Demonstration of Facilitated Positional Release Osteopathic Technique

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Dr. Simcha Shapiro here with Expert Village. And we're going to be showing you one more technique today called facilitated positional release, FPR. Now in many ways, although it may not look like it, is very similar to what we talked about before called strain counter strain. And the concept here is to bring everything into a position where it is relaxed. You find the area that's stuck, bring it into a position with the greatest relaxation, but then, here's the trick, is we fix, we keep the area that is stuck in place. And we move the arm around, once again that long lever concept, we move the limb around. And it goes right through that area that is stuck and we come out on the other side and we move much more freely. Here's a patient who has a shoulder problem. In fact, one of the big problems is right here where many people feel stress. This area is actually the first rib. Because our first rib starts right up here at the bottom of our neck and comes right around. It's a real short, little rib. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to come up here on top of the first rib with my fingers on it. That's usually a little tender for people. Cross the arm across. What that does is it pulls back a little bit on the rib. Pulling the rib away from its joint and creating a little gap there. Otherwise known as disengaging the rib, freeing up its movement. I know pull down here, fixing it. I do a rotation up, around and down. We felt a little clicking and clunking there as things fell back into place. And it?s just that simple."