Meridian stretching is a preventative and therapeutic tool utilized in pain assessment and management that correlates specific muscle groups with specific organs, energy meridians, and psychological qualities. By preventing future trauma and by alleviating present discomfort, this form of stretching is highly effective in pain assessment and management.
This holistic philosophy combines Eastern wisdom from Traditional Chinese Medicine and India 's Hatha Yoga with Western science's Kinesiology and Psychology to create a profound integrative healing system. The practice utilizes resistance stretching - initially assisted and eventually self-directed - and yogic poses to activate certain muscle groups. The benefits in pain assessment and management are created by the awareness of the person's breath, body, and psychological states that address specific physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental aspects.
Using eccentric contraction, Meridian Stretching is able to induce rapid and cumulative changes in muscle length. Increasing your flexibility helps extend your range of movements and can decrease your chances of injury as well as aid with pain assessment and management after an injury has occurred. In a simple example, if your hamstring muscles are too tight, your lumbar spine will be overstressed when you bend.
By systematically changing muscle lengths, it is possible to return the body back to proper structural alignment so that it moves as it was designed to. Meridian Stretching can create tremendous changes in bone rotation, structural alignment, and thus posture. When used for pain assessment and management, the stretching allows the therapist to find the imbalances in the muscle systems. These imbalances and abnormal tension in specific muscles can then be correlated with organ/meridian/psychological function to improve, restore, and balance all aspects of one-self.
