Dry needling, Cupping, & Body Work
We love some good body work here at Empower Physio and Wellness! It is a great way to reduce pain and inflammation while increasing mobility and muscle activation.
We have multiple tools in our toolbox based on your current limitations, goals, and preferences. Some of our favorites are dry needling and cupping.
Things that dry needling, cupping, and body work can help with:
Muscle pain, tightness, and knots (especially those knots that never seem to go away!)
Acute injuries
Swelling
Exercise recovery
Improving mobility and joint pain
Headaches
TMJ pain/TMD (temporomandibular disorders)
Neck and shoulder pain or tightness
Back and hip pain or tightness
Thoracic outlet syndrome
Nerve injuries or nerve entrapment, including sciatica
Trauma informed.
Resilience focused.
Hope infused care.
Dry needling
Dry needling is one of our favorite and most sought-after treatments. It is one of the most efficient and effective ways to treat muscular pain and tightness.
What is dry needling? For dry needling treatment, we use a thin monofilament needle inserted into the muscle to help the muscle and nervous system relax. Think of it as the deepest deep-tissue massage you can get. Most people stand up from a dry needling treatment and immediately feel better. This is one of the reasons we love it!
To learn more about dry needling, check out our blog post all about dry needling.
How does dry needling work? Dry needling works on both the local tissue and the nervous system.
Locally, the needle is a stimulus to help tight muscles relax. When muscles relax, they have less pain and tension and can contract more efficiently. It also improves blood flow and reduces inflammation, both of which promote healing.
On the nervous system level, dry needling helps calm the nervous system to get it out of the fight or flight, protection mode. When the brain and nerves relate to the target body area better, you can move better with less pain.
Cupping and other body work
Does the thought of needles make you want to pass out? Not to worry, we have you covered! We have a whole host of body work strategies that are just as effective.
Cupping is one that we love to help you feel and move better while reducing feelings of pain and tightness. Cupping provides a distraction, or suction, force to the muscle and fascia and can help you quickly improve mobility and reduce pain. We love to get you moving with the cups on to make the treatment even more effective.
We also do “scraping” (a form of Graston treatment), trigger point release, myofascial release, and joint mobilizations. All of these treatments accomplish the same goal of helping you move and feel better with less pain. You and your physical therapist can decide which modalities are best for you.
Our Philosophy
At Empower Physio and Wellness, we value trauma informed, resilience focused, hope infused care.
We are trauma informed because people almost always have at least a small trauma experience connected to their current limitation. Trauma is as simple as being in pain or being unable to do something you value. We consider these past traumas, big and small, and how they are currently affecting your life.
We are resilience focused because physical and mental resilience are so important for thriving through life. We guide you in maximizing physical and mental strength so you are equipped with the tools you need to handle future challenges life throws at you.
We are hope infused because hope is sorely lacking in the current health space. We are positive and honest with you about your current limitations and infuse hope in what your future life can look like. The sky is the limit for what you can achieve.
Above all, we are focused on YOU. You get your physical therapist’s full attention because we love getting to know you super well! Our focus is to give you what you need at each session, always thinking outside the box.
Let us bring joy and peace back to your life. With our expert guidance, you can get back to the life you love faster and with more ease than if you tried to figure it all out yourself.
We got you. Let us take the guesswork and shopping around out of the equation so you can get back to doing the things you love with the people you love most.
Our process at Empower Physio and Wellness
-
Calm
Let’s be honest, you’re here on our website because you want to get out of pain. That’s why calming pain is our first step. Once we have a very clear picture of what the problem is, we implement simple and effective strategies to start bringing your pain levels down right away. We don’t believe that you have to do 15 exercises every day for three months in order to start seeing results. Most of our clients start feeling better after the first one or two visits.
-
Retrain
Most aches, pains, and injuries come about because of movement compensations over time. That’s why it is important to re-train and optimize the way your body moves. We also focus on re-training your brain and nervous system to better process stress and optimize recovery so that you build overall resilience.
-
Empower
Once you are feeling and moving better, it’s time to get you strong! Stronger people are harder to kill (literally…studies show strong people have a 25% less likelihood of premature death). Current research emphasizes the importance of muscle strength, so in this phase we are locking in all the great work we did in the first two phases with building muscle strength. And we don’t mean 2-lb curls. We prescribe robust, total-body strength in a way that is super accessible to you.
-
Empower PLUS
At this point, you are feeling awesome! We see it all the time that our clients want to do things they never thought they could do- go on an adventure vacation, play on the ground and run around with their grandkids, do a 5k race or even a half marathon, be active and present in the moment (instead of analyzing if they’ll pay for it the next day)…the options are endless. We are here to support you throughout life, help you continue to feel great, and offer body tune-ups–bodies need regular attention just like cars do. Whatever you need, we got you.