Understanding NeuroKinetic Therapy
Do you live with pain on a daily basis? Have you tried almost everything, but nothing has worked? If so, have you heard of or tried NKT? If not, that could be the missing link. We are now offering NKT at Strafford Chiropractic in pursuit of helping our clients truly become pain-free.
NKT stands for NeuroKinetic Therapy, which is a hands-on technique to reactivate muscles and relieve pain from overcompensation in the body. Our new addition, Jim Burdumy, is an NKT Level 1 Practitioner and has used this method, along with other holistic modalities, to help people eliminate their pain instead of continuing to chase it. However, instead of using a fancy, scientific explanation of what NKT is and how it can potentially help you, to better understand it let’s use an example of how it actually helped Jim after he dislocated his knee.
After weeks and hundreds of reps in physical therapy of trying to strengthen his leg muscles to stabilize his knee, Jim’s right calf became extremely tight and started to hurt. Doing some muscle testing during one of the appointments, Jim’s doctor identified that his right glute was not firing/working. Jim asked his physical therapy doctor how that can be corrected. The doctor replied, “We need to do more reps.”
However, more reps is not the answer if the muscle is not working. That’s like putting a 500W light bulb in a socket that’s not working. If there’s no electrical connection to the switch or socket, it doesn’t matter how powerful the light bulb is. The same thing holds true with the body. It doesn’t matter how many reps you do if there is no connection to the muscle. Unfortunately, this is the mindset of many physical therapists, which can be problematic.
Therefore, Jim asked his son (7 years old at the time) if he could help him. He had his son do a glute test and his son was able to pick his foot up right off the ground. Jim knew it had to be his calf that was overcompensating. After poking around for a couple of minutes, Jim found the spot on his calf, relaxed it, and had his son reattempt the test. To no surprise, his son could not budge his foot. Jim’s glute was finally working again and the pain/tightness in his calf dissipated that day.
Oftentimes, the source of the problem is not where the pain is. In Jim’s case, the problem was his glute, but the pain was in his calf. If all he did was focus on his calf, he would have gotten nowhere because he wasn’t addressing the problem. Unfortunately, this is all too common and leads to people spending lots of time and money chasing their pain. If you’ve been to physical therapy, seen other doctors, gotten massages, stretched, and given it time to heal, but it’s still not better – then maybe it’s time to give this a shot and schedule your free consultation.