continue to see clients Monday thru Thursday from 8 am to 5 pm.
The guidelines for scheduled clients during 2024 are still the following:
•If you schedule and feel ill, please cancel in order to protect my wife and I as well as my other clients from infection. Remember, symptoms of COVID-19 include: Fever, Chills, Cough, Shortness of breath, Fatigue, Muscle or body aches, Headache, Loss of Taste or Smell, Sore Throat, Congestion or Runny Nose, Nausea or Vomiting, and Diarrhea. Symptoms of influenza include: Feeling Feverish or Chilled, Cough, Sore Throat, Runny or Stuffy Nose, Muscle or Body Aches, Headaches, Fatigue, Vomiting, and Diarrhea. Symptoms of RSV include: Cough, Running Nose, Sore Throat, Fatigue, and sometimes Fever and serious cases can cause difficulty Breathing and Dehydration. If you are in doubt about how you feel, “stay home.”
•You can cancel the day of the appointment with “no charge.” To cancel an appointment, you call 505-761-0016 and leave a voice mail. Messages are picked up on a daily basis. You can also e-mail me at kernterry7@gmail.com. I check my e-mails throughout the day.
•Please continue to be diligent about washing your hands or using a hand sanitizer, but especially before entering the clinic. You can wash your hands in the restrooms outside of my clinic down the hall. The bathroom code for women is 6712 and the bathroom code for men is 6711. I utilize a hand sanitizer between patients.
•Again, all physical therapy visits starting March 2024 will be based on a $100.00 hourly charge. I do not have any physical therapy assistants or aides, so you are stuck with me during treatment. I am a sole practitioner.
•I have added a new site for manual therapy clinicians including physical therapists, physical therapy assistants, acupuncturists, osteopaths, chiropractors, trigger point therapists, and massage therapists. Just click on “clinicians” at the top of the page and you will find a link to M.A.T. M.A.T. is the general systems approach to optimum skeletal posture and movement, analysis, balance, and treatment of acute and chronic musculoskeletal pain I have developed from my experiences as a nordic ski jumper and in the clinic.
•During the first quarter of 2024, I plan on having the first of my online classes and manuals available for manual therapy clinicians.
If you have any additional questions regarding the clinic, please call me at 505-761-0016 or e-mail me at kernterry7@gmail.com. Thank you.
Terry Kern, P.T.
Not all physical therapy is alike.
Your experience at Terry Kern Physical Therapy will be entirely different from any previous experience you may have had. The difference is an eclectic approach called Myomemory Transformation Advantage. (M.A.T.) It is based upon my own personal experiences as an Olympic athlete in the sport of nordic ski jumping, a physical therapist for over forty years, and more importantly as a patient having surgery and rehabilitation on both shoulders and a knee. My techniques incorporate the best of other physical therapy and alternative medicine philosophies, using their ideas in a new and innovative manner as it applies to laws of physics and your body.
The primary focus in the treatment of your musculoskeletal pain and/or injury is that of facilitating a transformation of your neuromuscular, fascial, and skeletal systems and ultimately your posture and movement through manual therapy, exercise, and education. My exercises target both isolated and integrated postures (holding patterns) and movements designed to reset your isolated and integrated neuromyofascial patterns and their length, tensile, and compressive forces that directly affect the stability and mobility of your skeletal system. Many of your symptoms including pain are due to the fact that your present neuromyofascial patterning no longer works for you. As your neuromyofascial patterning changes, so will your pain because there will be less breakdown and inflammation of the body’s soft tissues responsible for your skeletal balance and equilibrium. One of my goals is to alter the way you find skeletal balance and equilibrium by changing your habits and behaviors of posture and movement at a subconscious, reflexive level.
“Muscle/Myofascial Memory”…turning your muscles on “autopilot”
When talking about muscle/myofascial memory which I have shortened to “myomemory,”I am referring to the ability to reproduce a particular posture and movement without the intervention of the conscious mind, acquired as a result of frequent repetition of simple or complex postures and movements. This involves practice and as my coaches in nordic ski jumping would say, “Take the conscious mind out of the skill!”
This is how “myomemory” works. When you first perform a simple or complex movement, it may feel uncoordinated, clumsy, and foreign to you. Your mental focus and concentration at first is directed at performing the movement and what is happening with your body. However with enough practice, enough repetitions, the movement becomes easier. The main reason for this is that you are gaining body, kinesthetic awareness, motor control, and neuromuscular and myofascial efficiency referred to as “proprioception.” However, this is only one of the neural pathways through which your brain and nervous system creates muscle memory with the others being “visual and vestibular.”
Myomemory is a process of reorganizing and rewiring your brain/muscle/myofascia/fascia connection by using the different modes of sensory input that include proprioceptive, visual, and vestibular. Since about 60% of your brain is somehow involved with interpreting visual input, it is the most dominant mode of sensory input in my exercises. The vestibular system, involving the position and motion of your head and neck is second followed by proprioception referring to the sensory input coming from your joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia of the body.
When you are given an exercise at my clinic, it is designed to reorganize and rewire your brain/muscle/myofascia connection which ultimately changes the length, tensile, and compressive forces of the isolated myofascia and integrated fascia. With each repetition of an exercise I may give you to do over and over again, you are literally decreasing the resistance in your neuronal pathways within the brain and nervous system to create a new neuromyofascial pathway. You are creating change. This makes it easier for your brain to tell your body what muscle and its synergists to facilitate or activate next time when performing your activities of daily living. This is referring to something that is intrinsic within the human brain and nervous system called “neuroplasticity.” It is your body’s innate wisdom to recognize a better neuromyofascial pattern and change, allowing the old, dysfunctional neuromyofascial patterns to fall away ultimately transforming your posture and movement and reaching the goal that can be best phrased as “motion is life!”
The neuromyofascial patterns of posture and movement, the patterns of skeletal stability and mobility, are the development of muscle synergies where the the term “synergy” literally means working together. Once the brain and nervous system goes through the processing and integration of the visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive sensory input due to the vertical and natural forces of gravity and ground reaction force (GRF), the output is a coordinated recruitment of muscles with specific activation of posture and movement goals.
Your present functional, neuromyofascial patterns which are the habits and behaviors of how you perform your activities of daily living, become dysfunctional over time. The length, tensile, and compressive forces produced by the myofascia and fascia have become dysfunctional altering the position of the integrated body’s center of gravity (COG) from the ideal as well as changing the axis of motion, the alignment for the isolated joints. This creates postural asymmetry and compensation in movement that overtime can create arthritic changes in an isolated joint and eventually lead to joint pathology. It also can position an isolated joint in a disposition leading to acute joint trauma and injury during physical activities.
When you walk into many physical therapy clinics today, you see a multitude of exercise machines to work out on in order to improve your fitness level. However exercise and your overall fitness level is not the critical problem, it is the dysfunctional neuromyofascial patterning. Don’t get me wrong, exercise addressing your fitness level is an important aspect of your health and wellbeing, but it won’t help alleviate the acute and chronic musculoskeletal pain due to your dysfunctional myomemory and neuromyofascial patterning that causes poor integrated posture and movement and compensation of isolated joint alignment from the optimum. Your osteopathic doctor, chiropractor, and physical therapist might manually try to adjust your skeletal system in order to put you back into alignment, but again, you are not actively involving the brain and nervous system, muscular, and fascial systems to make a lasting effect on your posture and movement, integrated center of gravity (COG), and isolated joint alignment. Altering your myomemory and the dysfunctional neuromyofascial patterning can only occur with specific, active exercises that I will give you through a system I now call “Myomemory Advantage Transformation” (M.A.T.).
With M.A.T., I first evaluate a patient’s integrated posture and movement and isolated joint alignment in a process called “body reading” on each visit, looking for the neuromyofascial and fascial compensation causing asymmetry. I have also acquired what is called a “tuning board” which I now use in my evaluation and treatment process. The exercises and education I offer within M.A.T. involve altering the isolated myomemory and integrated functional neuromyofascial patterning that is the result of compensation to the constant forces of gravity and GRF in everything you do.
These exercises are not meant to address your fitness level and for you to work up a sweat. They are specific isolated and integrated exercises I have designed that you do for a short period of time over and over again to transform your myomemory and functional neuromyofascial patterning. These exercises involve different joint and body positions to affect the proprioceptive system, different head and neck positions to affect the vestibular system, and more importantly eye movements to affect the visual system. The goal of these exercises is not only to alter your myomemory and functional neuromyofascial patterning, but in this process to decrease the inflammation and pain of the body’s soft tissues from the compensation.
My M.A.T. assessment made on a daily basis includes how you sit, walk, and move. It now includes how you balance with the “tuning board.” I also go over your body’s trigger points created by the dysfunctional myomemory and neuromyofascial patterning. There are many trigger points throughout your body due to compensation that’s been happening over time. Trigger points, taut bands of fibrous tissue better known as fascia, lie deep to the skin and along the fibers of muscle tissue. The fascia encapsulates the isolated muscle fibers called “myofascia” and becomes part of the tendon attachment of muscles to bones.
The fascial component also encapsulates the body’s organs in a supportive role, as well as separating and connecting organs and the different tissue layers. By applying vibration to the tendon attachments of muscles and their trigger points, I am altering the alignment of the collagen fibers. That is also accomplished by applying direct, manual pressure to the trigger points of the compensating muscles, I allow your body through its innate wisdom to realign itself reflexively and naturally. But again without active participation by the nervous system with the specific, M.A.T. exercises, the changes achieved are short lived allowing you to return to the old neural pathways. It is the M.A.T. exercises that allows the old myomemory and neuromyofascial patterns to fall away and facilitate new patterns.
As you might imagine, these trigger points tell me a lot about how your body is working to maintain its COG and isolated joint alignment. They really help pinpoint exactly what is going on with you and how you are compensating with your posture and movement from both an isolated and integrated perspective. Yes, I can tell which muscles, muscle groups, neuromyofascial patterns, you need to work on and what you need to do to change their length, tensile, and compressive forces.
I might be working on a client’s feet, and they might say, “Wow. I can feel that in my shoulders!” I love it when my clients begin to understand how their body parts connect and work together through their integrated neuromyofascial patterns. The most popular statement I like to use in the clinic is, “everything is connected.” This is an important part of their education in M.A.T. in order to make the meaningful changes required to achieve optimum performance of their musculoskeletal and fascial systems. The body is such a wondrous, integrated, and synergistic design.
When there is a shift in your body’s integrated COG from the ideal, it becomes a problem because of the compensation affecting the length, tensile, and compressive forces that occur throughout your skeletal structure. This did not happen overnight, but occurred over time. As you fix one issue within your dysfunctional neuromyofascial patterning, another issue might appear. This is not unusual because dealing with compensation is like peeling away the layers of an onion. It is bound to happen in your treatment with M.A.T. and is actually a sign that you’re making progress. Whereas an immediate benefit of M.A.T. could be a reduction in your pain, it is the long term benefit I am after which is creating “ideal static alignment” of your structure and the elimination of your pain.
Even when you have joint pathology either from trauma or compensation over time that requires surgery like with a hip, knee, or shoulder, the surgery only corrects the pathology. It does not affect the compensation and the body’s isolated and integrated alignment in response to the vertical forces of gravity and GRF that created the pathology. It does not affect your myomemory and the dysfunctional neuromyofascial patterning. In fact, surgery may increase the compensation and dysfunction because of the random and disorganized scarring that can occur leading to “arthrofibrosis.” Therefore, it is important for post-surgical patients to work on their posture, movement, and alignment as well by transforming their myomemory and functional neuromyofascial patterning in order to return to ideal static alignment, stability, and mobility.
So, let’s get started today working on your myomemory and neuromyofasical patterning that affects your posture, alignment, and movement! Let’s change your myomemory and neuromyofascial patterning so you can manage and eliminate your pain while allowing you to get the most out of your exercise routine to improve your fitness level. To schedule an appointment, you can reach me at kernterry7@gmail.com or call me at 505-761-0016.
Keep in mind that you are transforming the length, tensile, and compressive forces provided by the integrated fascial and isolated myofascial systems. The foundational building block of fascia is “collagen.” It is in fact the most prevalent protein found in the human body. That is why collagen supplements have become so popular. The best collagen I have found is offered by “Ancient Nutrition” and Dr. Josh Axe. You can find this collagen supplement, a powder at Sprouts. I put in my cup of coffee I have every morning. I will also be able to purchase it at the clinic later this month.
“Quote of the Month”: “When the forces passing through our spine and head flow freely upward and downward, our mind is quiet and calm.” Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen