or, What We Do & How It's Different
The clinical (sports, remedial) massage therapy we offer is different than what many people think of when they hear ‘massage therapy’.
On this page, you’ll learn about our approach, aka Creighton Structural Massage, and how it’s different.
What We Do - The Overview
- Identify your goal
- Check movement & posture
- Apply targeted soft tissue work
- Re-test for progress
- Explain what we find
- Share home-care advice
- details below
What is Creighton Structural Massage?
Creighton Structural Massage is a protocol for working with muscle and fascia developed over the past 15 years by LSM Clinic’s founder, Katherine Creighton Crook.
It focuses on being strategic, specific and targeted with the techniques we use so we can bring the body back into balance.
Instead of just finding tight muscles (usually where the pain is), and releasing them, we look at the whole body system from a mechanical perspective.
We then apply our knowledge of how the body relates to itself to explore why the tissue got tight in the first place, and how we can prevent it from coming back in the future.
Over the years, this has proven a very effective way to work with muscle and fascia-based problems.
We start with YOUR goal.
The first thing we want to know is, what do you want from your session(s)?
Every session is designed around YOUR goal – there’s no repetitive routine here.
Do you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed?
Are you looking to use massage as part of your training or life management routine, or are you looking for a periodic MOT?
The Assessment & History
Once the therapist knows your goal, we do a brief case history and posture and movement assessments.
This helps us be more specific and targeted in your session.
Even in a general MOT or maintenance massage, we find targeting the main imbalances give a much better outcome than trying to do everything equally.
The assessment usually takes 5-10 minutes max of the session (perhaps a bit longer if you have a very complicated history) and allows us to be much more targeted, usually resulting in faster results for clients than they’ve seen in the past.
(Based on past client feedback)
The Treatment
On the table, we take what we learned from assessments and design your session based on your goal.
We also re-test during the session.
We do this for a few reasons:
- It helps us create a picture of how specific muscles are creating your imbalances, which allows us to be more specific in home care.
- It means if something isn’t reacting the way we expect, we can adjust during the session.
- It means you can see what makes what difference and you’ll gain a better understanding of your body mechanics.
- It means we know what makes the most difference for future sessions, so we can be as efficient as possible when we work with you.
During the session we also explain what we’re finding and what that usually means, so you know more about what to do between sessions.
Finally, your home care
Our ultimate goal is for you to be able to keep the problem away on your own, if you choose to.
(of course, once it’s resolved you’re always welcome to come for a regular maintenance session if you’d like)
For that reason, we not only explain what we find during a session, we also give you one self-care exercise, stretch or posture adjustment to do after your session.
We like to strategise on how you can fit it into your day – our ultimate goal is for you to have a self-care plan that takes no more than 5-10 minutes/day, spread throughout your day.
Any questions?
Hopefully this gives you a good picture of what to expect, but if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.
If you’re ready to book a session, click the button below, or you can look at our memberships or check out an MOT + report.